Often there is a common situation when a person read a book once upon a time, in childhood, and he really liked it. Now I want to refresh her memory again, but the name has already been forgotten. And he wonders how to find a book by plot description.
Employees of the New York Public Library even held a marathon: in two hours they found 48 books at the request of readers. Moreover, all that was known was an approximate retelling of the plot, the names of the characters or a description of the cover. Surprisingly, the librarians were able to do this with the help of a search engine.
This is a very effective way, you just need to drive all the known information into a string. So, how to find a book based on the description of the plot, if the reader has a very vague idea of the book, the title has long been out of my head? What to do in this case? Let's try to figure it out.
There are several ways to find a book by the description of the plot. Namely:
Search by fragment
It will be very easy to find a book by the description of the plot, if any part of it is literally known: the first line, some piece of text. In this case, you just need to enter the known fragment in any search engine and select the desired option.
If all else fails, you can try to remove part of the text or enclose it in quotation marks. Then only those results will be displayed that exactly repeat the query.
Keywords
They will also help you find the right book. It is better to choose nouns that will somehow describe the plot. For instance:
- History, Patriotic War.
- Aliens, the future.
- Pupils, study at school, graduation.
- Horror, vampires.
- Love story.
It will not be difficult to find a book by describing the plot in this way, the result of such a search may pleasantly surprise you. A book or an adaptation based on it will be detected. Sometimes even minor indirect signs can speed up the process.
The main thing, sorting out the known information in memory, is to squeeze the maximum out of it. The more nouns characterizing the book, the better. Information about the plot, genre, surname of the author, cover is useful. The bright quote used in the book will be of great value.
No need to be afraid to try different options, because this will increase the likelihood of a positive result.
Book Search Engines
They can significantly speed up the search. You need to do it the same way - with the help of keywords, phrases or quotes.
You can select the language or set the period for which the book will be published. If there is such a function, then it will also turn out to find newspapers and magazines.
Nouns that can be individually contained in any source can be effective. To do this, just write them together and put in quotation marks.
For example, to search for a cycle of works by D. Emets “Tanya Grotter” can be set in the line: double bass, vacuum cleaner, school. Then the name of this series will be displayed.
And if the service did not help?
In this case, you can use the manual search. It is worth writing about your problem on forums and social networks. At the same time also give all the available information. There are even special sections for finding books in such groups.
It has been proved in practice that it is also easy to find a book describing the plot: fiction, thriller, drama, anything, even a rare work. After all, the post will see a large number of people.
Books in English
Of course, literary works written in a foreign language will be much more difficult to find. If only because few people have enough of it to describe known data.
First you need to formulate keywords and translate them into English. Then turn to book search engines, and then to forums and groups. You can ask someone who knows the language better. After all, errors can complicate the search process.