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openindonesian YA romance novel about a housekeeper and 4 brothers Literature
Indonesian tropers might remember this one. or the ones who into local YA romance novels
i remember reading this like years ago. maybe when i was on 5th grade (this could determine the exact year its published. i read it on 2015).
the cover is brown color and has anime-ish outline drawing of a girl opening a mailbox with shocked expression with small drawings of the 4 brothers surrounding her.
The story is about a girl who hired as a housekeeper for a somewhat dysfunctional family and the entire story is her bonding with the brothers, and she (i think) falls in love with the eldest brother iirc?
What i remember about the story is the brothers themselves. the eldest one is the most responsible, and the second oldest (or the third) is typical bad boy. there is also the strict one who has asthma and the youngest is a 4-year-old boy who exposed to not kid friendly contents (in the story it said that he read adult magazine which belongs to one of the brothers) and thanks to his brothers and i remember the protagonist concerned about it
there also plotline where the youngest brother got sick, and its apparently because his unhealthy eating and near the end her parents who doesnt aware that she worked as housekeeper mistaken her to have secret relationship and really mad about it.
openHow To Have a Birthday Party Book Literature
It's a nonfiction picture book on how to have a birthday party. It follows a girl named Caroline. It mentions the term novelties and shows what they are.
resolved Young Spy Girl Goes to Japan??? Literature
I have just been hit with memories of this book i used to read obsessively as a kid. I'm pretty sure it was a series but there's one book in particular i remember and i am scouring the internet but i can't seem to find it anywhere.
ok so it's about a young girl who's a spy/secret agent and she gets a mission where she has to go to Japan and there's one bit i remember where she's on a bullet train and she thinks her blonde hair is making her too conspicuous and she like presses a button on her hat and a black wig pops out under it. she goes to this place where geisha do tea ceremonies for tourists and there's also stuff about traditional japanese beliefs about foxes? the more tails a fox has the more clever it is? or the more sneaky? please help i can't sleep im just thinking about this book
openQuestion about WH40K reference Literature
I have a question. I was trying to do research about Warhammer 40K technology lately. Saw a couple of references to a machine that was able to Purge it's name from databases across the galaxy. Being I was partially referencing non warp based ftl tech I should have made a note. Trying to find what novel this might have been from. Anyone have any ideas?
openDiamond Brothers book with a coded message Literature
I was going to see if one of the books in the Diamond Brothers series had an example of a coded message, but I forgot which one.
I remember one scene in which someone was given a letter that seemed innocuous, with "Ma" talking about how things are going. It began "Bad news, I'm afraid." and said something about the recipient's granddad being in hospital, if I recall correctly. However, it turned out that the first letter of every other word created a message when they were put together. Said message was something along the lines of "BIG ED TAKING OVER, COME HOME AT ONCE." I also remember that the titular brothers were in police custody, but I might be conflating it with my memory of another book since they frequently ended up there, at least once for wasting police time.
It's definitely not "I Know What You Did Last Wednesday" since the brothers never got arrested in that book.
Edited by Riolugirlresolved It might be named "Fish Girl" Literature
There's a work I'm looking for because I had gotten an idea for a new trope for the Mer Tropes index. I remember reading a children's book in my high school about a mermaid held captive in an aquarium run by a guy who puts up a God Guise pretending to be Poseidon. The book would've features the girl learning that she actually can gain legs on land, and upon doing so, she discovers that fraud that her owner is, speaks for the first time, and learns to live on her own among humans.
The book may be named "Fish Girl", but I'm not sure. I looked for this piece of literature in Mermaid Media, but didn't find it anywhere.
Edited by DeadlyEspressoresolved Short story about a man being kidnapped by his future descendants Literature
I think he was going to do something that was going to cause some kind of problem for his descendants. (I feel like maybe it was a reputational thing, like he made a bad name for himself and all of his eventual descendants; but maybe I'm making that up.) So they go back in time and kidnap him and trap him on a ship (an oceangoing ship, not a spaceship) for his whole life against his will, to stop him from doing the thing. He resents his confinement, especially over something so relatively trivial, but he can't do anything about it. He spends the rest of his life on this ship, with his descendants. At the end of his life, he points out to them that they forgot to give him the opportunity to actually bear any children, so after all their effort to fix their problem, all they've accomplished is retroactively killing themselves. (He deliberately didn't tell them until it was too late, because he resented them that much.)
