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openNo Title Literature
I was passing through an airport recently, and saw this book in one of the stores, in the fantasy section. I thought the title was "Tide Storm", or something like it, but apparently I was wrong, as my searches aren't finding anything close to it.
The cover was reddish and depicted some kind of scenery. What I remember from the back of the book is some mentions of war and - I think - some kind of fantasy world. I realize this isn't much to go off of, but any help would be hugely appreciated.
Additional cover description: There were some buildings on the front. They don't really stand out; the scenery just kind of blends together in a sunset-red haze. The scenery, or at least the redness, extends to the back cover as well. The whole cover is primarily red.
Edited by TwiddleropenNo Title Literature
This was a book I read the back-cover blurb on and wanted to research more when I got home, but I forgot the title/author. It was about some kids (two boys and a girl) playing a D&D-style game. One of the boys wants to quit and start a new game but the girl doesn’t. The thing is, the characters they created become real and begin to fight to make sure their world isn’t destroyed.
Is this ringing any bells with anyone? I seem to remember it was called something like Gameworld or Gameland.
openNo Title Literature
Ok, so this is incredibly vague and odd. Around 2004 I remember reading a young adult fantasy novel, it was in the new book section of the library and it seems it just came out. It was about these teens or preteens, a brother and a sister who wandered in a forest and met some kind of magical creature, I think they were elf-like. I vaguely remember there were these things that were valuable to the creatures and I think they looked like golden leaves or candy wrappers. It turns out their dad worked for the creatures in the past and they called him a 'thrall'. I also remember a gang fight in a mall involving a thuggish friend of theirs.
openNo Title Literature
It's an older fantasy book that focuses on a girl who attends a school for the magically gifted (I'm about 99% sure that it was written before the Harry Potter books). The school appears differently based on your skill level - beginners see it as a rundown building and more experienced students see a fancier structure. I think the same goes for the food.
The story ends with each witch in her graduating class receiving some sort of gift. It turns out that the main character doesn't get one, she cries, and one of her teachers tells her that one of her tears is actually universe/galaxy and that she's so powerful that she has actually reached god status.
I really enjoyed reading this as a teenager and I've been trying to figure out the title of this book for a very long time with no success. I'd very much like to be able to find it and read it again, so if the description sounds familiar to anyone I'd really appreciate a response!
openNo Title Literature
A scene in a young adult novel, probably a ghost story, where a girl (or boy) goes up into the attic and finds an old record player with a recording of the song "The Old Gray Mare" in it. The record keeps getting stuck on the "many long years ago" part of the song.
Edited by amazinglyenoughopenNo Title Literature
Does anyone remember reading a 'young adult' novel (I think there were two of them in series) concerning a book where the characters inside it are real. Every time a person reads the book the characters read their lines, and I think this was whenever anybody read any copy of the book rather than the characters being localised to a single copy. I don't remember the plot of the first book at all, but the second involves the granddaughter of one of the original characters (real life not the book within) and/or the original author of the book and I think she somehow gets into the book? She meets a teenage girl called Laurel who emerges from a laurel bush, has blue eyes and possibly supernatural powers? Like she created herself instead of being written or something like that? And I vaguely recall her being a young version of the protagonist's grandmother. I think the second book ends with the protagonist selling the story to a publisher so that it will go back into print and be read again.
Also, the version I read possibly had the image of a girl on the back of a giant owl / some other giant, brown, feathered beast.
Appreciate any replies :)
openNo Title Literature
It was a series of three books, aimed at about the 12-15 crowd (maybe younger.) It's sci-fi. The last book had a daughter and her irresponsible dad flying in a spaceship at the beginning, and she was trying to get him to help fix something. They land on a planet, with mountains and fields of grain (and possibly an uninhabitable side, not sure.) The daughter gets some UST with a native boy, and the dad uses a drug from another planet (ambroesia) and a pimped out box to trick the mayor into giving him power. The native boy accidentally leaves a bloody hand print, and there's a big dinner hall, some scandal, and at the end, the dad nearly gets stoned to death (with stones, not drugs.)
openNo Title Literature
I'm trying to remember the name of a short story where a doctor is performing surgery on herself using a tiny remote - controlled robot. She goes into a coma and an adventure guide who uses remote - control robots to let tourists hunt giant spiders safely is recruited to find the missing robot before she dies.
