Biblio File

Finding a Book When You've Forgotten Its Title

Brand 2020 your all-time reading year even so. Sign up for the Book of the Solar day electronic mail, and y'all'll become a daily volume recommendation email delivered to your inbox each forenoon. Find volume recommendations here.

Library books lined up on a shelf Cheque out selected results from NYPL Title Quest 2019, held August 2, 2019, equally well every bit Championship Quest 2018.

This is an update of a previous post past Sharon Rickson.

It can be tough to call up the championship and author of a book you lot read a long time ago—even if it was a book that was actually important to you. Fiction is cataloged by author and title, non by subject area or plot line, which makes identifying books past just their storyline difficult.

Readers often ask librarians for help finding these kinds of books. And we can't figure out the mystery every unmarried time, simply we do have a few tricks to help detect the answer.

First, pin downwards everything you can call up about the volume, plot, character names, time period in which the book may have been published, genre, etc. All these details are clues in identifying the title and author of the book.

Online resource can help with your search for a half-remembered book, fifty-fifty if all you have is a basic plot line. Searching yourself is a good place to kickoff; then, you can mail service to a listserv or discussion forum, where someone might recognize it. Or, last but not to the lowest degree, leave a annotate on this post!

Earlier You Start

Try Google! Type in everything y'all can remember about the volume — every bit in, "movie book rabbi animals advice yiddish" — and scroll through the results. (That'south a existent-life example of a book a patron was request for: It Could Always Be Worse by Margot Zemach.)

You tin can also try googling i key detail you remember from a book. One of our librarians solved a book mystery by searching "USS You-Know-Who" — the name of a gunkhole in the story that the patron happened to recall. (Some other real-life example: She Flew No Flags by Joan Manley.)

Crowdsourcing

  • What'south the Proper noun of That Book?
    A Goodreads group with searchable discussion posts and thousands of questions and answers.

  • Proper name That Book
    A LibraryThing group of ~3K members — many of whom are librarians or library-adjacent — who help solve book mysteries via threaded discussions.

  • The Fiction_L listserv
    Stumpers! Search archives of by questions, answered past an intense book-ish customs, or subscribe and mail service a new ane.

  • Reddit'due south whatsthatbook thread
    A well-nigh countless thread of users trying to help other users remember book titles, including several frequently requested books. Peculiarly good for science fiction and fantasy.

  • "Stump the Bookseller" weblog
    A cool indie bookstore in Ohio that maintains extensive, searchable athenaeum — and offers a $iv service for personalized assistance. Lots of children'due south books here.

  • Big Book Search
    If you can only remember what the cover looks similar, try this encompass-search tool.

Library Databases (log in with your library card)

  • Books & Authors

  • Books in Print

  • The New York Times databases

  • NoveList and NoveList K-viii (in-library use merely)

More Suggestions

  • If y'all tin can remember only one discussion, employ the search function on Goodreads or Library Thing to detect long lists of titles with a particular discussion.

  • Goodreads' browse-able lists of titles that readers have shelved in unique categories, such as authors' professions or decades of publication, is also exist helpful.

  • For recently published books, the reviews in Booklist Online are broken downward by detailed genre.

How to Move On

Sometimes, it's just not going to happen, and you can't observe that elusive volume you've been searching for. It's okay! Keen news: The world is total of great books! Here are a few means to find more than...

  • Check out recommendations from our book experts hither at NYPL. We offering suggestions via weblog posts, the Staff Picks volume finder, The Librarian Is In podcast, and more.
  • If y'all'd like a personalized recommendation, detect us on Twitter or fill out our What Should I Read Side by side? e-mail form.
  • Want a brand-new read? Check out our favorite New and Noteworthy titles.

Feel gratis to leave a comment and tell us nearly a book y'all're trying to remember! Our library staff members will popular in and check it periodically, and readers of this post are welcome to brand guesses and suggestions.