Written books placed in item frames can be "selected" by right clicking the frame.
After selection, a player can read through the book via the chat window without ever taking possession of the book.
The book in the item frame will not rotate on the "selection" right click, but continuous right clicking will still allow for rotating the books.
Known Issues
High volumes of player chat causes chat to scroll up and makes reading the books difficult
Setup
Commands:
/book - shows information about the currently selected book, i.e. title, author, page count
/page read|r|start|next|n|prev|p|back|# - read, r, and start all show the first page of the book. next and n advance to the next page if there is one, prev, p, and back go backwards a page, if there is one.