Futurama (I think) had an episode where something similar to this happened.
openNo Title Literature
I am trying to remember the name of a book. It was about a vampire girl, Megan I think her name was. She was running from another vampire who was borderline evil. She had two gay "protectors"/friends... She ends up with the borderline evil vampire, and gives birth to twins a boy and girl light and dark. The dad ended up taking the boy and disappearing cause someone was looking for him if I remember correctly... Ugh I hate that I cant remember... -.- it was also several years ago.
openNo Title Literature
I remember reading a Star Trek Voyager novel some time ago that provided a great non-video game example of Save Scumming, but I can't remember the title of the book, and all my searches so far have come up empty.
Plot goes somewhere along the lines of an away team (Torres and a couple others, possibly Kim and Paris) being sent to a seemingly deserted planet with signs of an ancient civilization on it. The away team accidentally triggers a time travel device that sends them to an inhabited era of the planet's history, but in the process they end up breaking one of the civilization's fundamental timeline protection laws. The aliens contact Janeway in the present to discuss the situation, while the away team (Torres in particular) tries to come up with an escape plan, only to be thwarted at every turn by the time traveling abilities of the aliens, complete with descriptions of the various iterations the aliens had to go through to come up with the eventual solution. (Hence, the Save Scumming example)
openNo Title Literature
(Putting this under "literature" because there's no "comics" option, I hope that's OK.)
I can't remember the title of a Captain America TPB, it's the one where a Skrull takes over HYDRA and pretends to be Captain America so he can turn people against each other by making everyone paranoid about Skrulls invading Earth. At the end the real Cap gives a speech about how America isn't as awesome as it should be, or something like that.
openNo Title Literature
I remember reading this series of books a few years back. If I remember correctly, it was about these kids who had some sort of powers. I think there was a character named Tim who was kidnapped by aliens and later found. I also remember that one of the books dealt with a rat infestation or something like that. I remember that the books had shiny covers. Thanks for the help in advance.
openNo Title Literature
A whole bunch of literature queries, while I think of them:
- 1) A short story where the main character is planning on selling his soul to The Devil - he goes on and on about admiring how clever The Devil is and how successful he is going to become for it... Then he finally meets with The Devil, and as he signs his soul away he looks in The Devil's eyes, and instantly regrets it because he realizes that The Devil is "an idiot".
- 2) I think this was in an English textbook I had in grade school: There's a class field trip to the zoo, and on the way one kid is made fun of for constantly making up outrageous stories about how cool his father is, such as that he has magical powers and keeps ostriches in their yard. Later on, the kids meet his father, and everything he said about him turns out to be true... sort of: He's a magician and there are life-sized ostrich sculptures in the yard, for instance.
- 3) A YA book: There was a school with a magical, vaguely Mary Poppins-ish school teacher. The main bad guy is one of the students, and at one point in some sort of magic-related mishap his hair turns green. The bad kid comes home with green hair and has to assure his malaproper father that he hasn't become "one of those runk-pockers". Also, even though it seemingly had nothing else to do with Doctor Doolittle, a Pushmi-Pullyu was involved somehow.
- 4) Another YA book - I only remember one small scene where the main character is hiding, and needs to enter a building guarded by two mook-type characters who are British (and I believe it's mentioned they're rugby players), and are described as both being so laconic as to seem like they have their own language. I mainly remember that the main character was listening in to their conversation and at one point one responded to the other with "Grade A, mate", and in his narration the main character wonders whether the mook did really say "Grade A, mate" or if he just changed the subject completely by commenting on the weather ("gray day, mate"). There may have also been something about a character being kidnapped and trapped in a room with a man who yells at them in an unrecognizable language and is described as looking like Mr. Clean, and the book may have actually alternated narrators with each chapter (If so, the chapters were headlined by the name of the character whose POV it was to make this less confusing). But then again maybe the "Gray day" / "Grade A" thing, the guy who looked like Mr. Clean and even the alternating narrators were entirely different books.
