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openNo Title Literature
There's a book or short stories about vampires. Most to all were pretty mild. One vampire just craved rare meat. In another story a girl told her older sister that a boy said he was a vampire but it turns out that the sister was one and dressed up sexy and went to feed on the boy. I'm not sure if this was actually aimed at children. Can any vampire literature readers help me out?
openNo Title Literature
This book is by the son of a baseball pitcher who was known to hit batters. His father hit an up-and-coming baseball star and permanently ended his career. The book is about this son retelling the story and distancing himself from his father before bringing the two former baseball players together years later to reconcile.
I cannot remember a single name for either player or a single team for which either player was on, unfortunately.
I think the book was published in the last ten years.
openNo Title Literature
This was a fantasy novel with a memorable cover that I saw at a bookstore ca. 1997. It featured a giant goddess with curved horns. I think she's emerging from a riverbed and there's a normal-sized human in the foreground looking at her in astonishment. I ran across the cover art online recently (but didn't think to save it) and now I'm curious who the author and artist were.
openNo Title Literature
I actually remember the cover of this one. It had a picture of a girl on the cover making the 'gun' motion with both hands (you know, clasping your hands together with the pointer fingers making the barrel?). The whole story is about how she's planning on killing her ex-best friend because she thinks he killed her twin brother. When she asks anyone about her brother's death (he was shot) they simply sigh and tell her it was an accident- which of course convinces her that they're covering for the friend.
She takes a gun and goes to the friends house and tries to kill him. He tells her how her brother actually committed suicide while the friend was in the same room. She has a bout of Heroic BSOD and fires off the gun. A minute later the friend's aunt comes upstairs to see what the noise was, and faints when she sees the gun. Turns out the girl had missed the friend entirely, and he tells his aunt that the gun was a toy and that there isn't anything to worry about.
openNo Title Literature
A book about a very VERY poor family, focusing on the son. The boy is ostracized by his peers because he smells bad and rumors say his family all sleep on the same mattress, covered in bugs. The boy adamantly denies this, but later, the family does clean out the room, and they do find the place swarming with bugs they never noticed and wind up sleeping outside for a night.
The boy befriends a middle-class (or wealthier) girl who takes him to a hamburger place. She's so busy talking about something (school related?) that she gets excited and doesn't finish her hamburger. He stuffs it into his pocket to eat later while she's not looking because his family can never afford to get fast food. Later, they're at the girls house, and as an experiment she has them each take a shower with all their clothes on so they can weigh the before and after, and the boy is terribly embarrassed when the girl's mom comes home, finds the place filthy, and the hamburger floats out of his pocket.
At one point, a social worker or a teacher actually looks over the boy's case file, but decides that it's too much effort or the family was too much trouble to actually do anything about, and just hides the folder in the back of the drawer.
I read this sometime in 2002-3, so whatever it is, it's older than that.
openNo Title Literature
I remember an audiobook I listened to at some point and it's horrible because I'm sitting on a cliffhanger.
In the first part, I think there was a girl who found out she's a witch or had magical powers or something. There were also two or three other women who were also witches and looked out for her. Her mom was gone or missing or something, but still alive. I think she had a pendant with a streak of her hair inside (that at the end turned out to be her own, since her mother had changed the main character's looks because someone/something wanted to find her or something). Also there was some guy or woman who was very nice to the main character but it was just acting, and I remember that they gave her a bra at some point. Another detail that comes to my mind is that illusions made by magic would start to crumble once somebody started doubting them.
I also remember something about the sequel, which was in the end more of a prequel because most of it was the main character's mother telling her daughter that as a teenager, she had accidentally summoned a goddess or something, and the goddess ended up haunting her. At one point she was on a ship with her boyfriend and the goddess was a guinea pig, and also they spent a lot of time near the north pole. I think I found the sequel a lot darker.
The last thing I remember is that magic originated from some people whose name were only one or two letters, I think there was someone whose name was M who had kids named Ma, Mo and so on, and also, there was a wizard named S. That's as much as my memory can get together.
