Research Guides: Resources by format: Pleasure reading books

While the University Libraries at Virginia Tech are primarily focused on serving the research needs of the university community, we still provide a number of pleasure reading books and popular literature.

Ebook collections

Most of our ebooks are nonfiction books related to the academic and research programs at the university. We do have a few collections that include novels and other pleasure reading.

American Fiction, 1774-1920 from Gale
American Fiction provides access to thousands of primary source, prose fiction works in a facsimile view, with page range or works downloadable as PDF. You can generate term frequency graphs to visualize results.

American Fiction, 1774–1920 encompasses prose fiction written by Americans from colonial times to the early twentieth century. The titles to the year 1900, which are now available, include nearly all of the works found in Lyle H. Wright’s American Fiction: A Contribution Toward a Bibliography. Wright’s three-volume set—American Fiction, 1774–1850; American Fiction, 1851–1875; and American Fiction, 1876–1900—is widely considered the most comprehensive bibliography of American adult prose fiction of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Readers in American realism and naturalism will be especially interested in the second and third parts of Wright’s collection. The collection includes novels, short stories, romances, fictitious biographies, travel accounts and sketches, allegories, and tract like tales typifying the development of American literature in a changing culture. The digital images available are based on microfilm collections from Gale, a part of Cengage Learning.
Wright American Fiction (1851-1875)
Wright American Fiction provides full-text ebooks in HTML and scanned image formats. You can limit by genre, historical period, language, and author's gender.

Lyle H. Wright, a librarian at the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA, created a bibliography of American fiction from the years 1851–1875, published as American Fiction 1851–1875: A Contribution Toward a Bibliography (San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1957; revised 1965). He listed a total of 2,923 titles in adult fiction, including "novels, novelettes, romances, short stories, tall tales, tract-like tales, allegories, and fictitious biographies and travels, in prose" (from the introduction), and inventoried 18 American libraries for holdings. This compilation is part of his three-volume set listing American fiction from 1774 through 1900, and is considered the most comprehensive bibliography of American adult fiction of the 18th and 19th centuries.

American fiction was still in its infancy in the years 1851–1875, but this period saw publication of works by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Dean Howells, and Herman Melville. Many of these authors, especially Twain, Harte and Howells, had just begun their writing careers during this period and went on to write their best known work later. However, most of the authors contained in the bibliography are little known. This period - a momentous one in American history - provides the foundation for later American literature, and this digital collection of 2,887 titles allows insight into American literature, culture, and history otherwise unattainable.

The Wright American Fiction project is still heavily referenced and often sought for data mining and textual analysis. In continuing support of readers and researchers, the project was recently migrated to ensure ongoing, optimal access to the digital content.

Searching the catalog

Users can search the catalog by title or author to find pleasure reading books. It is often easier to start by searching for a known work, like R is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton, and then use the links provided on the catalog screen for that work to find related works:

Author links to other works by this author. Also look for Added Author links when there is more than one author listed for a book (such as a collection of poetry or short stories).
Call number links allow browsing items nearby on the shelf. (See Browsing the Stacks section below.) Each author get his or her own call number (so Sue Grafton's is PS3557.R13) where his or her works, along with books about those works, will be found.
Some, but not all, works of fiction will list Subject Headings that can be used to find similar books. This example lists subjects for a fictional character used in the series, along with genres for this book. To find more fiction about women private investigators, use that subject to link to other similar books.
Suggested Books from LibraryThing Users links to other books in the catalog based on books owned in common by LibraryThing users. Here, owners of R is for Ricochet also tend to own other books by Grafton, plus a book by Sara Paretsky.
User Tags from LibraryThing links to other books in the catalog using LibraryThing user supplied tags (key words to describe the work). These can be especially useful when the work in question has few or no Subject Headings. The size of the tags indicate the frequency with which LibraryThing users have applied the tag to the work. Click a tag to find similarly tagged works and to find other related tags to use as well.

Browsing the stacks

British literature, 1900-1960	PR6000-PR6049
British literature, 1961-2000	PR6050-PR6076
British literature, 2001-	PR6100-PR6126
Asian, African, Australian, New Zealand and Caribbean Literature	PR9199-PR9639
American literature, 1900-1960	PS3500-PS3549
American literature, 1961-2000	PS3550-PS3576
American literature, 2001-	PS3600-PS3626
Canadian literature	PS8001-PS8599

Like most academic libraries and unlike public libraries and bookstores, Newman Library does not have a fiction section. Our fiction is cataloged using the Library of Congress call number system. Literature is arranged by the country of origin of the author and is further divided by date, based on the year an author was born.

British, Scottish, Irish, and Australian fiction is located in the PR call number range; fiction written in English by authors from the Caribbean, India, Asia, New Zealand, and Africa are also located there. American and Canadian fiction is found in the PS range. Each author is assigned a call number of his or her own, which arranges the books in alphabetical order by author (note that books about an author's works will also be found in the same call number range). Literature from other countries and languages will be located in other P call number ranges.

Using the Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library

Residents of Montgomery and Floyd counties, including students living on campus, are eligible to obtain a library card from the Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library (MFRL). While the Virginia Tech Libraries select items for its collections primarily based on the academic research needs of its users, public libraries strive to collect popular works (among many other types), with frequent turnover of their collections. While university libraries typically purchase a single copy of a book, public libraries often purchase multiple copies of popular works. We highly recommend our students, faculty and staff take advantage of the offerings of their local public library.

Reader advisory books and websites

A number of books and websites provide recommended reading lists based on a person’s interests and favorite authors and genres. Search titles and authors of recommendations in Addison and the MFRL catalogs.