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openEnglish children's book about a fairy tale school? Literature
At least I'm pretty sure it was English. It was essentially about a school where one side of it was 'good' fairy tale creatures and one side was 'bad' (trolls and ogres and such). I thought maybe Francesca Simon (Horrid Henry) might have written it, but it's not showing up on her wiki page. The art style was very similar though. I remember there were some songs in the book, including one about eating worms, and one about the bad side of the school invading the good side.
openJustification for WW2 air combat in space Literature
I read this in a collection which also contained a "Section General" story featuring an operation on a crustaceoid alien, but no idea of the title of the collection any more than the title and author of this short. I was going to put this under Old School Dogfighting, but don't have a title for it. The human protagonist is aboard a fighter with kinetic kill rockets and machine-guns, as their enemies, which IIRC were called the Ogliki (Ursine Aliens, as in Six-foot teddy bears with fangs and warlike tendencies) have a technology called The Shield, which dissipates any energy beams at the edge, and anything that is meant to explode will also do exactly that, against the outer radius of The Shield, therefore the only weapons both sides are left with (the humans reproducing the Shield quickly enough) are kinetic kill rockets, machine-guns and railguns. The aliens also have The Weapon, which can mysteriously freeze an enemy ship, leaving it uncommunicative and completely helpless to do anything but drift off into space. This turns out to be a temporal stasis device. The story is framed with a description of a war memorial in an Ogliki village, beginning with a monument to fighting humans, containing a miniature scene of an Ogliki in a wrecked ship with an agressive human crawling toward them to kill them, and ending with a monument to peace, with a human and Ogliki touching (contains a miniature of the previous monument as well).
openNo Title Literature
Two things I remember reading at my cousin's house when I was a kid (so 80s, maybe early 90s):
A short story about a girl who, on her 13th birthday (I think) inherited a loom which could weave her own hair. I don't remember if it was actually called a hair-loom, or if that was a Stealth Pun. Everyone in her family had mild magic powers of one sort or another, and there was enough weirdness around the edges to make me think it was part of a series, but I don't think I ever read any others. It was in a collection of kids' fantasy stories, but for some reason it's the only one I remember.
One of those big picture books with the story on the left hand pages and detailed paintings on the right hand pages (like Kit Williams' Masquerade, but without the treasure) about a girl who entered the rainbow. Each picture was the "world" of a different colour, and there was an Or Was It a Dream? ending.
Edited by DaibhidCopenBio-tech society Literature
I read an old book recently that I was going to mention under Living Ship, and Organic Technology, but no title or author comes to mind. I don't remember whether I re-donated it (it was in a charity shop) or it's still hanging around my place. The system has been colonised, with the use of bio-tech and bio-mechanical tech, to the point where you can make your children as you wish; live for an awfully long time, though this is restricted by law due to mental decay after a certain age until you are completely insane; wear a living cloak; live in an organic house; and you will be absorbed into a data matrix after your death ceremony, which the living can access, so they are not truly without you. One protagonist is sent to prison (wearing her living cloak) after someone is murdered in her house (and the house ends up dead too), another decides to leave Venus (one of his bioengineered daughters comes with him) looking for answers to some great puzzle, which turns out to be a conspiracy theory to take over the system with a new race of far-more-wildly-engineered posthumans; and one is chasing down someone who is living longer than he is supposed to... There is a crab-shaped prison ship the guy and the young girl make off with, to get to the prison; the throne which people are able to access the matrix of the dead on the ship is a trick, it actually just kills you; and the ship is sentient, protesting that it is highly irregular when the young girl orders a dessert from its food supply system (seriously, that function was installed, didn't you ever think someone would use it? Who built you, the same jokers who come up with the comms connections in Sharp cash registers?) which she promptly spills, as the bioship is on final approach. This comes after the pair have seen a city on a (Saturnian? Jovian?) moon which appears to have been a bio-modified forest.
openDimension Traveling Book Literature
I remember reading this book a couple of years ago. The cover of the book looked like it was from the 1970s, or some time close to that. It featured a boy who could travel through different dimensions. Eventually, a girl joins him. every so often when they travel though dimensions, their bodies would reverse, like they were looking in a mirror. When this happened, the girl had to spend a few days re-learning how to read and see. Because the boy was more experienced, he didn't have to. I believe someone in the story was in charge of protecting the 2nd dimension. Any help in finding this book would be greatly appreciated.
openBloody Murder Literature
There was a book series I (kinda) remember reading in middle school. It's about a teen girl detective (but not Nancy Drew) and I remember there were these really gross death descriptions. Like some point in one of the books she mentions someone driving a car without a seatbelt and them not being able to find all his body parts and another where her teacher is roasted from the inside out with some kind of huge microwave thing outside his door while he was sleeping and his eyes blew up. I think it has CSI in the name or some version of that.
openFantasy about reluctant villains Literature
There was a fantasy book about Good defeating Evil for good, just to find out that upsetting the Balance would lead the world to ruin. So main characters turn evil, because someone has to do the job. I'm sure it's somewhere here in the examples for the anti-villain subtropes, but I can't find it. Can anybody remember the title? Thanks!
