Working With Google Books's Download Restrictions

I wanted to read an item from Google Books offline, but it wasn't downloadable, despite being available in "full view." Unfortunately the interface is so clumsy that it takes forever to get from one point to the next.. If you save a very simple html file using the "embed" code in the Google Books entry, however, it will still load from Google (i.e., no actual download or offline use), but it will be infinitely more responsive.

Here's the complete "web page" saved as EasyVegetarian.html in my James/Documents/Recipes folder:

Obviously it's not a standards-compliant web page, but it loads just fine in the browser without other "required" elements.  I added the <div> tag to center it on the screen, and manually adjusted the size of the frame to match the book—although my inflexible blog theme cuts it off in this view. Other options are self-explanatory. Use em or abuse em.

Here's what it looks like:

Scrolling through it on Blogger (a Google product), it's way quicker than it is at the Google Books site itself. Well worth the little bit of trouble it takes, especially if you don't go all OCD on the options, just use the defaults. And you can always bookmark your local file in the browser to keep it with other topical links.