Resources to find books - Please try before posting!

[Kagama-the Literaturevixen]

I found this list of sci-fi books with short and concise plot summaries. I havent managed to identify a book with it...yet.But it could be helpful.

http://www.dondammassa.com/g1.htm

[Cheryl]

One would have to use a 'search site' tool, if I understand correctly - but yes it does look like a possible resource.

[Cheryl]

Fran just shared a relevant discovery in another folder, see below:

Just to Chat > bookshare.org (edit)

message 1: by Fran (new) Mar 08, 2013 12:42pm

I just found this search engine that lets you do word searches in the text of books. I was able to find things that didn't come up on Google Books searches. It helped me solve at least one posting on here so far (Class Clown).

https://www.bookshare.org

[Jenny]

Any suggestions for hunting specifically for older (pre-1965) children's books?

[Tess]

Here is a list that has historical fiction listed by area or era. Seems helpful to narrow down a search and give some direction.
http://www.historicalnovels.info/

[Cheryl]

thanks!

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

1950s illustrations. Use them to jog your memory.

http://pinterest.com/aggers008/1950-s...

1950's Misc. Vintage Children's Illustration

http://www.flickr.com/photos/trywhist...

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

And the same flickr user has posted more sets of illustration styles. Includes Little Golden Books, Wonder Books, 1940s illustrations, 1960s illustrations, and more.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/trywhist...

[Cheryl]

fantastic, thank you!

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Another flickr user has uploaded a bunch of Scholastic covers and interior illustrations from the 60s and 70s.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jl-incro...

[Cheryl]

Oh wow, I'm drowning in nostalgia. :sigh:
Should be a helpful resource!

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

I have found that the GoogleBooks search has gotten worse and worse over the past months/years. At this point searching googlebooks is borderline useless for me, frankly.

They have also changed the page format so I can't find "advanced search," which was the best way of searching. I don't know if they got rid of it, or it's just really hard to find.

I'm not sure what they're trying to accomplish, but I'm close to being done with Google Books. The only area where I find them useful now is if I need quick access to a public domain book.

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

I've been finding a lot of books lately through the Chicago Public Library advanced search:

http://www.chipublib.org/search/advan...

You don't have to be a member to search. They have a pretty large collection, so often you will find what you're looking for. I use the "words anywhere" field and the dates field, and the fiction/nonfiction toggle. Or I just add the word "fiction" to the "words anywhere" box. Sometimes I use the adult/kids and teens toggle.

[D.M.]

Yeah, Google Books has become less effective over time. I think what happened was that they started including irrelevant results to pad out responses, making it a lot harder to narrow down a specific subject.

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Yes, it's so very odd. You'll search for some YA romance and on the third page of results will be "Mein Kampf." Uh, what?

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

http://loc.gov/rr/program/bib/lost/no...

The Library of Congress mentions this group! (Under: Posting to Message Boards.) They warn people to read the post about "HOW TO POST"! (So few people do.) Their numbers are a little out of date however, the group now has 8,089 members. Up from 5,000.

They have some good ideas and links to other resources.

[laurenpie]

That's neat!

[Aerulan]

For those looking for a romance novel this site might be useful. They have books sorted into lists by theme.

http://www.likesbooks.com/lists.html

They have a lot of varied and well populated theme lists. Some examples of what they have....Pirates, Disabilities in Romance, Heroes in Pursuit, Tortured Heroes, Cabin and Road Romances, Unusual Professions. There are a lot of themes and the lists are quite good and generally have many books on them. Definitely a worthwhile resource.

[Cheryl]

thanks!

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

I've run across this site a few times and it looks like it can be a great resource.

http://librarybooklists.org/index.html

You kind of have to hunt around - the lists vary widely in topic, like "YA and juvenile set in Maine" - crime novels where the murder weapon was something weird, like a toaster - etc.

[Cheryl]

cool, thanks!

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Wayne, we have a zero-tolerance policy for authors promoting their books in this group. So I deleted your comment. This is solely a group for people who want to find the name of a book they read and have forgotten.

