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I built this tool a year ago but I feel like Mastodon folks would like it

The "Weird Old Book Finder"

Type in a search query, and it'll find one randomly-chosen public-domain book that matches the query -- and present it for immediate reading: weird-old-book-finder.glitch.m

Why only one book? To prevent the paradox of choice! Just *start readin'*

Can't promise every book will be weird, but most are

A longer essay on how/why I developed it: debugger.medium.com/a-search-e

This was a search for "mastodon"

@ilen That is fabulous!

What on earth is that book about??

@clive it’s a report/how-to book from the dept of labor on a coordinated week-long campaign focusing on baby care and health in the US in 1914-1916. Weirdly compelling! I foresee my problem with weird old book finder will be not getting sucked in to random new obsessions…

Clive Thompson

@ilen That book sounds fascinating!

Yeah, when I first made this thing I lost like a solid week to reading 100 incredibly strange but compelling old books