I don't remember when I read it, but it was probably less than ten years ago. I feel like the story itself was older than that, though; it had the vibe of classic science fiction (i.e. 40s-70s) more than modern science fiction. But, I might be wrong about that.
resolved Short story about a man being kidnapped by his future descendants Literature
The protagonist was going to do something, or something was going to happen to him, that was going to cause his descendants to not be born. So they kidnap him and trap him on a ship (that is, an oceangoing ship, not a spaceship) for his whole life against his will, to keep him safe or to stop him from doing something that would lead to them not being born. At the end of his life, he points out to them that they forgot to give him the opportunity to actually bear any children, so after all their effort they're all going to die anyway.
I think I misremembered this. I think he was just going to do something that was going to cause some kind of problem for his descendants. (I feel like maybe it was a reputational thing, like he made a bad name for himself and all of his eventual descendants; but maybe I'm making that up.) So they kidnap him and trap him on a ship (an oceangoing ship, not a spaceship) for his whole life against his will, to stop him from doing the thing. He resents his confinement, especially over something so relatively trivial, but he can't do anything about it. At the end of his life, he points out to them that they forgot to give him the opportunity to actually bear any children, so after all their effort to fix their problem, all they've accomplished is killing themselves. (He deliberately didn't tell them until it was too late, because he resented them that much. Not just for kidnapping him, I think, but for being shallow and ridiculous people in general.)
I might be screwing up some details, but I'm pretty sure about the broad details that people from the future isolated him on a ship, but then it was all for naught because they forgot to let him have children.
I don't remember when I read it, but it was probably less than ten years ago. I feel like the story itself was older than that, though; it had the vibe of classic science fiction (i.e. 40s-70s) more than modern science fiction. But, I might be wrong about that.
Edited by NoriMoriopenYA book about dragon finding other dragons Literature
A YA book (I think it was a series) about dragons that I read in the 90s. I don't remember a lot of specific details, but it involved a dragon, I think working with 1 or 2 young people, trying to find other dragons. I remember a specific scene where they've heard rumors of dragons in a desert land, but when they get there it's actually giant crab monsters that they need to fight. The dragon is insistent that the crabs aren't real dragons.
openI don’t even know pt 2 Literature
This might be the same book as my last post, but it’s even more all over the place so I hope not.
Uhhhh…
Girl in village, I remember reading it and imagining lots of sun and green grass. On a hill I think. There was some sort of hunting tax.
For some reason the girl went on this quest?
All I remember about the quest is her absolutely demolishing a smith shop.
I think there were dragons?
And either an axe or daggers were super important. May have belonged to a father.
Again so sorry for the lack of info but I’m really just getting like glimpses of scenes.
resolved I don’t even know Literature
I don’t remember a whole lot. I don’t think I got very far into the book or series. I remember I stopped because a friend who was a few books ahead warned me there was a few too many s3x scenes.
It was a very dystopian like book. A heavily guarded village sorta setting. These two girls, either sisters or twins, were being constantly compared because one was strong and smart while one was gorgeous. I think for some reason the strong one had more suitors tho? I could totally have that backwards. Then there was either some sort of coming of age thing or a sacrifice ceremony thing. The strong one got chosen. Went on a journey with her sister and a couple boys. There were shadow beasts. I think her sister died? Oh and behold she left there was like a lot of marriage proposals. I THINK they might’ve come up to an another big city and done some vigilante shit but it’s been years so I don’t really know.
Found!!! Sea of Shadows by Kelly Armstrong
Edited by Zee-TrayhorneopenYA Sci-fi book Literature
main characters are young twins (boy and girl) with minor genetic mutation to have gills. I think later they get some kind of superpowers. Several other minor mutants including a lion tailed guy named Leo. I think there was an Layered Metropolis setting that was kinda dystopian.
