from flickr user Patrick Gage

Rather than keeping your bookshelf in your living room, try keeping it on the cloud and filling it with e-books, offers Google.

Today the cloud-based Internet juggernaut began an online book selling service, allowing users access to millions of titles that are accessible through any device with an Internet connection. That excludes Amazon's Kindle, which is made to work only with Amazon e-books.

The books will also be downloadable, in case you're one of the cheapskates with the non-3G iPad. What's more, thousands of classics like Pride and Prejudice and Moby Dick are available for free, delivering a hefty beer-money boon to lit majors everywhere.

As an added bonus, customers can buy not just from Google, but from large and small booksellers across the country.

An NPR reporter tried it out with a bevy of digital devices and found that the service worked relatively well over all, although it wasn't an improvement over other apps.