Forgotten Books Found

January 5, 2007 7:54 AM

The Loganberry Book Store is the place to go if you have a favorite book from childhood and remember the characters, setting, plot and everything but the title? Well your problems are solved. Check out Loganberry Books' stump the bookseller section. They help me track down one of my all time favorites - My Very Own Special Particular Private and Personal Cat by Remy Charlip. It's like a trip to the nostalgia library.
posted by brookeb (12 comments total)

I used to live a block away from Loganberry Books (and I remember recommending them in an AskMe about a rare book a while back). Great store.
posted by amro at 7:58 AM on January 5, 2007

I've never liked the $2 charge, especially with a 50-70% answer rate. The Fiction-L list does the same thing, using a mailing list of librarians and book discussion leaders, and it's free. Just sign up, ask your question and sign off.
posted by mediareport at 8:04 AM on January 5, 2007

It's as if millions of AskMe's cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

That $2 cover charge is kind of a deal-breaker, though.
posted by Mayor West at 8:18 AM on January 5, 2007

What happens to the $2? Does the person solving it get the money?
posted by veedubya at 8:19 AM on January 5, 2007

It's $2 each time you want to ask a question. That's not a bargain worth crowing about, when there are equally good if not better places out there to get similar info.
posted by mediareport at 8:26 AM on January 5, 2007

For free.
posted by mediareport at 8:26 AM on January 5, 2007

True, but I'd pay the $2 just to support a good independent used bookstore, especially since I know of two others in the process of going out of business.
posted by amro at 8:36 AM on January 5, 2007

Oh c'mon, $2 ain't so bad. I bet you paid more for your coffee this morning than that. I'd give a whole lot more than $2 if they could figure out the name of this one book I read in my teens. Sometimes I wonder if Iactually read the damned thing or if I imagined it.
posted by Skygazer at 8:36 AM on January 5, 2007

Plus support your damned independent bookstore dammit, as amro said.
posted by Skygazer at 8:38 AM on January 5, 2007

Oh and the $2 goes towards the purchase of the book.
posted by Skygazer at 9:48 AM on January 5, 2007

Enjoyed your post brookeb!

I appreciate the site for a couple of reasons, one being the recollections of those looking for their old favorites and the other is knowing there is more than one place to ask for a book whose title one forgot. There is something charming in reading how the books were remembered. I loved Remy Charlip's Arm In Arm when I was a teen. (A little more about Remy Charlip here and here).

In case anyone is interested, the Baldwin Project has 387 children's classics online with the illustrations. An elderly friend of mine was near death and she remembered the name of the long lost first book she remembered reading, Otto of the Silver Hand. I Googled it and read the first pages to her over the phone. She didn't know how to use the web. She was pretty astonished and pleased.

Fortunately, over the last 6 years or so I was able to find most of my childhood favorites via Google or AbeBooks keyword search. Horrible and Adelaide the Flying Kangaroo by Tomi Ungerer, the Swans of Ballycastle by Walter Anthony Hackett; How to Do Nothing with Nobody All Alone by Yourself by Robert Paul Smith; A Friend Is Someone Who Likes You by Joan Walsh Anglund. And even some of my father's favorites, like Two Little Savages by Ernest T. Seton.

But there is one book I've been looking for for ages. Can't find it. It was about getting the measles. I think it was called The Pox or something like that. Will go to the links in this thread and see if I can find it. Thanks.
posted by nickyskye at 10:37 AM on January 5, 2007

Ah, the smell... Loganberry is a good bookstore. It is a very good bookstore. It is really big, and really neat (in the sense of cleanliness and organization). The floors are spic and span, and there is no dust anywhere. But when you approach the large children's section there is an odor -- not strong and not necessarily unpleasant -- that comes from the thousands of children who owned and loved these books originally. A kiddie smell.

Kind of touching, actually.

If you're ever in Cleveland, you must visit Loganberry and spends tons of money there.
posted by Faze at 11:42 AM on January 5, 2007