Read when I was a middle school, so over 10 years old at least.
openStory about one of the Apollo missions crashing into one of the spheres of heaven Literature
It's some alternate reality story where an Apollo mission, presumably Apollo 11, crashes into one of the spheres of heaven and now everyone knows that heaven and hell exists. Another detail is that in hell, people who sin less are thrown into worse hells in order to incentivise people to commit worse sins.
resolved Sci-Fi book where soldiers are kept in storage and are essentially immortal Literature
I read this book in the 90s, so it was from that era or earlier. In the future, scientists develop transporters, like Star Trek, but they are able to store the "pattern" of a person and then bring them back multiple times. The main character is a soldier who, after every battle, he and the other soldiers are dematerialized, and then when the next war starts, they're brought back to fight in that one. After a while the MC realizes that hundreds of years have gone by, and the people in charge don't consider the soldiers stored in the computer to be real people any more. The climax of the book is MC finding the main computer where the digital copies of all the soldiers are stored and destroying it so they can't be brought back any more. Does this sound familiar to anyone?
resolved Mid-nineties children's horror anthology Literature
In the mid-nineties, I read many horror story anthologies for children, although the stories often came from adult publications. The one I'm looking for has a sulfur-yellow cover with a pair of glum children peering from a poisonous-looking haze. I remember two titles from the stories within: "Battleground" by Stephen King and "The Ruum" by Arthur Porges. Other stories include a man who appears to be one hundred years old but is just about to reach his first birthday and one where a dodgy man is willing to pay any price for a specific house because a fortune he murdered to get is stashed away somewhere inside. I thought the book was titled Death Comes at Midnight but I can't find it searching for that title.
resolved A book about an orphan, a flooded earth, fedora-shaped spaceships, terrible fashion sense Literature
I read this book back in the '00s when I was living in Scotland, probably mid-to-late, but I can't be exact. The book was written in English, and I got it from my local library. The target audience was Tweens, probably 10-13. It's doubtful it'd be classed as YA for modern audiences; the content wasn't mature enough.
I'm pretty sure the cover was a picture of the main character crossing swords with someone and a big flare of light at the point of impact.
I believe the name of the book was the name of the protagonist, or included their name as a subtitle on the front cover. What that title was is long lost. I was certain it was "Johnny Z" or "Jimmy Z", but having tried everything in that vein (Jimmy, Jonny, Timmy, Tommy, X, Y, and Z), I'm stumped. As far as I remember, the protagonist was named this since he was an orphan, and they didn't know his parent's last name.
The book had a very Douglas Adams feel to it with a wacky futuristic Earth post-ice caps melting, where Earth's cities float, and the culture/fashions have been toyed with by alien races (though they have since stopped messing around, resulting in the current trends). Military uniforms are covered in polkadots and transports are in the shape of starfish. The book is full of fun little asides that explain why things are the way they are, giving contexts for the absurd things which happen.
The setting on Earth is that everything is flooded, with lots of mist and clouds, with everyone living in floating cities. Later, they get a lift to an alien space station, before the MC travels back to earth briefly at the end to save it from destruction.
The book opens with the protagonist being bullied in school. Everyone has these hand-held tractor-beam things that the bully is using to hold something of the main character's out of reach (homework? notebook?). They have silly acronyms for the gadgets, and the MC's one reflects its inferior strength compared to the bully's.
The protagonist is a young boy, or early teen, whose parents are both dead. He doesn't have much going for him and gets bullied a lot.
Every year, the other inhabitants of the galaxy send Earth a message asking them to join their wider community, though Earth refuses. I remember the messages coming down the prime minister/president's chimney. Earth's leader is an important supporting character; they are kind of the MC. Their second in command/deputy is a minor antagonist who tries to seize control of Earth while the leader is away.
The aliens send a message to Earth saying they want to have a tryout for a team of youngsters to save the universe. What is threatening the universe was never revealed, only that they needed to assemble a team. 4 or 5 human children are selected, with the MC being one and his Bully being another. They take off in a space rocket, reach and orbit the moon, before being met by a fedora-shaped ship which transports them to the space station where the selection process (try-outs) will take place.
While in transit, I remember them being kept in big glass bubbles, possibly with a view out into space. At this point, MC is visited by a multicoloured furry alien who ends up being on MC's team during the trials. There is a bit about burgers and how in the future, science has achieved delicious food that tastes like fast food but is nutritious and healthy.
The alien in charge of the trials looked a bit like a kangaroo.
The human children are split up into individual groups. The team the MC ends up on includes the multicoloured furry alien from before, a big three-armed alien, and maybe two others, one of which was a (non-human) girl I think he had a bit of a crush on.
