Makers of SearchMil and SearchGov offer SearcheBooks
The folks who brought you SearchEdu and SearchGov are now out with SearcheBooks at http://www.searchebooks.com/? . It looks like the Google interface, and it doesn't seem to offer Boolean OR, only AND or NOT (and phrases, of course). On the other hand, its searches are case-sensitive. (Google's aren't.) Searching for "crazy salad" found two results, one of which was the Yeats poem. Hmm. Results are cached, too. This looks very Googlish.
Some authors have few enough results that they're worth searching for (Italo Calvino) and some have so many that it's better to search for a phrase from their work (Henry David Thoreau, though Henry Thoreau provides far fewer results.) There doesn't seem to be as much repetition as you'd expect; "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents" found only two results, and "yellow skyrockets" found only one. Even Shakespeare doesn't overload the engine: "like an ill-roasted egg" finds only three results. Worth a look. Thanks to the Scout Report for the heads-up.
Posted to Humanities-Literature
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