Books You Don’t Remember the Name or Author of - Because if I can’t remember the name, it’ll drive me crazy

[The Vicar]

I want to say it was a relatively modern book and this would've had to be around 2008-2010.

The only thing I can find that matches is this plea on reddit, and I'm assuming that's from you.

 

[Xolanite]

A book where they were looking for a Breton accused in a string of murders; and some guy exclaimed, “Christ on the cross!” when they found a dead prostitute who was a readhead.

 

[JimiHendrix]

a long long time ago i read some compilation of stories. one of them had a girl visit her aunt, who had a lake in the backyard, twist of the story was the girl had drowned in the lake weeks before the story took place.

that's not the important part. the important part is the second story. there was a story about some girl in a abusive household...or she had a friend who had an abusive household? and they managed to open a portal to another world...and the story ends with the friend going through the portal to live a better life, and doing so turned him into a furry.

I know this sounds like insane ramblings, but it's been almost twenty years since I read that second story and I just wish I knew what the fuck it was.

 

[Arthur Morgan]

So this was a book we were reading in fifth grade but never finished and I just want to know the ending.

It's set in WWII Poland near the end of the war I think. It starts with a man who has been thrown in a camp who manages to escape and return to his home town, but can't find his family. He finds a boy named Jan, and they talk, until the man notes that he and his wife planned to meet up in Switzerland if they got separated. He searches some more and decides to try Switzerland.

Months later, we find out the man's kids were in town, except for the eldest son who was in a different work camp but also managed to escape, and the eldest daughter is looking after the orphans. I'm not sure what happened to their mother. Anyway, they meet Jan and upon learning where their father went, travel across post war Europe together to find him and reunite the family.

I have no idea what it was called, or any of the characters names. I just remember Jan because my teacher pronounced it like a girl's name instead of as a Y sound and I found it a funny thing to name a boy.

 

[Fliddaroonie]

So this was a book we were reading in fifth grade but never finished and I just want to know the ending.

It's set in WWII Poland near the end of the war I think. It starts with a man who has been thrown in a camp who manages to escape and return to his home town, but can't find his family. He finds a boy named Jan, and they talk, until the man notes that he and his wife planned to meet up in Switzerland if they got separated. He searches some more and decides to try Switzerland.

Months later, we find out the man's kids were in town, except for the eldest son who was in a different work camp but also managed to escape, and the eldest daughter is looking after the orphans. I'm not sure what happened to their mother. Anyway, they meet Jan and upon learning where their father went, travel across post war Europe together to find him and reunite the family.

I have no idea what it was called, or any of the characters names. I just remember Jan because my teacher pronounced it like a girl's name instead of as a Y sound and I found it a funny thing to name a boy.

The silver sword, Ian serrailer.


Seriously though shut up. Cos I was just thinking about this book like five minutes back. SPOOKY as actual fuck

Was one of my favourite books as a kid. I wont spoil it for you if you want to read it but I still have my copy, decades on now.

 

[Arthur Morgan]

The silver sword, Ian serrailer.


Seriously though shut up. Cos I was just thinking about this book like five minutes back. SPOOKY as actual fuck

Was one of my favourite books as a kid. I wont spoil it for you if you want to read it but I still have my copy, decades on now.

Just read the Wikipedia entry and that's it, yes. Thank you, that's been bugging me for 20 years

 

[Fliddaroonie]

Just read the Wikipedia entry and that's it, yes. Thank you, that's been bugging me for 20 years

That's quite uncanny. I knew that's what it was when you mentioned the camp and Jan. I was about five minutes before seeing your post (and I'd never checked out this thread before, funnily, it was totally fluke) looking at my bookshelf and my copy caught my eye.

 

[MerriedxReldnahc]

I've been trying for years to remember the name of one of my favorite children's books, which for some reason I don't own anymore. The story centered around these animals, which I remember as being hard to identify, who run a rainbow factory. There's a huge rainstorm and they need to create a rainbow to make the rain stop, but they're all out of colors. Several of the critters go to the gather the colors in all the different color worlds. This was the coolest thing about the book because I remember all the art being vibrant collages of each color, I think that there was also a little splash of the next color hiding in the corner as that was the entrance to the next color world. At some point they think "Hey, how is so-and-so doing back at the factory?" Cut back to critter at the factory screaming in horror as rain pours into the building and gross things like snails crawl around.

 

[TungstenCarbide]

When I was in middle school I read this book from the school library: it's the story of a French nuclear engineer who is kidnapped along with his family by a group of ecoterrorists. They want to use him to find the plans for a new nuclear reactor and destroy them (or maybe he had to bring the plans to them so they could find a weakness to stop it). He doesn't want to, because he isn't an action hero, then he accepts but is captured by the secret services and disappears. The story literally ends like that. I can't remember the title or the author.

 

[Sea creature]

There was a book I read years back about a girl named Tempest I believe and she is able to control storms, she doesn't know it till towards the end of the book. I remember her mother was dead, also able to control storms and that father lives by the beach in their old house while she lived with her grandmother or aunt.

