Booksleuth provides further help finding "lost" books.

November 14, 2011 12:36 PM

I have just discovered ABE books "Booksleuth" forum, where people help each other remember that "lost" story or book.
posted by uans (13 comments total)

Now what are we supposed to do with AskMeFi. Way to make something obsolete uans.
posted by Fizz at 12:39 PM on November 14, 2011

The "Weird Room" is fun to peruse.
posted by Burhanistan at 12:41 PM on November 14, 2011 [2 favorites]

Oh neat. I have, in the past, sent people to "stump the bookseller" when they had a hard time finding something, but this sounds like it will be not just useful but maybe fun to participate in as well.

For some values of fun.
posted by jessamyn at 1:03 PM on November 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

The Weird Room tells a haunting tale of delusions of grandeur, being bipolar and the descent into misery and insanity:

How to Start Your Own Country
How to Be Happy Though Married
How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found
Pictorial Poultry Keeping
Ragnar's Guide to Home and Recreational Use of High Explosives
The Practical Pyromaniac
Welcome To Your Face Lift
All About Scabs
Encyclopaedia of Medical Ignorance
So You Want to Be a Shaman
An Intellectual History of Cannibalism

posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:05 PM on November 14, 2011

I have supported abebooks.com mostly for not being amazon.com, especially after amazon dumped wikileaks, but take care what information you give abebook.com!

If you employ abebooks.com's 'lost my password' feature, you'll receive an email revealing your old password, which should be impossible if they followed correct procedure, i.e. hashing passwords with per-user salts. In short, anyone who hacks abebooks.com will trivially obtain your password, probably any other information they retain as well.

You should use the following precautions when using abebooks.com or any website that ever parrots back your password under any circumstances :

- Do not use the same password on abebooks.com as you use anywhere else, if you forget it just hit 'forgot my password' again, but don't reuse the password you use there elsewhere. I search my inbox for 'abebooks' every time I login there.

- Do not let abebooks.com retain your credit card information because bad password security suggests bad credit card security too.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:21 PM on November 14, 2011 [5 favorites]

ABE Books was purchased by Amazon in 2008. You may be interested in The Octopus (link to LibraryThing). Amazon.com purchased 40% of LibraryThing in 2008. You can not escape the reach of the Octopus.
posted by stbalbach at 1:25 PM on November 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

The only thing that ever made me sad about AskMe is that it failed to come up with the title to my long-lost childhood sci-fi novel, and I was counting on it as my last recourse. Now, a new last recourse/challenger has appeared! Thanks; I can try my luck again.
posted by ilana at 1:26 PM on November 14, 2011

Time to look through all my old unresolved askme's and start reposting.
posted by nomisxid at 1:28 PM on November 14, 2011

Interesting stbalbach, I suppose one could still order books directly form the publishers. In any case, you should not trust abebooks.com with a password you use elsewhere.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:49 PM on November 14, 2011

God, I was hoping that you were wrong about the plaintext password, but I just had mine emailed to me. Oy.

Really enjoying picking around here. Their tips for new users makes me happy that I am in a more geeky web community. Also for the hardcore, do not miss STUMPERS THAT WILL NOT DIE. How can you not be able to find a mystery thriller set in Tonga?
posted by jessamyn at 4:46 PM on November 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

Well, now you’ve just made me sad.
posted by bongo_x at 12:31 PM on November 15, 2011

Why?
posted by uans at 8:02 PM on November 17, 2011

>Why?<

I thought my comment was quoting the part about ABE being bought by Amazon. Oops.
posted by bongo_x at 10:08 PM on November 17, 2011