How To Find A Book With A Specific Cover

how to find a book

Take you lot ever lost rail of a favorite volume from your childhood because you can't think the title or writer? Practise yous accept the story on the tip of your tongue? Can you explicate the plot, describe the cover, or know the era, but only tin can't recollect the one detail you lot need in order to really find the book? We've been in that location and know exactly how frustrating this can exist. Below are a few tips we've used when searching for a lost book we dearest.

Tips to Find a Book When You Don't Know the Title or Author

If you're currently suffering from a case of book amnesia, try some of these tricks to see if they can spark your memory and aid yous remember more than a vague cover image or a quirky side graphic symbol you loved.

First, Wrack Your Brain for Book Memories

When it comes to finding a book you accept only a vague recollection of, you demand to fish out everything you can possibly remember about it from your memories. Respond the beneath questions to see if they assist y'all recover whatsoever additional data virtually your book.

What did the encompass expect similar? Practise you only remember a fuzzy image that'due south predominately ane color? Fifty-fifty that is a clue! If you recollect hard, do y'all think any elements on it? Was the author'south name in large print, or was the title large? Whatsoever of these details can be the deviation between success or failure.
Can you remember a phrase, quote, or a item paragraph of the volume? Sometimes you can remember lines you lot felt were funny or meaningful or just manifestly weird. Write them down as best you can for your search. Odds are that same phrase may have stood out to someone else likewise.
What tin can you recall from the plot? Even if you're not entirely confident, write down what you think you lot call up. You might find your memory looks something similar "boy gets kidnapped. Girl best friend says she'll detect him. I remember she becomes a detective at some point or runs into him subsequently in life and they fall in love. The male child may exist involved in drugs or something sketchy when she runs into him. I think at ane point he wakes upwardly in a dumpster." Even though yous're non one hundred percentage certain, you can try unlike searches with the elements you think are there and hopefully in one combination, you'll get a hit. Or, hopefully your details will exist shut enough that someone else can piece the elements together.
Can y'all remember any characters' names? Remembering one or two of the characters' names volition also be a huge help in your search. Fifty-fifty if they're side characters and not main characters, write them down.
What genre was information technology? If information technology was fantasy, practise you recollect any details to narrow it down to a subcategory of fantasy?
Do you remember whatever other story-related details, like a city name, street, location, pet, era, etc.?
Do you call up whatever details related to publishing? Do you call up whether your school or library that you got the book from often bought books from a certain publisher? Do you recall when the book was published? For example, if information technology was a book you read from your childhood, and then you know you can exclude any contempo publications. Or, possibly you call up that information technology was a new book that came out when you were in loftier school, then you'll know to look for books published only in those few years. Do you lot recollect whatsoever other similar authors that people seemed to besides read if they liked the book you're trying to think?

Call back to write down as much information every bit you can, and maybe you lot'll remember some more than details in the process of finding your lost book.

Google and Other Search Engines

When you first endeavor to search for a forgotten novel, you probably turn to Google or a similar search engine. Unfortunately, your average search may not be able to get you the results you're looking for. Because of the vast volume of novels with similar plot elements and diverse SEO tactics and companies skewing the search results to favor their products, unless the book yous're searching for happens to be one of the most pop books of its kind, you're going to have to practice a deep Google.

Let me explicate. If yous're looking for a book virtually mermaids, but you're definitely not looking for something super popular similar Disney'due south The Little Mermaid, you lot may go frustrated that no matter what variation of "mermaid" search terms y'all endeavor, you notwithstanding observe Little Mermaid results popping upward on top because Disney can beget to pay people a lot of money to brand sure their products stay on top of the search results.

So when searching for a forgotten novel, you'll oft have to use all the different details you remember from the book with Google's dissimilar search functions. For example, quotations will exist your friend to make sure Google doesn't try to eliminate distinguishing details. The add-on symbol volition exist useful for linking multiple elements into one search. Attempt using the Advanced Google Search Folio with filters like subject, publisher, linguistic communication, and publication date as well. Some other tip is to ever check the image results. If you're on the right track, then sometimes an paradigm event will appear more quickly than general search results. There are other avant-garde Google search skills that you tin give a try too, like excluding specific keywords or using the wildcard operator to judge the name of a graphic symbol.

Google Books Search

The Google Books Library Project now makes information technology possible to detect books by searching through their text and content. The Books Search reference folio also displays book specific data like various covers, tables of content, common terms and phrases, and pop passages from the books. You can apace view sample pages to ensure that the book yous've found is the book you've been looking for.

