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openNo Title Literature
There was this excerpt from a book I read in elementary school about this guy climbing a rock wall with his brother and they both save each other's life. the title had something to do with bravery i think.
openNo Title Literature
Hi!
I read this book in school when I was about 13/14 and I think it was aimed at that age group, or a little younger. So maybe you read it too! Anyway, it was fiction, and it was a story about a boy who was obsessed with war and violent entertainment until he started having flashbacks that he was in World War 1 or 2. The moral was that war is serious and traumatic. You might call it fantasy, but I don't know if it confirmed that there was any "magic" going on or if he was just hallucinating.
I'm pretty sure the book was British, and I'm not sure about when it would've been written but I'd place it between the 70s and 90s.
openNo Title Literature
I'm looking for a series of sci-fi stories and (I think) novels. They take place in a world where time passes differently based on elevation. One of the stories involved a mysterious abandoned city where it turns out that the houses eat people.
Edited by FloydPinkertonopenNo Title Literature
I’m trying to find this one book about a girl who runs into a forest and is followed by a gaunt looking man and a robot. There are all kinds of timey-wimey shenanigans and they end up drifting in and out of this Arthurian legend and each other’s timelines with the man trying to find the girl and the girl trying to find the grail while the robot wanders around menacingly. Somehow the book ends up in space and the man’s face looks more and more like a skull as the book goes on. Yes, I know it sounds like a really bizarre book, and it is. I really wish I could remember the title though. Any ideas? Thanks in advance!
openNo Title Literature
Hey, I'm hoping that some tropers might know of the Jeremy Leven book Satan: His Psychotherapy and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr. Kassler, J.S.P.S.. I don't need much help remembering it, since I've read it recently and have it on hand, but I want to launch a page for it and would love any trope suggestions. I've looked through all of the Biblical/Satan and Psych tropes already, of course, and there are a few others I've thought of like Zelazo's experiments with Body Horror and For Science!!, but I'd love to get it more fleshed out. I'd also love trying to deal with the discrepancy in the book about Satan (well, possibly Satan) saying that he's contacting the humans from far away in the presence of people they know to be dead (presumably Hell) while also saying that Earth is Hell. I'm not really sure how to handle that one, whether I should treat the latter as a metaphor or what.
openNo Title Literature
I'm putting this under 'Literature', but it's a comic. Black and white, probably late-70s to mid-80s, probably no later than 1985. Might have been manga, might have been European; either way, it probably wasn't American.
The setting was sci-fi. The only part of the comic I remember involves a ship with some cryogenically preserved passengers/crew. One of them was woken up (maybe before s/he was supposed to?) and went for a 'walk' on the outer hull of the ship in a spacesuit. This is the part I remember very clearly: after so long in space, the ship had accumulated a thick layer of dust on the outside, so the person left deep footprints, like they were walking through snow.
I have no idea whether this was early in the story, or the very end. I think they eventually reached their destination, but I don't know whether that was Earth or some other planet.
openNo Title Literature
Science fiction novel I read a long time ago. It was about an impending civil war between the government, who were ratbags, and a powerful rebel group who weren't much better and it was clear that the government couldn't win. The protagonists were mainly concerned with making sure that a huge, ancient megacorporation remained neutral in the war. There was a scene where a rebel sympathizer was stoned to death by a bunch of loyalists; it was very graphic and told from the victim's point of view.
openNo Title Literature
I'm looking for a children's book I used to read, in fact, it might have been a series, about a little girl who lives in the Louisiana swamps. It kind of went into Cajun culture, and the book I specifically remember had this girl wanting to go catch an alligator. I can see part of the cover of the book in the background on an old photo I have, and it shows this girl in the back of a truck with the alligator next to her. This would have been late 90's-early 2000's, though the book could have been published before them.
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At least I think it's literature... I found a story summary for a story I want to read really really badly, however, for the life of me, I cannot find it.