[Lou]

I have a fair amount of luck using the Pikes Peak Library District's catalog search. You can start with a very broad search term, like 'fantasy', which will give hundreds or thousands of titles, then narrow by subject. They rank every subject in any book of the search by number of incidences, and you can include or exclude them. You can also specify date ranges, format, and location, which returns the home location of the book, whether it's checked out or not. That last lets you search within broad age ranges too.

The main problem is they only show the 100 most common subjects, so you have to include or exclude something before you get anything really specific like "Fantasy-->Space and Time-->Environmental Degradation--fiction" that there's only one of.

[Julie]

I have submitted a suggestion to Amazon for managing cloud book content.
1) allow libraries to be made for each member of the family so that books can be separated between libraries. children can be blocked from seeing or accessing the adult books, but you can put a book in multiple libraries.
2) the ability for books to be broken up into genre in each library for easier search.
with many of us using the ebook cloud storage this would be a great advantage. If you agree please take the time to forward the suggestion.
Thank You
Julie Torres

[Kaion]

I updated the OP up to date with all the suggestions so far. Hopefully it will be helpful :)

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Thanks.

[Kaion]

Hey, there's a Romance-specific book finding group: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...!

Any other book finding groups on goodreads?

I know that the huge SciFi and Fantasy Group also has a "lost book" section: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group...

[Kaion]

Apparently there's a book finding thread on the M/M Romance Group as well: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

[Kaion]

Stop You're Killing Me: http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/Loc...

A mystery database, which has sections in which mysteries are listed by location, historical period, genre, and job of the protagonist.

[Kaion]

Since so many people are looking for romance books, I thought I'd share that I just found out that All About Romance has a very extensive database of romance titles that can be browsed/search for by name of character, type of character, title, author, and most importantly, by subject -- aka genre, setting, and plots.

http://www.allromancewriters.com/subj...

[Kris]

EDIT: Updated old links.

Here are some search tools that I've seen mentioned in this group:

Google searches of a specific book site that contains reviews (great for keyword searches), for example -- site:www.goodreads.com keyword "exact phrase"
OR site:www.amazon.com keyword "exact phrase"

Amazon U.S. -- www.amazon.com/Advanced-Search-Books/... -- The publication dates may be for reprints, not the earliest edition.
Amazon U.K. -- www.amazon.co.uk/gp/browse.html?node=...
Librarything's tag mashes -- www.librarything.com/tag/keyword,keyw... -- You need to be signed in.

Worldcat -- www.worldcat.org/advancedsearch -- No results? Try removing some search terms. Look at similar books to see what are useful Subject terms.

Google Books -- www.google.com/advanced_book_search

Amazon's "Look Inside" Preview for a specific book. Wait a few seconds for the preview icon to appear over the book's cover image.

Google Book's Previews (often longer than Amazon's previews) -- http://books.google.com/

Novelist Plus -- You might be able to access this search site through your Public Library's website.
AllReaders -- http://allreaders.com/booksearcha.asp#S1 -- First, select a genre link.
FictionDB -- www.fictiondb.com/search/search.htm
Library of Congress -- https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/searchA...
Old Children's Books -- www.oldchildrensbooks.com

[SparksofEmber]

Unfortunately, http://www.allromancewriters.com/subj... which is mentioned in the list on message 1 and message 86 is dead. Sad - that was a fantastic resource for older romances.

[Jenna]

http://crimethrutime.com/ isn't bad for...well...historical mysteries

[Empress]

I think it should be added in the first post that people can search their "amazon kindle history" as well as their purchase history on any other sellers websites (including audiobooks).
This is relating to requests for books people have read on their kindle or listened to. I know there is a line "Check your own reading history", that is very similar, so probably this is redundant ...


In "Forums/sites similar to What's The Name" the following could be added:
r/whatsthatbook , though people mostly post in /r/suggestmeabook/ or /r/printSF/ (for sci fi)

Also a not very comprehensive website but sometimes useful for cover searches is (the search itself is not very good, seems to search by title) http://bigbooksearch.com/

[Justanotherbiblophile]

Ellie [The Empress] wrote: "I think it should be added in the first post that people can search their "amazon kindle history" as well as their purchase history on any other ... websites"

Yup, I second the motion.

