Biblio File

Finding a Book When You've Forgotten Its Title

Brand 2020 your all-time reading twelvemonth yet. Sign up for the Book of the Day email, and you'll get a daily volume recommendation email delivered to your inbox each forenoon. Find book recommendations here.

Library books lined up on a shelf Check out selected results from NYPL Title Quest 2019, held August two, 2019, equally well equally Title Quest 2018.

This is an update of a previous mail service by Sharon Rickson.

It can be tough to recollect the title and writer of a book yous read a long time ago—even if it was a book that was actually important to y'all. Fiction is cataloged by writer and title, non by subject or plot line, which makes identifying books past simply their storyline hard.

Readers oftentimes ask librarians for assist finding these kinds of books. And nosotros tin can't figure out the mystery every single time, but we do take a few tricks to help find the answer.

First, pivot down everything y'all can retrieve about the book, 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 volume.

Online resource tin help with your search for a one-half-remembered book, fifty-fifty if all you accept is a basic plot line. Searching yourself is a good place to start; and then, you can post to a listserv or give-and-take forum, where someone might recognize it. Or, final but not least, leave a annotate on this post!

Before You lot Start

Try Google! Type in everything you can recollect virtually the book — as in, "picture show book rabbi animals advice yiddish" — and scroll through the results. (That'southward a real-life instance of a book a patron was asking for: It Could Always Exist Worse by Margot Zemach.)

You can besides try googling i fundamental 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. (Another real-life case: She Flew No Flags by Joan Manley.)

Crowdsourcing

  • What'due south the Proper name of That Volume?
    A Goodreads grouping with searchable give-and-take posts and thousands of questions and answers.

  • Name That Volume
    A LibraryThing group of ~3K members — many of whom are librarians or library-next — who assistance solve book mysteries via threaded discussions.

  • The Fiction_L listserv
    Stumpers! Search archives of by questions, answered past an intense book-ish community, or subscribe and post a new one.

  • Reddit's whatsthatbook thread
    A nearly endless thread of users trying to help other users remember volume titles, including several often requested books. Especially practiced for science fiction and fantasy.

  • "Stump the Bookseller" blog
    A cool indie bookstore in Ohio that maintains all-encompassing, searchable athenaeum — and offers a $4 service for personalized aid. Lots of children'due south books here.

  • Big Book Search
    If you lot can just remember what the comprehend looks like, try this embrace-search tool.

Library Databases (log in with your library carte)

  • Books & Authors

  • Books in Impress

  • The New York Times databases

  • NoveList and NoveList K-8 (in-library use only)

More Suggestions

  • If you tin can remember simply i give-and-take, use the search role on Goodreads or Library Thing to find long lists of titles with a particular give-and-take.

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

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

How to Move On

Sometimes, it's just not going to happen, and you tin can't find that elusive book you've been searching for. Information technology's okay! Great news: The earth is total of corking books! Here are a few ways to notice more...

  • Check out recommendations from our book experts hither at NYPL. We offering suggestions via blog posts, the Staff Picks book finder, The Librarian Is In podcast, and more.
  • If you'd like a personalized recommendation, detect u.s.a. on Twitter or fill up out our What Should I Read Adjacent? email form.
  • Want a brand-new read? Check out our favorite New and Noteworthy titles.

Feel free to exit a comment and tell united states about a book you lot'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.