There are several other book databases you tin can find equally well, such equally Volume Finder, Word Cat, LibraryThing, Volume Sleuth, Goodreads, Amazon'south Advanced Book Search, and Library of Congress. Notwithstanding, if you haven't been able to observe the book you lot're looking for with a Google search, you probably don't have enough information to notice it in one of these databases either. If yous desire to give some of these a endeavour though, these are some of the ones we observe the most useful.

Book Cave: This site has the unique feature of beingness able to search through a rated books database. So if you know a volume was a children's book, you can avoid whatsoever adult rated book. Or if you know it'south an adult rated book you can exclude anything milder.
The Library of Congress: This the biggest online library in the earth and has a search engine capable of combining search parameters with keywords. At that place's likewise an interesting choice called "Ask a Librarian" where yous tin send an e-mail and attempt asking for aid in finding your volume.
Worldcat: Worldcat is a catalog of over 70 m libraries in 160 countries. Here you can wait for a specific keyword, and you'll get a listing of book titles in various languages. There's also a "Fiction Finder" section where yous can search for a volume by a character or place in addition to a keyword.
Large Volume Search: If y'all can but remember what the cover looks like, try this cover-search tool.
If you can call up just one word of the title, use the search role on Goodreads or Library Thing to find long lists of titles with a item word.
Goodreads' browse-able lists of titles that readers have shelved in unique categories, such equally authors' professions or decades of publication, may also be helpful.

Turn to Reddit or Other Popular Book Forums

Is there anything that the people of the internet don't know? If computerized searches fail and y'all demand a personalized touch, there are thousands of fellow volume lovers out there who would dearest to help you out. Places like Reddit, Tumblr, Goodreads, and several other bookish forums have book sleuths that seem to be able to solve even the vaguest of mysteries. Reddit in particular has several defended sections such equally Tip of My Tongue, What's That Book, Books, and PrintSF for when you lot can simply think the cover. Just take a scroll through the book section of Reddit to observe a thread that best meets your needs. If Reddit isn't your thing, check out some of these other book forums and groups:

Goodreads What'due south the Name of That Volume? is a group that volition help solve your volume mystery after yous've done a valiant effort to commencement detect information technology yourself.
LibraryThing's Name That Volume is some other identify where y'all tin post nigh your forgotten novel. Just follow their instructions and endeavour to wrack your brain for as many details as you can, and fellow readers will do what they can to find your book.
Stump the Bookseller is a web log run by a absurd indie bookstore in Ohio that offers a $4 dollar service to help readers find lost books, specifically childhood books. Plus they take large searchable archives that you may find helpful as well.
The Fiction_L listserv is another place where you might be able to get some help, although they don't seem to have a section dedicated exclusively to finding lost books.

Ask Your Ain Social Network and Community

Postal service on all your social networks, accomplish out to friends from the time when you were reading the book, and ask a local librarian or even sometime school teachers. You lot might be surprised to find that your personal community is the missing link needed to find your book. Communities oft have similar interests, and then the books yous enjoyed as a child might be the aforementioned books your friends and others in your boondocks also enjoyed and borrowed from the library.

Your own circle may be especially helpful if you tin remember the time that you lot read the book. If you lot know y'all read the book in inferior high or high schoolhouse, reach out to your friends from that era and see if they remember anything nigh the books yous were reading back and then. If you're like me, yous probably accept a whole friendship circle of readers and you probably non only told them about every book you read but also offered to let them read information technology every bit well so you could talk almost it. You never know what odd memories a person may exist able to call back from their past.

When All Else Fails

If you've gone through all of these things and however aren't able to discover the elusive book you're looking for, then you lot may have to accept that it'south non going to happen or fifty-fifty that you lot may non be remembering it correctly. I remember 1 story nigh a person looking for a detail Danielle Steele book who later realized the book she was looking for was really by Daniel Silva. These kinds of close merely not quite recollections are understandably frustrating considering while you're confident you're looking for the right matter, in the end you were actually going down the incorrect rabbit pigsty the entire time and may not fifty-fifty accept realized it.

Some other consideration is whether what you're looking for is even real. There take also been times in my life that I've been convinced something that happened in a dream was real life, and ofttimes my dreams take up various elements of books I've read. Could you lot possibly exist remembering a particular wrong or combining several unlike books from your by? Whatever the instance may exist, hopefully you can at to the lowest degree be somewhat cheered upward by the list of books you've uncovered in your search that at least have many similar elements to what you lot were looking for.

Happy reading!