Michele just posted this link for Kindle searches:
https://www.amazon.com/forum/kindle?_...

[Kris]

PM'd Kaion.

[Empress]

LOL, someone just posted this one on the Feedback group. A better search engine for GR: http://gradvancedsearch.com/ (Edit: I'm not sure if it is actually better!)

It's not the best, but maybe it will get improved. I personally don't care for language filter since not all books/editions have that field filled in.

[Bargle]

It's certainly something that's needed. Thanks for the link.

[Arielle]

Just heard of this one today, an index to basic themes of folk/fairy tales.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/...

[RavensScar]

Here's a site I use a lot when I'm trying to find books

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

GR now has a new (beta) feature which is only available to Feedback Group members. You can search on the book page for specific words or terms in all the community book reviews. This could be very helpful for searchers in this group. Read about it here:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Since many of us use Worldcat to search for books, they may present you with a pop-up box asking if you want to take a survey about the site. I would encourage you to take the survey, since it's a useful site but could still be improved. I suggested that they add Signet books to the database (there don't seem to be any and this is a big gap in coverage) as well as descriptions to many of their older novels.

[Kris]

Good point. Here's the link to the advanced search on Worldcat.org:

http://www.worldcat.org/advancedsearch

I find this site particularly helpful for older books, children's books, or a specific range of Years.

Browse the book pages to see which words/tags they use for Subjects (or use Keywords if in doubt). This can speed up your search.

[Gillian]

Lobstergirl wrote: "Since many of us use Worldcat to search for books, they may present you with a pop-up box asking if you want to take a survey about the site. I would encourage you to take the survey, since it's a ..."

One of the things to remember about Worldcat is that it is a catalog of Library Catalogs. If a Library doesn't own a book (and older paperback only publications are likely in that category) then it won't be listed there. In the 70's and 80's in particular, most public libraries either didn't buy paperbacks, or at least never cataloged them and threw them out as they got old and battered. So that's a significant weakness.

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Thanks, Gillian.

[Kris]

Lils wrote: "Hi, I'm trying to post a request but it says "Sorry, you must verify your email before posting a new topic."

I just joined this group and didn't get any email verification email or anything. I che..."

This a common problem, Lils. After you join Goodreads, you need to verify your email address before you can access all of the site's features.

1. Go into your email program (Gmail/Outlook/etc.), and look for an email from Goodreads in your Inbox (or possibly your Spam folder).
2. Follow the instructions in the email (e.g., click on the link). This will tell Goodreads that you used a valid email account when signing up.
3. Then come back to our group, and you should be able to post a message/etc.


If you're uncertain of which email address you used when signing up:

1. Using the desktop website, click your avatar icon/link in the upper-right corner.
2. Select "Account Settings", then the "Emails" tab at the top. "Not Receiving Emails? Alert emails will be sent to [your-email-address]" appears in the right-hand column.

[Lils]

Kris wrote: "Lils wrote: "Hi, I'm trying to post a request but it says "Sorry, you must verify your email before posting a new topic."

I just joined this group and didn't get any email verification email or an..."

Thank you!

[Ayshe]

Alejandra wrote: "I’m looking for sport romance book were the main character tries to reunited 2 friends that don’t speak anymore But while this she fall in fall with the guy she doesn’t now how to him she’s best fr..."

You need to post that as separate thread in the Unsolved folder. See this link: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/... for guidelines.

[Kaion]

Found some new romance book search resources to replace the defunct ones:

All About Romance (special title listings): http://allaboutromance.com/readers-ch...
Eye on Romance (by genre, subject, etc.): http://www.eyeonromance.com/index.cfm
All Time Favorites (by genre, time period, hero, etc.): https://www.romance.io/topics/best/all/1
The Romance Reader letters column takes requests for lost books/has an archive of found books: http://www.theromancereader.com/

Also, this article seemed worth a look:
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-...

___
First post updated, though the link for kindle history went nowhere

[Becca]

Just to say that r/suggestmeabook is not intended for finding books - it's for book suggestions / recommendations only. Users might help but are more likely to redirect you to r/whatsthatbook or r/tipofmytongue