- 5) A very... odd book I ended up browsing through in the library as a kid. It had something to do with alien invasion, but the main thing I remember is that the end of the world was supposed to be preceded by an endless traffic jam, which one of the main characters ends up starting. There's a certain song that drives the aliens away, and the song was even printed in the book with lyrics and sheet music.
openNo Title Literature
I read a book when I was younger and now I can't remember the name of it. I know the copy I had was a tall, skinny book. It was about a boy, I want to say he was in the 4th grade. I just remember that instead of regular-length chapters, it had a ton of shorter chapters (by shorter, I mean 1.5-4 pages). The only thing I remember from the plot is that the kid is ridiculously good at untangling knots. In one of the chapters, there's a business (maybe a pizza place?) that has a flag and the excess string from tying the flag to the pole had become hopelessly tangled over many many years. There may have even been a long-standing challenge with a prize to whoever can untangle it. It takes the kid several hours, but he does it. I want to say that the name of the book had the kid's name in it, but I could have made that up just now.
openNo Title Literature
I think I read this story in a folk story book at my piano teachers house as a child. Its kinda dark and hans christian anderson-esque.
I only half remember the details, but it's about a magic stick that grants wishes. A boy finds it and shows it to a girl who doesn't believe that it's magic. He tries to convince her that it is, and she gets frustrated so she takes the stick and wishes that if she threw it the boy would turn into a dog, chase after it and leave her alone. And he turns into a dog. Later a family has the dog guarding a baby in a crib for some reason and an eagle comes in and attacks the baby and carries it away. The family comes in and sees blood everywhere and kills the dog/boy.
Yeah I don't know.
openNo Title Literature
I'm trying to find a certain children's book. It was basically a safari in a book, taken to he exreme, and every double-page spread (the pages were about A4 size) was a different place, like one for the arctic, with arctic foxes and rabbits and such, and another in the desert, which showed the burrow of a small animal, and an owl that lived in a cactus, and one in the rainforest, where there were leopards and sloths and such lying across the branches of trees. There was one double-page spread where you turned the book sideways so you had a vertical spread instead of horizontal, and it was underwater, from surface to near the bottom.
I remember that on every page you had to find a jewel of some as well; it was probably just some little hook to keep the kids interested. I think the jewels belonged to something called the "tree of serendipity".
Edited by JaceLightningopenNo Title Literature
I'm looking for a Harry Potter fanfic; I can't remember much about it except that (somehow) Harry is gifted with more maturity (maybe?) (and the fic is not a Peggy Sue); unfortunately the only events from the fic I can remember are that Harry goes (muggle) clothes shopping, and goes on a not-date with a girl who works at the clothes shop; the only other feature of the fic I can remember are a few Americanisms (the girl asks Harry if he has a car when Harry (probably) wouldn't be old enough to hold a driving license in England, Harry refers to a building being a few blocks away, ...)
Not much to go on but I'd be grateful for any suggestions!
(Oh, and the fic isn't Forced Maturity.)
openNo Title Literature
There was this futuristic dystopia-type book I read a few years back, maybe like 2006-2008, somewhere in there, but it could have been older... there were these two groups of people and some of them were called "believers" or something, who were waiting for the arrival of some being, and the other people looked down on them and were skeptical of the being arriving. I think it was an allegory to Christianity, but I can't remember much else. Anyone?
Edited by redvelvetmock
This is a book I read as a kid about the possibilities of extraterrestrial life. One section of the book had pictures and descriptions for various hypothetical other planets, like a low-gravity one, a high gravity one, a jungle one, an ice one, and a gas planet where life floated around in the atmosphere. The illustration from the latter was used for the cover, showing a whale/manta ray type creature on a bluish background.