At one point, it's revealed that the space station has some kind of normalisation field which makes everyone the same size, but in fact, the furry alien is actually really big, whilst the three-armed alien is very small. I also remember a rather novel aside where, when it's revealed that basically everywhere on the station is under constant monitoring, the three armed alien gets embarrassed and asks if they were monitoring when it did a number 12 (or some such number), and the book takes time to explain that humans are rare/unique/lucky that they only have to deal with number 1s and number 2s, but doesn't elaborate on what the other 10 possible types are. Witty kiddy toilet humour, for sure. There's no way I, as a pre-teen myself could have been so imaginative to come up with that.
They navigate the station via a series of wormhole-like discs on the walls, which you have to jump/fling/catapult yourself through. Personal size is irrelevant; anything can fit through one of these. These discs come back later as the method through which the MC saves the Earth by placing a pair on either side of the planet for their spaceship to fly through to avoid destroying it.
The selection process takes the form of a series of challenges that they have to train for. I remember one being a relay race in spaceships through an asteroid. Another was a sword fight involving special swords that take 800 years to forge and are passed through the heart of a star. Each sword is the maker's life's work.
In the room where they duel and practice with the swords, there is a diving board "thing" that protrudes over a gap around the edge of the duelling ring. The further along it you walk the more your worst fear feels real. The M Cs greatest fear is the Earth being destroyed. He is told only people with great "inner laft" can make it to the end. MC sneaks in one night and walks the entire length, falling off the end, where he meets his mum and dad in some kind of vision. They talk before he returns to bed. There was some form of repercussion for this since no one is supposed to go into the training room without permission/supervision.
Eventually, after all the challenges are completed and the Bully's team are disqualified for cheating, the MC's team wins. There follows a party, something causes the world leader to have a heart attack, he "dies", but the aliens revive him with a "microwave". There's also something which causes the Kangaroo alien in charge of the whole thing to need to take a rest, and so uses some kind of time-dilation device to take a very long nap without anyone else being affected. If I recall, he then forgets to turn it off, racking up a very expensive electricity bill?
After the party, they return to earth, where the world leader confronts his deputy/stand-in who has tried to seize control and replace him as leader. The world leader ends up getting stabbed. MC then duels the bad guy using those newly acquired sword-fighting skills and beats him, but the world leader actually dies this time. Pretty sure the world leader was a widower and also took his death well.
MC places two of the wormhole discs in space to try and save the Earth from destruction, since the spaceship he and his team have to take to save the universe has to reach super speeds to reach wherever it is they are going, and to reach these speeds it requires a runway that happens to pass through the Earth.
On his return, he chats with the Kangaroo alien (I think this might be where the aside about the time-dilation bit comes up), who offhandedly mentions "laft falls" which are trust falls without anyone behind you but you trust that someone out there truly loves you and their love will catch you. MC suspects "laft" is actually "love" just mispronounced beyond recognition.
They depart, the ship doesn't destroy the earth because of the wormhole discs, and the book ends with the girl on MC's team listening to two others doing "laft falls" with pillows to cushion them (which doesn't work since they aren't trusting). She then does a laft fall whilst thinking about the MC, but it's not revealed if she hits the ground.
Other curious notes:
- There was telepathy and telekinesis. - Terrible fashion sense (polkadot camouflage uniforms was just the beginning) - Doors which required the password "shaushages" - The protagonist's parents were revealed to have been friendly with the aliens but died in some (spaceship?) crash. - I recall there was a sequel in the works/about to be released (pretty sure I found it on Amazon) I don't know if it was to be a duology or a full series
Honestly, at this point, I'm tempted to try writing this book myself and trying to get it published. At least then, even if it's plagiarism I'll have found what I'm plagiarising.
Would love to find this book again, it's driving me crazy that I can remember a story so vividly but can't name it or find it. I've probed Chat GPT and Bing Copilot but neither were any use. Amazon and Abebooks don't show anything useful for the variants of Johnny/Jimmy/Timmy/Tommy X/Y/Z.
resolved verbally abusive mother Literature
First time trying something like this, sorry if it's formatted poorly! I randomly remembered this recently, but when I was in elementary school (I think), I read a book about a girl who I think was in fourth grade whose mom was verbally abusive. In hindsight, that didn't belong in my elementary school's library, but that's besides the point. I only remember a handful of details, so here goes.
-Like I said, I *think* the girl was in fourth grade, but she might've been in sixth grade. Definitely not a high schooler yet, at least.