Summary:
In a short mystery story called "True Lies," starring Lieutenant Johnson and Sgt. Bolton, the genius detective sergeant has narrowed down the possible murderers to two, but doesn't know which one. Since he thinks his lieutenant partner (who is the Narrator, and who would be Too Dumb to Live if he didn't know how to hide it from his fellow cops) is the genius detective, and so is dependent on him for his own genius, he asks the lieutenant for the solution. Our narrator doesn't know and is eating dry granola, so he chokes and says (as an excuse) "Tense!" This gives the sergeant the solution; the murderer was the one who referred to the victim in the past tense before it was generally known that she was dead.
You'd think I'd be able to find it with all this information right? Well that's what I thought. Instead I am only met with frustration and Google's been of no help. I've only managed to learn that it is extreamly annoying to do a Google search on any title that has a movie of the same name. Please help.
openNo Title Literature
This was a trippy book that I read when I was in the sixth grade. It was a musty little paperback, so I can't give any kind of publish date estimate other than the fact that it was before the late 90's/ early 00's. I don't remember the cover very well, but it definitely had a sci-fi vibe.
The premise of the book was that one of the main characters was sick, and could not be cured in a normal fashion. I think the doctors were trying different things on him but nothing was working. Stuff happens, and the sick kid's friend (maybe there was more than one friend, but I'm not sure) team up with some sort of magical creature and go inside of the sick kid's cells. Then the book got really strange....inside of the sick kid's cells is another world with alien creatures who have their own little society. I remember someone remarking that time passed differently in this cell world, with the sick kid's heart beating once every 10 years for them. It turns out that the sick kid's illness is caused by something wrong with his mitochondria. More plot that I can't remember happens, and in the end the sick kid is cured.
It was very strange, and probably one of the first sci-fi books I remember getting into. I also suspect that it was part of a series, because the characters were treated with a lot of familiarity and this kind of confused me at some points. If anyone could tell me what book/series(?) that was, that would be magnificent.
openNo Title Literature
Here's all I remember: it was a hardback edition; the dust cover was orange with something green and maybe a bit of sky on the cover; it begins with two (I think) characters in a desert (thus the orange?) and something about an impending rainstorm. It was initially brought back to my memory when I read Dune - something about the description of Caladan was very similar stylistically (though not of course in scenario).
(It was also my introduction to sci-fi. In 4th grade - that would be 1995 - the English teacher at the high school my dad taught at handed me this book. I assume I was being a nuisance and they were trying to have a meeting of some kind; details are a little vague. Unfortunately, I only read about half the first chapter, and didn't realize what I had tripped over until much later. I have a fetish for finishing books, so I've been looking for it - whatever it was - for years now.)
openNo Title Literature
I read a children's book about 8 years ago (it could have been written way earlier, though). It was about a boy with a really long, colourful scarf who fell down some kind of hole into a different world. He found out the entire universe was made out of different layers like an onion, with different worlds in each layer and holes like the one he fell through leading from one to another. The layer he fell into was a prison, with other characters - I think one was a hyperactive squirrelly creature, and another was some kind of professor.
They all went on adventures in different layers, and eventually faced a villain who was trying to build a "museum of everything", and had a thing she sealed herself in to keep herself young. The title was some kind of sound effect, the kind you get when objects hit each other, like "thud" or something (I think it was the noise he made when he hit the bottom of the hole). The cover showed the boy falling, with his scarf streaming out, against a black background. I remember finding the book really funny.
openNo Title Literature
This is one that popped into my mind when reading the But I Can't Be Pregnant! entries. It was a book released in North America some time prior to 1998, probably after 1990 (I remember reading it in a local library some time around high school). The main character is a former nun (turned private investigator?) who's been tasked to research two recent cases of "virgin birth". I remember that the denouement showed that one of the girls had been impregnated by a group of boys who ejaculated on the outside of her vagina, letting it seep through the holes in the hymen and the other was found to be carrying the anti-christ. And in the end, it's hinted that the main character is the one carrying the second coming of Christ despite having never had sex.
The title of the book had "poison" or "poisoned" in it and I think that it featured a line drawing of a hand pouring stick-figures out of a pill bottle.
