My little sister-in-law wanted a place she could search for plotlines and concepts from old short stories she read in school. I remembered that there was a forum once where you could ask someone about books or stories you vaguely remember but can’t recall the title. After a little Google-fu, I found a similar website that I shared with her. Still searching for the other one though; I’ll report back if I find it.

The site I found is called “Stump the Bookseller” by Ohio-based Loganberry Books (which I will definitely be visiting if I ever have occasion to be in Ohio). “Stump the Bookseller” attempts to, and I quote, “reconnect people to the books they love but can’t quite remember”. If you want to see the unsolved mysteries, click here and if you want to see the solved ones, click here.

World Cat, which is basically the online catalog of many participating libraries across the world, has a pretty great keyword search and can really help narrow down those nebulous plotlines and concepts. Or give you more great reading material.

If you’re looking for a book that was published before 1980, the site Old Children’s Books might have what you’re looking for. They aren’t updating the database anymore apparently, so it’s a small niche, but worth a look.

And of course, no list of books would be complete without a Good Reads mention. Good Reads is another go-to site for finding out books and stories, although their keyword search is a bit lacking in my opinion. If you’re a Good Reads user, be sure to friend me.

I wrote this in an effort to make my keystrokes count, a not-so-silly-but-sounds-kinda-silly idea I got from Jon Udell. Basically, you have a finite number of keystrokes, why waste them writing a response to a single person when you can make a blog post and serve dozens or more? It makes sense. And I’m doing it. =P