Edit: Dammit, I'm thick. Villains by Necessity
Edited by ThainenopenPost apocalyptic novel Literature
I read this book sometime in the lat 80s or 90s. I think it's set in Ireland. The protagonist is a girl who's being forced into an arranged marriage with an older man. Her brother talks about beating up the apocalypse when it comes back, because he thinks it was a being of some kind. Wolves are significant somehow, and I'm pretty sure that the title has something to do with wolves.
openNo Title Literature
I'm looking for a book of short scary stories for kids. There's only one story I remember from it, and I'd love to read it again: It's about a kid whose family frequently has the dad's boss (he might've just been a coworker or friend, but I think he was the dad's boss) over for dinner. The boss is friendly and nice, and he always gives the kid some jellybeans when he visits. (The jellybeans are a minor detail, but I remember that bit specifically.)
But every time he visits, the parents send the kid up to bed early before the boss leaves. One night, the kid sneaks back downstairs and peeks into the living room, and he sees that the boss looks utterly satanic (I think he has horns, and he MIGHT have been sitting in a floating chair), and the parents are doing some ceremony around him.
I think the kid faints and then the story ends eerily, without a proper resolution.
It's a pretty short story, but it's unusual and memorable. Unfortunately I don't remember any other stories from this particular book for certain, but it's just this one that really interests me. This book was probably rather old, since I had gotten it from a library that had a lot of old books. Any help would be very appreciated!
Edited by Oecobiusopenit was like The Thing, but it was a book and also other differences. Literature
Trying to track down this book I got as a gift about a decade or so ago. I remember it being similar to the film The Thing, in terms of body horror, the difference being it was all technological instead of alien virus-y. The story took place in the United States, I think on the northwest coast but don't quote me on that. I also seem to remember the cover being a picture of a vivisected skull with all sorts of nasty gubbins going on, in a whole lot blue and red, but again don't quote me on that because it's been a while.
Is this ringing any bells for anyone? I'd love to read it again and see if it was as good as I seem to remember.
openBook with a bus crash and codependency Literature
A girl is trying to remember about this book, but she only knows the story. A group of people are trying to find this book since january/2015, but after many searches, no one was able to find it's name or the author name. The only girl who have read the book shared some informations about the book. The author is male, the last name reminds her about trees (wood, paper...). Takes place in Florida, a girl and a boy almost die in a school bus accident (it fell on a river/lake). After that she had many scars and the boy suffered damages that prevents him to play baseball, then they create a co-dependency relationship, in the begining plantonic but then becomes obsessive. The book is written by the point of view of a new girl on their school, who thinks the relationship very weird (the others don't mind at all). She read the book around the year of 2007, but she said the book could take place around the 70's, because there was no presence of cellphones and internet. The cover is half black and half white, similar to Paradox Love (by Dorothy Gravelle). Sorry for the way I wrote, english is not my first language P.S.: NOT the sweet hereafter.
openWarhammer 40k Fanfic Crossover Literature
Hello, I'm looking for a Warhammer 40k Crossover, the one where Humans and Ponies get sucked into the realm of chaos by one of the gods.
openRomance/Drama Manga Literature
A manga featuring a dude who crushes on a blonde (tennis player?) from afar when a dark haired girl comes and offers to help him win her over. Has quite a few cliches in it and focuses more on the drama than comedy, if there was any. The dark hair has a rape-ish incident in her past. I think it ends with dude and dark hair together and blonde with her ex. Found it on TV Tropes the first time but cant seem to find it again.
openBook about Death via Dodgeball Literature
Okay, so, major spoilers here. There was a book about a girl who, while playing dodgeball, gets hit and breaks her neck. In the afterlife (which, iirc, was similar to a shopping mall), she meets someone who gives her a box of things she''s had over the years and tells her to 'answer her own question'. She doesn't know what the question is, and is expected to figure that out, as well. She looks at all these things and tells the stories associated with them—one thing, i believe, was sm she shoplifted? Anyways, by the end of the book, she realizes her question was 'why didn't i move out of the way of the ball?' and the answer was 'I didn't deserve to live.' Really morbid, and stuck with me for years. Any ideas?