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When I was in first or second grade, my teacher read aloud a book that was told from the point of view of a baby named Sam (the book itself might have actually been called Sam, I'm not sure). The only part I particularly remember is where Sam escapes his crib (or falls out of it accidentally), and then crawls under a chair. His parents come in the room and freak out because the baby's missing.
openNo Title Literature
This guy was describing this book today, but I don't know what it is called. It included a LOT of tropes though.
- It was a romance novel written by a female.
- Set in Toronto.
- The main character was called Ana, short for Anastasia.
- There were LOADS of sex scenes, and even a rape scene.
- There was something about a photography shoot, possibly with the rapist but I'm not entirely sure.
- The cover of the book was black, with some mint green thing on the front.
- The blurb on the back mentioned the line "she finds him quite attractive" and something about "inner demons".
Any ideas?
openNo Title Literature
WARNNG: Contains sex descriptions and TRIGGER WARNING: Attempted forced sex
It's a story about step-brothers. One black, one white. The black one has extreme amounts of bad luck while the white one has extreme amounts of good luck. It begins with the black one's birth and he has a hole in his heart and they're not sure if he's gonna make it. His mother gets to know the doctor treating him and after he is better they continue seeing each other. I don't know if they actually get married, but the doctor has a son and all four end up living together with a stereotypically Asian house keeper. The mother dies (it's implied either because the white son absorbs all good luck or the black son emits bad luck) From here, the narrative splits to follow each son.
The black one has, as said before, the worst luck. I remember one scene where he is forced to be a drug mule as a child and delivers to an older man who tries to rape him. He escapes through a back window and runs away. In a different scene he gets the new number of where his step-dad lives but the housekeeper answers and lies to him and tells him the stepdad doesn't want him there. (This is because the housekeeper sees him as bad luck and harmful to the family)
The white one has disgustingly good luck. He misses his step-brother but doesn't know where he is. He goes through life being amazing at pretty much everything. He becomes an phenomenal tennis player. He ends up having sex with a girl in the back of a car and his ejaculate hits the ceiling of the car. She remarks how amazing he is and that her current boyfriend "dribbles".
The get reunited at the end but not before the black one gets kidnapped. He is in a car and has an epiphany that dying isn't bad luck for you, it's bad luck for everyone else, so if he is truly bad luck, he won't die when he jumps from the car. This works.
Near the end, the housekeeper explains that she lied because he's harmful to the family. The white brother says "He would never harm me! He's my brother!" (It's implied that they balance each other out, the good luck and bad luck)
It's bothered me and I have wayyyyy too much remembered not to be able to find it, but I'm really bad at searching for things so I hope someone can help me find it.
openNo Title Literature
Forgive my vagueness, it's been years since I read this one. XD
The story was about a boy (the age slips by me but it was a YA book) who had to move in with his grandfather on his farm. I can't remember the parental situation very clearly either but the granddad is brusque but later found to be caring. He allows the boy to learn to ride on the very old horse he has on the condition that he's very careful not to get hurt or hurt the horse. After that it gets somewhat more fuzzy- I remember a scene with swimming in one of the farm ponds I think?- but at the end the horse gets caught in a cow-stopper, which is like a ditch with pipes across it that deters cows from walking over it, breaks its leg and has to be put down. Then at the end the boy gets a new horse. :)
I've tried a google search but nothing came up.
openNo Title Literature
I remember a book. The cover was gray with the head of a gray fox in the center, although I'm not sure if the book has any alternate covers. The book itself was about a girl who lived with her grandmother, and one day she got lost and became unconscious, waking up as a fox, in a whole new world. The world was medieval, I believe. She finds a man who becomes her main love interest for the duration of the book. I feel like I remember the government being really corrupt, and I remember she had a dream sequence where her grandmother was an owl and her love interest was a fox and she had to choose between the two. Also, in our world, she was in a hospital the whole time, in a coma.

I read something in a textbook about the Holocaust; it was from the viewpoint of a woman, i think, who met her future husband after she was rescued. It wasn't Gerda Weissman Klein, though, because i think the guy had also been in the camps. I remember very vividly a scene where he wanted to eat some cherries out of a bowl but was refused because it could kill him.