Have you forgotten the title of a book you once read? And now you want to find it but all you can remember is a little bit of the storyline? Don’t worry, today I’ll help you learn how to find a book from vague descriptions of its plot!
Situations like these are one of the reasons I always encourage readers to track their reading, whether in a handwritten journal or in a database that gives automatic reading stats. If you keep a written record of the books you read and your thoughts about them, it is easy to look back and find that one book you loved but just can’t remember the name of at the moment.
While that’s helpful for going forward, it doesn’t do much to fix your current situation. So what can we do now? How can we find a book by description of plot points that you remember? Here are 11 tips for how to find a book title from a description!
What to Do Before You Start Your Search
If you’re going to find a book using a vague description, you’re first going to need to gather as many details as you can. So the very first thing you need to do is think about what you already know and remember about the book. Here are some aspects to consider:
- Do you remember the genre?
- Do you remember the audience? (adults, young adults, or children)
- Do you remember the color of the cover or any cover art?
- What do you remember about the storyline?
- Do you remember any character names?
- Do you remember any quotes from the book? (This can be very helpful!)
- Do you remember any words that were in the title?
- Do you remember the authors first name? Last name?\
- Do you remember what year you read this book?
You don’t need to be able to answer all of these questions. You just need to gather enough little pieces that we can put the whole puzzle together. Even if a piece of information seems trivial, you should still take note of it in case it’s that little missing piece that you need!
How to Find a Book You Can’t Remember
Now that you’ve gathered all the information you can remember, it’s time to move on to the actual search part of this hunt to find a book title by plot.
You may have already tried a few of these methods while (figuratively) screaming “Help me find a book I can’t remember!”, but hopefully some of these methods will introduce you to a few new tips that will give you book-finding success!
1. Ask Google
Google is the first place you should check when trying to find a book by plot description. You’d be surprised how much information you can find when you include all the little details you remember!
To search Google, you can first type in a long string of words with all the things you can remember. For instance, let’s say I forgot the name of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. But I do remember a couple of details—like that there’s a character named Lydia, it has romance elements, and there’s an arrogant male main-character. If I type all that into search, it might look something like this: book romance lydia arrogant man main character. (You can click that to search this query and see the results for yourself).
And guess what? The first result is a Wikipedia entry for Mr. Darcy, and the second is an analysis of characters in Pride and Prejudice. So ta-da, you’ve found your book!
Using Boolean Searches
But more complicated Google searches can be more efficient and easier than this if you use something called Boolean Searches. Essentially, this just means you use a few words (called “search operators”) and your search will be more specific and return better results. Here are the main search operators you should know:
- Using AND between two search terms means that the results will contain both of those search terms, not just one or the other.
- Using OR between two search terms means that the results will include at least one of the terms, but maybe not all of them.
- Using quotation marks (“”) around your search terms means you will only get results with an exact match.
- Using the dash symbol (–) before a search term means the results will exclude that term.
Using Boolean operators, you might end up with a search term that looks like this: book romance AND lydia AND arrogant man main character. Then, if you search this but see results showing up that aren’t what you’re looking for, you can use the dash symbol to subtract keywords…e.g. book romance AND lydia AND arrogant man main character -Bates.
In our case, our search is pretty simple so we didn’t really need to use Boolean operators to find our book, but this is a good technique to keep in mind in case your search ends up being more difficult!
Tip #1: Sometimes it does matter what order you type words into Google! For instance, if you swap the “lydia” and “romance” in our earlier query to get book lydia romance arrogant man main character, a completely different book shows up at the top of Google search results! So if you aren’t getting the results you need, try switching the order of your search terms.
Tip #2: Boolean operators (AND, OR, etc.) must be written in uppercase letters, because that’s how Google understands it’s a search operator and not just a regular word.
2. Try Google’s Advanced Book Search
If plain old Google didn’t help you on your quest to find a book without title or author information, then it’s time to pull out the big guns—Google’s Advanced Book Search.
This advanced search allows you to input all sorts of specific information (which you may or may not have, depending on what you remember). You can find results by inputting terms in the forms including “With all of the words,” “With the exact phrase,” “With at least one of the words,” and “without the words” to help you narrow your search. You may have to search a few times to refine your search, depending on what you see when you get the search results.
If you happen to remember anything specific such as the subject of the book or the publisher, there are also places to input that information. And one of my favorites—if you remember when you read it (or thereabouts), you can narrow results down by publication date! (After all, if you read this book in the 90s it can’t have been published in 2020!)
So play around with this advanced search feature, and hopefully before long you’ll have found that book you read years ago and can’t remember!
3. Check Amazon’s Product Database
When you’re wondering “what was that book?”, another method you might want to try is searching Amazon’s product database. As such a large retailer, Amazon’s book database has a high likelihood of containing the book you’re looking for.