openA short story I can't find Literature
Okay, MAJOR spoilers, but... This dude builds a thing named some variation of Chimera, but it's kind of awful and thinks it's terrific and demands its maker build it a mate. BUT FIRST they have to figure out if the chimera is a man or a woman? First, they say man. Then, a wisewoman says its a woman. The chimera destroys itself. The maker is like, "well, glad we figured out she was a chick." And the wisewoman is like, "Nope. Totes a dude. What but a man would rather die than be called a woman?"
I've been looking for this story forever! Does anyone know it?
openA girl and her blob. Literature
This was a book I read back in the '80's that I only vaguely remember. I think a girl was playing around with a chemistry set and created some kind of new lifeform. I think it was a sort of blob that communicated in whistles and something like whale song, and she kept it hidden in her room. She was worried about what people might do to it if it was discovered, and in the end she decides she can't keep it hidden away forever. I think in the end she releases it into the sea and hears it singing like a whale. I can't remember anything about the title, and google isn't any help with the few key words I can come up with that I might my mixing up anyways.
openNovels about a second born daughter Literature
This is for my mom, who's having a tough time finding a fantasy novel series she read a while back:
It's a series—second-born into a royal family gets married off. Her older sister becomes the queen of her home country. I seem to remember that where she gets sent to is very dry and dusty. It's all about political intrigue and rulers that are not taking care of the people. She's working with some rebels, I think, to try to right that wrong. It involves something about a flower that's a symbol in the royal palace—especially in the royal bath, I remember, because that's where she has the epiphany about what it means towards the end of the series.
It's a series of several books I think.
Anyone recognize it?
resolved Kids' novel about sidekicks Literature
This is a kids' novel that I read somewhere between 2003-2008. I do not know who the author was. I think it was part of a series, but I don't know which book in the series it was, and I never read any of the other books.
The title was something like "Sidekicks", but this is not the graphic novel by Dan Santat. The art style was similar, but it wasn't a graphic novel, just a novel with illustrations. Also, there were no animal characters.
It takes place in a city where superheroes exist, but the story is about their sidekicks. The main character is called something like "Speedy", because his power is Super-Speed. "Speedy" is the sidekick of quite possibly the worst superhero ever: Pumpkin Pete, who has a pumpkin for a head and appears to be wearing a green unitard. Pumpkin Pete claims to have "all the powers of a pumpkin", but the fact that he runs away from every fight makes it clear that he has no powers at all. As if that wasn't bad enough, he's a total glory hound who takes all the credit when someone else saves the day. And all the citizens believe that he saved them.
"Speedy" hates this, and wishes he was a superhero so that he could be acknowledged for once. He gets his chance when a Mad Scientist attacks the city with a giant robot. Hilariously, when he first meets Speedy, it takes him a while to come down and meet Speedy face-to-face because he has to go down the stairs in his robot. When he finally makes it to the bottom, he's out of breath.
I don't remember the mad scientist's name, but I do remember this: He was really short, and he hated it. His plan was to use his robot to crush everyone so that he would be taller in comparison. (I only just realized how horrifying this is.)
There's one other thing I remember: One of the other superheroes was called Haggis Man. I bet he's still more effective than Pumpkin Pete.
Does anyone remember this?
openFunny book about US Gov? Literature
There was a very funny, but very informative book i read maybe 3-5 years ago. It's meant to teach teens about the US government, and how everything went so wrong.
It starts with the founding fathers time traveling to the 21st century and being horrified by what they see.
They go on to explain that they're horrified because we've strayed so far from what they intended when they wrote the Constitution.
There was something about how the Constitution sets up a pyramid, and we've turned it upside down.
Another problem they mentioned was that we treat our government like Superman, as if it can solve all our problems. We put too much weight on its shoulders.
Anyone recognize this?
Does anyone know if this fanfic, I don't remember what it was called, about this ordinary girl who got whisked away to a school for bad fanfic writers set in a magical land? I think it involved a huge crossover with other fandoms, too, it sort of poked fun at the cheesy writing you'll find from some writers. I read the first chapter and enjoyed it immensely, but I lost the title and page of it afterwards. And I'm pretty sure that it was hosted on fanfic.net. Got any ideas on what it might have been?
Edited by cake1