Edited by JarinaopenNo Title Literature
A very odd one. I have this memory of a play being done at my old school called The Shirt. The story involved someone (a king?) who had a shirt which may or may not have been made by a mad scientist. There was definitely a scientist in it. The main plot involved this man taking this shirt around the world and encountering various people. I don't know if they were signing it or what. The only other details I remember are a scene with some people gambling and a man (I think the scientist) whose wife constantly shouted at and berated him. Is it possible that this was an actual play, or a children's play of some sort? It may have just been invented by the school. I know it's not much to go on.
openNo Title Literature
This was a short story in a collection of Science Fiction stories aimed at children/young adults which was in my high school library in the UK (I attended 1980-1985). It was about a teenage boy who plays an arcade game which turns out to be a recruitment tool in an interstellar war. I know what you're thinking, but I'm positive this pre-dates The Last Starfighter by several years. It's also definitely not connected with Terry Pratchett's Only You Can Save Mankind.
The main detail I can remember is that the protagonist notices that the background stars in the game don't twinkle but shine with a hard, constant light, like you how you would see them when viewed outside the Earth's atmosphere. I think the story may have been set in Britain and had an anti-war tone. I want to say the story was by Nicholas Fisk, it seems like the kind of thing he would write, but can't find enough detail in entries for his short story collections to confirm.
Edit: I've just checked the And You Thought It Was a Game trope, and it's not there.
Edited by AspectiferopenNo Title Literature
(Comic book, but that's not an option! Literature is the Closest Thing We Got.)
I asked about this quite a while back on the old format YKTS but never got a good answer.
In 2003 an acquaintance mentioned that he had read a comic book many years earlier where Batman and Superman fight, and Batman ends up using a nuclear bomb on Superman. When I previously asked about it The Dark Knight Returns was suggested, but I don't think that's it - it'd've been even older than that.
PS What happened to the old format YKTS & LNF archives?
openNo Title Literature
Im looking for a Young Adult book that I read probably sometime in 2009. It was part of a trilogy (I think it was at least, I know I read 2 books out of the series). It had a tree on the cover of it (the sequel had the same tree, but a different color scheme, I think), and there was a lot of mind-twisting plays with different dimensions and time travel and stuff. There was a boy in one dimension whose mother was dead, and he traveled to another dimension where his family had a daughter instead of him and his mother was alive. The "shifting" was related to the tree, when they were touching it, at some points, they were shifted. There was also an old man who owned the house before the children's family, and the boy saved his life in the past or something. This has been bothering me for a while, and I would really appreciate it if anyone could help me out! EDIT: at the end of one of the books, I remember that the universes were collapsing and they had to merge them
Edited by JernikopenNo Title Literature
I'm trying to remember a book that I read when I was about 10/11-ish, so circa 2005/2006, although the book may not have been released in that time. From what I remember, it was set in modern day. I'm not sure if it was a series or a standalone book, but one plot point (not, I believe, the entire plot) I remember is this:
A girl has never known anything about her father. She does some research and believes she may have found him, so gets the bus to see him. She finds out there is a man in hospital in a coma with his face bandaged who she believes is him. She frequents his bedside, developing a slight bond and eventually helping him awake.
If I remember correctly, the man is revealed and it his her dad, but for some reason this is a trick and it was the wrong man-in-coma. The real man-in-coma is then revealed and it isn't her dad.
As a series, I believe it may have some kind of kid/teenage spy thing, but more a la "Famous Five", not quite "Cherub"-style, but don't quote me on that. There also may be a science institute involved at one point, but again, I'm not certain. Also, there may-or-May not be some kind of gameshow involved, which may or may not be hosted in a school hall, and it may or may not be a distraction to some higher plan.
It's been bugging me for a while, now. Sorry my recollection is quite vague, but hopefully it's enough.
openNo Title Literature
Two requests where I have maddeningly vague memories: 1) Sci-fi story, involves the last member of an alien race saying that a particular child will be a savior of the galaxy. Everyone assumes that this means that he will be able to transcend the teleportation limits (if I recall correctly, they could teleport up to some amount, say 22 kilograms, but the moment they added a gram more, it failed). His father was a former football player and it was referenced a few times that he used a football carry for the baby with the head in one hand and the rest of the body on one forearm. The parents were killed by some sort of extremists and the boy was tested for his teleportation abilities and they found that he couldn't transcend the limit. And... that's about all I remember.