You can go to the Amazon Books page to start your search by inputting aspects you remember in the search bar, or you can even try Amazon’s Advanced Book Search to input keywords, the subject of the book, and any other information you might know.
4. Search on WorldCat
Looking for more ways to book search by description? WorldCat is another great place to go! WorldCat is a collective catalog of books from more than 15,000 libraries in over 120 countries, so there’s a 99.99% chance that the book you want is in there.
You can use WorldCat’s Advanced Search to input keywords (and title or author if you know pieces of the title or author’s name). You can also narrow it down by a range of possible published years, by audience, by fiction or nonfiction, and more! It’s a pretty sophisticated system that will hopefully help you find your book.
Another WorldCat option is their Fiction Finder search, which is an application that provides access to millions of fiction records for books, eBooks, audiobooks, and more. You can search for the book you’re looking for by person, place, topic, genre, character, Dewey and more, which makes this a great book finder by description search engine.
5. Try the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world (with more than 170 million items!), so if you’re wondering how to find a book without title or author then this is somewhere you will definitely want to check.
You can search their online catalog with a keyword search, as well as limiting the search through what you may already know (including publication date, place of publication, language, and format).
But even better than their online catalog—you can use their Ask a Librarian feature to get help! If you’re really struggling with how to find the title of a book you can’t remember, then you can ask a general question to their librarians or ask a specialist (if your query falls into any of the specialist categories). It’s a really neat feature, and may be able to help you out!
6. Ask in a Facebook Book Group
If none of the above options worked and you are still wondering how to find a book without the title or author, then joining a Facebook book group could be a great option!
Book groups on Facebook, like the Bona Fide Bookworms Book Community, are an excellent place to turn when you can’t remember the title of a book. All you have to do is join a few book groups, then make a post in the groups with the details you do remember about the book. Group members can then comment and suggest titles of books they think fit the description, and with enough members joining in it is likely that someone will know the book you mean!
You can join us in the Bona Fide Bookworms group here—we’ll be happy to do our best to help you find that book you read once and want to remember now!
7. Join Goodreads’ “What’s the Name of That Book?” Group
Goodreads is another excellent place to find books by description, especially since they have a whole group dedicated to helping people find the books they forgot! It’s called What’s the Name of That Book? and it is pretty much a marvel.
You’ll need to follow a few rules and have your genre and plot details on hand, as well as all the other information we gathered earlier (especially the approximate date of when you think you read the book). And then the lovely members will do their best to help you find it! You may also enjoy trying to help other members out with their requests, as you may have the key to helping someone else find the book they’re looking for.
8. Visit AbeBooks.com’s BookSleuth®
When you’re wondering how to find a book without title information, there’s nothing better than having help from around the world! And that’s exactly what AbeBooks.com’s BookSleuth® does.
This forum is a place where you can post a short description of what you remember about the book you’re looking for, and visitors from all over the world will read your post. Someone is sure to know what you’re talking about and be able to help, and maybe you can return the favor by helping someone find their book too!
9. Try LibraryThing’s “Name That Book” Forum
LibraryThing also has their own group and forum that can help you out when you’re looking for how to find a book by plot. It’s called Name That Book, and it’s a very active place!
It works pretty much the same as Goodreads’ forum and Abebooks.com’s BookSleuth®, but it is another place to get eyes on your query in case no one knows the answer in either of the other groups. You simply follow the rules for posting your question, and then other members of the community will hopefully be able to help you in your book search without title or author!
10. Post on Reddit
Reddit is another place where you can ask about the books you can’t remember, and others in the subreddit can try to help you out. There are two subreddits you might want to join: What’s That Book and Tip Of My Tongue.
What’s That Book is obviously specifically for finding the books you can’t remember, but it has fewer members than Tip of My Tongue. Tip of My Tongue, meanwhile, is there to help users find books, movies, videos, games, songs, or pretty much anything else they can’t remember. Be sure to follow all rules and guidelines when you post!
11. Ask a Librarian at Your Local Library
Last but not least, if you are wondering how to find a book when you forgot the title then you can ask a librarian at your local library for help!
Librarians are amazing at being able to find books by plot description or look up a book by plot. Why? Well librarians usually have read a lot of books, have extensive knowledge about books, and have access to more databases (and the search knowledge to use them!). So when you need help finding a book, they can be an excellent resource to help you out!
Did You Find Your Book?
So now you know exactly how to find a book when you forgot the title! Hopefully you have been able to find the book you were looking for by using the methods above. I’d love to hear about your book-finding success, so feel free to leave a comment letting me know how your search goes!
Wondering how to find good books to read? Check out these 16 tips to find your next favorite book!