I used to live in an apartment complex that had a built in library. The library was tiny but it had nothing but high quality sci-fi and fantasy novels and an impressively comfy couch.
I once picked up a sci-fi book at random and read about a chapter of it, but I put it back down wanting to pick it back up later. I ended up moving away and now I want to go find that book again but I can't remember anything about it, including the name or the author.
The only thing I remember clearly was that it was that it was written by a woman, it was an older sci-fi novel, it was in hardcover, the cover was black and it was about a college dropout who is making contact with aliens.
This book has since become my white whale. Since it is an old book it's not sold in any book stores near me. I check all my library's sci-fi collection and none of them have it. The only thing I know for certain is that I'll know it when I find it.
I @#$%ing hate online book search algorithms because they only prioritize popular novels and novels written recently.