Edit: The cover was also blue, I think k it had the sea and a storm on it? I know it was various shades of blue.

 

[Fromtheblackdepths]

I've been trying for years to remember the name of one of my favorite children's books, which for some reason I don't own anymore. The story centered around these animals, which I remember as being hard to identify, who run a rainbow factory. There's a huge rainstorm and they need to create a rainbow to make the rain stop, but they're all out of colors. Several of the critters go to the gather the colors in all the different color worlds. This was the coolest thing about the book because I remember all the art being vibrant collages of each color, I think that there was also a little splash of the next color hiding in the corner as that was the entrance to the next color world. At some point they think "Hey, how is so-and-so doing back at the factory?" Cut back to critter at the factory screaming in horror as rain pours into the building and gross things like snails crawl around.

Is this MLP' Rainbow Factory?

 

[High Tea]

I've been trying for years to remember the name of one of my favorite children's books, which for some reason I don't own anymore. The story centered around these animals, which I remember as being hard to identify, who run a rainbow factory. There's a huge rainstorm and they need to create a rainbow to make the rain stop, but they're all out of colors. Several of the critters go to the gather the colors in all the different color worlds. This was the coolest thing about the book because I remember all the art being vibrant collages of each color, I think that there was also a little splash of the next color hiding in the corner as that was the entrance to the next color world. At some point they think "Hey, how is so-and-so doing back at the factory?" Cut back to critter at the factory screaming in horror as rain pours into the building and gross things like snails crawl around.

That one's tough. I know a lot of books in the 80's - 2000's were like that with licensed characters such as Care Bears, My Little Pony, Rainbow Brite (since all of those books involved rainbows). The thing that sticks out in my mind is Richard Scarry books. They always had critters. He wrote a ton of books about colors. I might start by googling Richard Scarry colors (or add vintage if it's a few years old) and see if they look familiar.

 

[MerriedxReldnahc]

That one's tough. I know a lot of books in the 80's - 2000's were like that with licensed characters such as Care Bears, My Little Pony, Rainbow Brite (since all of those books involved rainbows). The thing that sticks out in my mind is Richard Scarry books. They always had critters. He wrote a ton of books about colors. I might start by googling Richard Scarry colors (or add vintage if it's a few years old) and see if they look familiar.

It wasn't anything licensed and I remember the style being super off-beat and artsy. I'm surprised that I don't have it anymore because I still have so many of my favorites.

 

[Minister Burroughs]

You're good! That's it.

And, holy cow, that book is rare! They've got copies selling used for over a thousand dollars! Mebbe I don't want to read it quite as much as I thought I did...

If you want the book for free, here's Libgen: http://libgen.rs/fiction/BA09DB2DD38D05D56166DFDC29A996CF

I donated the book when I moved. It had a relatively generic name like Sea and Lake Monsters and Legends.

It was a hardcover book from the 1990s with a collection of various sea and ocean legends of different formats but mostly article summaries, they included missing ships, ghost ships, encounter with giant sharks, giant jellyfish, lake monsters and so on. There were also longer stories, one was about finding and living on an island where supplies would conveniently wash up on shore from time to time (the story mentioned painting supplies), another was diving in a lake and claiming to encounter lake eels.

Could it have been True Sea adventures by Donald Sobol? https://archive.org/details/trueseaadventure00sobo

Now for mine: I read this book back in middle school but remember certain things as clear as day, and it drives me bonkers. It was called something like 'Skull Island' or something like that, 'Something Island', but it stars a brother and a sister. It starts off with the two of them getting a letter from the mailman and bringing it to their father who very deliberately opens it with a letter opener, which the narrator explains he always does because he morally objects to those who tear open letters with their fingers. Turns out the father inherited a house on an island, and so they go there. There's exploring the island, the house has a big ballroom, there are lights in the fog, etc. The climax of the book involves the discovery that there were pirates on the island, who left their treasure in the house. The daughter finds the treasure (another point I remember with perfect clarity), by pacing out the size of the basement of the house, then the size of the ballroom above, and discovering that the basement had a fake wall because the basement was smaller than the ballroom. So they find the treasure and all ends well.
I went so far as to contact my old middle school teacher (I read this off the classroom shelf), but she couldn't help me.

 

[PaleTay]

If you want the book for free, here's Libgen: http://libgen.rs/fiction/BA09DB2DD38D05D56166DFDC29A996CF

Could it have been True Sea adventures by Donald Sobol? https://archive.org/details/trueseaadventure00sobo

Now for mine: I read this book back in middle school but remember certain things as clear as day, and it drives me bonkers. It was called something like 'Skull Island' or something like that, 'Something Island', but it stars a brother and a sister. It starts off with the two of them getting a letter from the mailman and bringing it to their father who very deliberately opens it with a letter opener, which the narrator explains he always does because he morally objects to those who tear open letters with their fingers. Turns out the father inherited a house on an island, and so they go there. There's exploring the island, the house has a big ballroom, there are lights in the fog, etc. The climax of the book involves the discovery that there were pirates on the island, who left their treasure in the house. The daughter finds the treasure (another point I remember with perfect clarity), by pacing out the size of the basement of the house, then the size of the ballroom above, and discovering that the basement had a fake wall because the basement was smaller than the ballroom. So they find the treasure and all ends well.
I went so far as to contact my old middle school teacher (I read this off the classroom shelf), but she couldn't help me.

