The trick to finding forgotten books for people

[conuly]

is to keep a small list of frequent flyers in your head. If the details can be cut or stretched to fit one of the 50 - 100 most commonly requested books, then that's probably it. (Sometimes you even guess one right where every detail was wrong.)

The trouble with this method is that if you have a forgotten book, odds are nobody else has ever heard of it, because it's not one of the top 100 books, or even the top 500.

This is very annoying, but I keep asking anyway.

(What's really annoying is when you know you asked before and got an answer, but now you've forgotten again.)

Comments

[heliopausa]

:) You're very kind, to be helping people find their forgotten books!
But what is a "frequent flyer" in this context?

[conuly]

It's asked about again and again. Some examples are:

Anything by William Sleator, especially House of Stairs and The Boxes.

The Great Good Thing

Harrison Bergeron

All Summmer in a Day

Time Windows

Stonewords

As you can see, there's a lot of requests for things people read prior to finishing college (whether of their own volition or not), and speculative fiction is prominent. At any rate, if you take 50 requests to a site where people ask for books they lost, at least one of them is bound to be a frequent flyer. Sometimes you get the same book twice in a row, even.

[conuly]

And it's not *so* kind. I think of it as a competition, and every correct book is points. I'm up to three zillion and change.

[heliopausa]

:D

(and thanks for explaining 'frequent flyer'.)

[alatefeline]

Heee! I love this.

I am very good at remembering books I've read, but ones that I meant to read and didn't find a copy of in time tend to get reduced to a bundle of inaccurate impressions that I can't for the life of me describe well enough to find said book again.

As for finding books for other people, well, I deal with a LOT of kids who tend to answer "Um?" to the question "What do you want a book ABOUT?" and so that's an area where I am actively working on strategies for what to ask instead and how to help them answer that question for themselves. ("I hand you five books I think you might like, you pick one or more" has had mixed results). (Lately the answer seems to be (a) animals (b) superheroes (c) fake diaries of angsty youngsters (d) Pokemon (e) horror video games (f) pink sparkly fairy princesses. Preferably in graphic novel format.)

[conuly]

Have you tried asking what sort of shows or movies they like to watch? That can narrow down preferences without them having to commit to a favorite book.

[alatefeline]

Great idea!

They tell me a lot about their games and apps, too.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"The trouble with this method is that if you have a forgotten book, odds are nobody else has ever heard of it, because it's not one of the top 100 books, or even the top 500."

Precisely! I have searched for A strange Christmas story (http://whatwasthatbook.livejournal.com/3176722.html) for years now; so far have never encountered anyone else who's read it. It was by an author notable enough to be included in a high school English textbook, though, so I know it's out there somewhere.

[conuly]

I can crosspost that for you if you'd like. No chance you remember what your textbook was titled, or what it looked like?

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Yes please! Alas, no, I don't recall the title. It was a big brown hardcover textbook, at least a couple of years old in 1974. I'm pretty sure the stories A Rose For Emily and A Good Man Is Hard To Find were in it too.