Do you have any "mystery books?"

An open thread, even though Substack doesn't allow them anymore

Once upon a time I received a book in my pile of Scholastic orders.

(A few years ago I told my husband how every quarter — or however often they arrived at school — I went through each delicate, newsprint Scholastic catalog, picked out whatever books I wanted, gave my mom a total so she could write me a check, submitted it to my teacher, and later received a pile of books on my desk. He said, “I could never have any of those, and I really wanted to.” I have been damn lucky to have unfettered access to books my entire life. I remain forever grateful for that privilege, and for parents who never denied me any book I wanted, ever. But this is not a story about that.)

Once upon a time, I received a book in my pile of Scholastic orders. It had a rich, deep blue cover, with a dark, etched illustration. The title included the word “Motel.” Inside somewhere was another etched image of a person wearing a toilet seat on their shoulders. The story was something like: future archaeologists look back at our time and explain how we used all our everyday stuff. Most of their interpretations are wrong, including (it left a big impression) toilet seats as fashion accessories.

I loved this book, but over time and shelf purging, it disappeared from my life, and so did my memory of its exact title and who wrote it.

But I never stopped thinking about this book. I thought about it for years. I thought about it every time I drove past the enormous 100+ mile transmission line designed to electrically connect the eastern part of Iowa to south central Wisconsin, and wondered if future civilizations would think these hideous, bizarre, but vaguely human-looking structures were effigies of our gods. (I still think this, to be honest.)

I know there are services for finding a book when you've forgotten its title — the New York Public Library has an excellent article about how to go about finding mystery books, including a list of crowdsourced sites that can help.

Maybe I was too lazy for that, or maybe I had two tiny children and a full-time job outside my home, or maybe there was a worldwide pandemic and I was just trying to stay sane — I don’t know! But it wasn’t until my favorite librarian in the world — she of the curly brown hair, who knows who she is, who has helped me with more esoteric requests and far-flung searches for books than anyone else, ever — told me about searching via Google Images, and then took this real picture of me:

I ran like Atalanta to the nearest computer and typed in "blue cover ‘motel’ children’s book” and there it was — THERE IT WAS! — my long lost book, just as weird as the first day I pored over its pages: Motel of the Mysteries by David Macauley.

It was published in 1979, before I was born, but I am guessing I got my little mitts on it in about 5th grade, in ye olde 1993.

Of course, upon finding my mystery book, I bought it immediately (last August, from Thriftbooks, for $8.69, though I would have paid 10 times that.)

It’s just as good as I remembered. The toilet seat is even better:

I think I need full-size toothbrush earrings

(Once upon another time, I tracked down a mystery book for my boyfriend’s mother, who was nostalgic about a picture book she’d read to her children when they were little. It was the story of a chicken who walked around saying, “Lucky me.” That’s all the information I had to go on, so could not use the magic spell of Google Images, but I found it — of course I did — and I bought her a copy off eBay, and I’ll bet she regrets her son didn’t marry me, at least sometimes.)

Your turn: do you have any “mystery books” from childhood or otherwise? Books you remember, sort of, but haven’t been able to find?

(They don’t have to be from childhood! They don’t even have to be children’s books!)