-Also like I said, the girl's mother was verbally abusive, but I don't *think* she was physically abusive? Maybe she slapped the girl once, but I don't think so.
-I think the cover was blue, but I might be wrong.
-The girl had an older brother.
-There was a scene where the brother (I think, some male character older than the girl) referred to the mom's 40th birthday as "happy over the hill" or something like that.
-There was a secondhand shop thrift store kinda place where the girl liked to spend a lot of time, I remember she sold a dress her mom wore there and got boots of some kind?
—Related, when the mom found out the girl sold the dress she got really mad.
-The girl really liked caves, there was a field trip where she got to go with a teacher to see caves and her mom threatened to revoke her permission to go I think?
-When the girl told the principal about the abuse, she said her mom called her "stupid" and "dumb shit" (this I remember vividly, mostly because of the swearing when I was younger and didn't know you could put swear words in books).
That's all I can remember, if you know the author or the title that would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!
Edit: fixed spacing issues
Edit 2: it was Call Me Hope by Gretchen Olson! Thank you!
Edited by CupcakeGal25openMiddle grade book, children escape from mad scientist Literature
So, I read this book in school, around the mid-2010s.
It was about a bunch of kids who were captured and being experimented on by a mad scientist, in a facility that might have (I'm not sure of this) eventually been revealed to be in space.
The children all had powers of some sort- I can't remember whether they had powers beforehand and that was why they were being experimented on, or if the mad scientist just decided to kidnap a bunch of random kids For Science! and the experimentation is what gave them their powers. Either way, the powers they had were pretty weird- I remember specifically there was this one girl whose hand turned into a hammer. Oh, and they had a Team Pet in the form of some unidentified creature that had also been subjected to (possibly even created in) the mad scientist's experiments.
Eventually, the kids figured out how to mount an escape (naturally, this involved cleverly combining all of their abilities, even the seemingly useless ones).
Other stuff I remember:
It was made for kids, so despite the "captured and experimented on" setup the tone was still somewhat lighthearted.
The cover had a colorful image of the main cast of children on it, including the aforementioned Team Pet, although the image made it look like a brick covered in purple fur (and with a pair of eyes sticking out of the fur).
The mad scientist was either mentioned or briefly shown to have performed an "experiment" with no actual science (mad or otherwise) in it; he was just torturing a lab mouse For the Evulz by pulling out chunks of its fur. I think he claimed that he was testing how "how many hairs you pull out at once" affects "how loud the mouse squeals in pain".
Oh, and I am REALLY, REALLY not sure about this, but I think at one point the narration used a weird expression that I think was an Australian-ism. Again, it is very possible that I'm misremembering and it was either another book or just a character with an Australian accent, so use this fact if it helps you search but please don't reject a possible match just because the author wasn't Australian.
openSci-fi book with digital copies of ancestors Literature
Chapter book for younger audience that I looked over in a library in the 00s
- Starts of the main character, a boy, dirt biking and crashing
- His mother so upset that she takes him to a place where they have digital copies of the minds of their ancestors to talk with a grandfather or older generation male relative.
- The people who looked after the place were called something like geeks or nerds and wore rainbow suspenders. Despite the name, they where honored for their role.
- The grandfather/past relative gives him a cheery speech and winks at him. The protagonist finds a message hidden the a frame of the wink.
- The protagonist recruits a computer savvy friend to help him and makes contact with the grandfather/past relative who tells him that the guy set up the digital copies of the minds has set so it edits the responses
- They confront the guy and he says that says he did it to stop "Clan Wars" and his actions were necessary to stop the cycle of violence
- The grandfather/past relative and the guy try to get the protagonist to decide who take control of the system with grandfather/past relative arguing for free speech and the guy arguing that it would lead to war.
- He puts them in a platform game-esque arena with whoever reaching the end gets control then deciding that neither should have control and putting them into a loop by sending them back to beginning when they reach the end.
- Then it turns out that it was All Just a Dream that the protagonist was having while unconscious after the biking crash at the beginning.
- After the protagonist wakes up in hospital he talks to computer savvy friend who exists in non-dream world where they make videogames suggests they could make a level that sends the player back to the beginning when they reach the end as reference to above plot point.

I recall hearing about numerous myths from Chinese novels or stories in which monkeys (gibbons specifically I believe) would transform into women to deceive people. However, I can’t seem to find a source if one exists.