I like bibliofind and half dot com for older books; sometimes you get a zealous seller including a description.

Oh yeah, Katerina's definitely right! Try abebooks.com too.

alibris will often have descriptions of their out of print offerings.

Thank you.

Or, instead of searching book sites, you could just post the title of the book in question. I bet one of us would at least have heard of it, if we don't have a first edition shelved somewhere.

Katarina - I am actually gonna just grab the book from home and use the blurb off of it. I had no luck online and I'm trying to write up descriptions for my bookclub. FTR, the book is Fortitude by Hugh Walpole.

I am kinda amazed that online book sites (where the full book is online for reading or download) do not have descriptions up for all the books. I'd think they'd get more downloads if people could browse descriptions. WIthout them it seems you'd only get destination downloaders/readers.

Sadly, I'm unfamiliar with "Fortitude." Perhaps another part of the hivemind will come to the informational rescue.

Agree that advertisers should include blurbs about their products. I'd find it helpful.

Just bought a collection of Mary Oliver's poetry. I love buying books of poetry -- makes me feel so decadent for some reason, more so than when buying a novel.

"Wild Geese"
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

sighhhhhhhh - oh to be able to write like her

I have a poem of hers sitting in my inbox that I've been meaning to post in my LJ.

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Oh yes, isn't that wonderful? It was in Writer's Almanac last week, right? I saved it in my inbox too. It's what prompted me to finally go buy an actual collection of her work.