How to Find a Book You Forgot the Name Of

You have a setting, a peculiar scene, perhaps half a character's name. The title is the missing part. If you're working out how to find a book you forgot the name of, start with a few distinctive clues, search a small combination, then check any possible match against a reliable book description or sample.

The first promising result is a candidate. It still needs to agree with the book you're looking for. Here's a way to move from a loose recollection to something you can check, including what to do when the search stays unresolved.

How to find a book you forgot the name of: start with clues

Make a short note before searching. Two columns are enough: what you remember and what you're unsure about. A character's job, an unusual object or a particular incident gives you something concrete to work with. “It was quite moving” leaves much more open.

The Library of Congress guide to finding novels suggests searching remembered plot details, character names and other details from the text. Start there. You don't need to supply a complete plot summary before trying a search.

Keep context separately: roughly when you encountered it, the language you read, and whether it was a novel, story collection or something else. If a cover comes to mind, record it as a clue rather than a requirement for every result.

A year you read a book isn't necessarily its publication year. Keep “read around 2010” in those words until you have a reason to narrow it further. An uncertain date shouldn't quietly become an exact one in the search box.

Search a distinctive combination

Choose two or three concrete details and put them together. Try the setting with an unusual event, or a character's name with their occupation. Keep the first search small enough that you can tell which clue to change if the results don't fit.

If you've marked a detail uncertain, try a second search without it. You might keep the unusual event and leave out the guessed location. Make one change at a time rather than rewriting the whole question; a tiny note of the queries you've tried can save repeating them.

Google's search guidance explains that quotation marks request an exact word or phrase match. Use them for wording you actually remember exactly. Leave a description in your own words unquoted. Otherwise, you're asking the search to find a sentence that may never have appeared in the book or its description.

If nothing useful appears, that search hasn't settled the title. It hasn't established that the book doesn't exist, either.

Try Google Books or a library catalog

Google Books supports keyword searches as well as searches for a known title, author or ISBN. When available, a preview can give you more to compare than the short description in a search result. Preview access varies, and some features may be unavailable on mobile.

Its Advanced Book Search has fields for words, an exact phrase, language and publication dates, among others. You can leave the title and author blank. Start broad enough to accommodate the things you're unsure of; add a language or date limit only when you have a reasonable basis for it.

A library catalog is another route to check. What it searches depends on that catalog and its records, so look at the available keyword or subject options. Don't assume it searches every sentence inside every book. A missing result leaves the question open; another search route may have different coverage.

Use a small example, then check the candidate

Here's a constructed example using an existing researched title. It isn't a reader's submitted question or a story about a book I forgot.

Suppose the clues are a couple, a rented cottage in Tokyo and a cat that keeps visiting. Those are paraphrased details, not a quotation from a novel. A search to try is:

novel couple Tokyo rented cottage cat visits

For this demonstration, the candidate is The Guest Cat. The next step is to open New Directions' publisher page and check the clues together:

Those details agree with the example. They don't prove this is the book someone else remembers. If you also recall a distinctive scene that the synopsis doesn't address, mark that part unknown and look for an available lawful sample or ask for help checking it.

Don't turn a mismatch into a match just because the cover looks promising. Keep the candidate's title beside the detail that doesn't fit, then return to the search with that difference in view.

Give a librarian a useful question

If the search stalls, you can ask a librarian with the notes you've gathered. The Library of Congress identification FAQ lists useful information, including memorable incidents, names, the approximate reading year and physical format. You can consult that checklist without having every answer.

Here's an original fill-in request you can adapt:

I'm trying to identify a book I read or encountered around [year or range]. It was in [language], and I think it was [format or genre]. The clearest detail is [specific event or feature]. I'm less sure about [uncertain clue]. I've checked [candidate titles or searches]; [detail] didn't match. Could you suggest another place to look?

Keep the uncertainties visible. That gives the person helping you a different question from a list of firm claims. Ask through your library's available route; identification and response time aren't guaranteed.

Keep the identity once you find it

Save the title, author and source you used to check them. For a translated book, keep the translator's name when you have it. An edition or ISBN can help you return to that particular version later.

Once the work is identified, choosing an English translation is a separate decision. If you're still searching but would rather find something different for now, How to Choose a Book offers another starting point.

An unresolved search can stay in your notes with one candidate and one unanswered detail. You don't have to write a title into the gap before you know it belongs there.