It might have referenced that book, or included some of the same stories but it was around 400 pages and the cover art was different. I believe it had multiple authors now that I think of it.

 

[The Empirical Bogey]

As a kid I had this illustrated storybook with talking animals. It had three stories and I think a bonus story as well. The first was about these animals going to investigate a rundown inn on the edge of a village, maybe it was supposed to be haunted but I think they find a grouchy old mole there and then something about jam(?) that's all from the first story. The second was about a regatta the animals have on a river - I remember this particularly because that's how I learned what a "regatta" was. The third is a complete blank (which makes me wonder if there were just three stories and not four) and the bonus story was at Christmas time, a fox in a Santa hat shows up in the village. Maybe he defrauds the animals out of their presents and then has a change of heart but that's just me guessing based on tropes, not memory. The illustrations were done in a Beatrix Potter style with lots of rich detail, the book was large with a brown cover. As to place of origin I'd say it was British (especially due to the talking woodland animals).

 

[SSF2T Old User]

How about this situation... Figuring out the publisher that released a certain piece of media that relate to the books you used to read.

Let me present to you this rabbit-hole that I decided to go down to because apparently I hate myself. In 4th grade my teacher had a big bookshelf in her class and three of them specifically were books regarding the unknown and supernatural.

These three books specifically are all hard-covered and had audio cassette tapes that came in a clear cover that went over the books themselves. The weird thing about the tapes themselves is that they only told like half of the book (like 4-5 chapters if I recall) while side B of the tape had the reader of the book countdown to 1... for reasons that honestly escape me. Regardless, it's the audio cassette tapes that were my real main focus for the search.

However, and here's the kicker, NOWHERE does it show these things having the audio tape linked with them. All the sites I checked on Google (goodreads, amazon, ebay, discoverbooks, etc...) ONLY show the books by themselves and don't even mention the cassette tapes in their description. At first I thought that "Random House Inc." were the ones that made the audio tape, since the background music they used in some parts were exactly the same ones that were used in the "1988 TMNT Adventures Heroes In A Halfshell" cassette tape that came with the comic book. But then I found this...

ONE image... on FUCKING PINTREST of all sites. Linked to a DEAD ebay link. The text on the tape is illegible, and the logo on the top left is absolutely NOT Random House Inc. which looks like this

So I'm completely convinced I've hit a dead-end at this point.

 

[Arachnophile]

Okay, last time I'm posting here, I swear. There was this book I read in elementary school about a kid who gets struck by a bolt of blue lightning. It transports him to this primitive world where he ends up killing this ferocious monster (I think it was called the Howling Thing?) and earns the trust of a tribe of natives. The natives are then captured and enslaved by a bunch of colonialists, one of which the protagonist falls in love with. Eventually the kid learns of another human who was also sent through time by the same lightning, and has become a fearsome warlord by the name of the Mur-caw. He finds this Mur-caw and it turns out he's just some criminal piece of shit who's living a comfortable life as a warlord. The book ends with the kid getting sent back to his original time period after getting hit again by the blue lightning, and the twist is that he becomes a doctor to try and stop a plague that would eventually turn the world into the primitive future he just visited.

 

[Orion Balls Deux]

Okay, last time I'm posting here, I swear. There was this book I read in elementary school about a kid who gets struck by a bolt of blue lightning. It transports him to this primitive world where he ends up killing this ferocious monster (I think it was called the Howling Thing?) and earns the trust of a tribe of natives. The natives are then captured and enslaved by a bunch of colonialists, one of which the protagonist falls in love with. Eventually the kid learns of another human who was also sent through time by the same lightning, and has become a fearsome warlord by the name of the Mur-caw. He finds this Mur-caw and it turns out he's just some criminal piece of shit who's living a comfortable life as a warlord. The book ends with the kid getting sent back to his original time period after getting hit again by the blue lightning, and the twist is that he becomes a doctor to try and stop a plague that would eventually turn the world into the primitive future he just visited.

The Transall Saga by Gary Paulson. Didn't have to look that one up, it's actually on my shelf. I enjoyed his Hatchet series.

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

old, old, old kid's book...like 1970s old...

Late elementary, early middle school age kid stumbles across aliens who have crash landed on earth and are living underground. What was weird was that the aliens manifested different human body parts: giant eyes, giant noses, stuff like that. They'd also been taken over by these rat-like things, another kind of alien, who imprisoned their leader, a giant brain. Of course. It had illustrations but it was mostly text.