2) Fantasy, released somewhere in the early 2000 timeframe because I remember bringing it up at sci-fi club in college. The main character is a blacksmith who is some minor avatar of the local gods. It makes him slightly stronger and tougher, and unable to die easily. There was a scene where he walked a long distance, wearing out his shoes and then the soles of his feet, but continued to walk for days even leaving a trail of blood. I want to say the title ended with "of the Gods" and that he wielded a hammer on account of being a blacksmith. I also think the paperback cover featured him standing alone on the cover with hammer on his back although I have only a vague mental picture and there may have been variant covers.
openNo Title Literature
I had these books as a child in the early 90s, but they may be older. They revolved around a bunch of stuffed toys and the illustrations look like photographs. There was a brown dog, a bear in red pants, a zebra, and maybe a sailor doll. In one book, the toys were playing hide and seek and the bear was hiding in a picnic basket. And I'm about 90% sure these books were British.
openNo Title Literature
When I was in high school we had this book of short stories. The one I'm looking for was some story from Buddhist Mythology that's something about this bad guy who went to hell when he died, however since he once saved a spider from being squished Buddha sends down a giant strand of spiderweb to give him a chance to escape.
openNo Title Literature
I'm not sure if requests like this are ok to post here. If not please let me know.
I'm not looking for a specific thing I remember, more for something I would like to read but haven't found yet. Does anybody know any books which feature a lesbian relationship and are NOT set in real life? Fantasy, historic, sci-fi, anything. The relationship doesn't have to be the main topic, but it should also not be mentioned in just one sentence or based on vague implications. I can read German and English. Anything else is not really important. If you have any matching recommendations, I'd be forever grateful.
openNo Title Literature
3 YA book series.
1) Short series about an Adventurer Archaeologist named something like Lone Gone(or that might've been the name of his sidekick). His schtick was that as a boy, his parents were anthropologists, and with whatever culture they were studying they'd have that culture teach the boy their skills. So he had hunting/stealth/investigation skills up the wazoo. The format of the books was in the form of a case file, and who the actual villain of the book was up to you to deduce, or you could just read the answers at the back.
2)[Found!]A series about this teenage boy who was a phenomenal drummer and the adventures he had.
3)Really vague, but it was about bunch of kids who built a time machine out of bathtub. They travel to the future and wind up on a Generation Ships an meet another kid who describes himself as an "Unthief", someone who retrieves what was previously stolen.
Edited by IndalecioopenNo Title Literature
Somebody posted this on the Something Awful forum, and I'd love to find the story in question.
" I read a short story once that messed with that idea. A pastor buys an android to help around the church and starts discussing theology with it. He tells the robot that it doesn't have a soul but as a thinking being it should be able to earn one through good works. Then a child dies and at the funeral the pastor tells the android that children automatically go to heaven when they die. Since going to heaven is a good thing and seeing as it doesn't have a soul so it can't sin the android starts a murder spree, killing children. "
openNo Title Literature
There was this series of children's books (I think it was a trilogy). It started in a society that used a color-coded caste system. Every year, every person was tested to see if they could ascend/descend/stay in their caste. The main character was in a family with her mother, father, brother, and their baby. It was ruled by someone called the Emperor. I think the main character left this city about a quarter of the way through, but I can't remember what happens after that.
openNo Title Literature
This was a picture book from maybe 10-15 years ago. All I can recall clearly was a blue dinosaur that was drawn as though melting away, with his legs and tail sort of running down the page like dripping paint. The tone was very depressing if I recall correctly, like the dinosaur was sad or dying or something and I can remember it freaking me out a bit. The only other detail I'm pretty sure about is that the background of the page had a somewhat "gritty" appearance, like rusted metal. Any help would be much appreciated!
edit: when I say 10-15 years that's when I would have first seen it, not necessarily when it was published
Edited by jerichocaine
As my earlier post seems to have vanished...
Three books. The first one was a series of at least two entries, the covers were red and white, and were similar to A Series Of Unfortunate Events in style, and one character was a boy who couldn't feel pain, nicknamed Rubberboy. I also remember there being an evil teacher, and a tower full of pterodactyls.
The second book is about a girl who discovers rodents are sentient, the cover was orange and black, and I'm pretty sure it was called Rat, but Google was unhelpful. The main thing I remember was a scene with a chinchilla being forced to put its pawprints on pastries for some reason.
And the third is a fantasy book, mostly a satire, that features a girl who makes a deal and has to give up her sarcasm.