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When I was a wee lad I read a book that sparked my lifelong interest in Sci-Fi. It was about a boy who found what turned out to be an alien artifact, a marble-sized metal ball. There were bad guys (either aliens or government agents) who were trying to retrieve it. The ball responded to the kid's mental commands (for instance he could make it levitate and I recall that he instructed it to become red-hot in a bad guy's pocket after it had been taken from him). There was another small artifact, a cube with bristles like a brush (I think) but I don't remember much more about that. This book was probably written in the late '50s or '60s. I got it from my grade school library (in about 1975) and it seems to me like it might have been fairly old even then. Does this sound familiar to anyone? It's been bugging me for years. Thanks in advance!
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 redvelvetmockopenNo Title Literature
This would have been a Young Adult book from around 1993 or so. It involved a boy who was socially akward or handicapped or something like that. (Maybe he had crutches or leg braces.) There was a magical dragon that only he could see. I think it was from a stuffed dragon, but maybe that's just Homestuck wrecking my memory. The kid was bullied a lot and it was kind of tough to read because he had such a crappy life. I seem to remember him being bullied in the bathroom and peeing his pants.
Not much to go on, but I know you guys work some powerful magic with the interwebs.
openNo Title Literature
A book that was in my elementary school library, about a girl and her pioneer family. IIRC, she resents being out there or feels her family doesn't appreciate her or something. I DO remember that they lived in a sod house, and that they get visited by a couple of Native Americans at one point, which is a really tense moment because they think the Indians are going to kill them, but they just end up eating some food or something, and one of the Native Americans gives the girl an eagle feather for her courage. I also remember that there was a prairie fire near the end, when the girl is alone with her younger cousin, and she saves them by going down into the well.
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A YA book: The gist of it was that these two friends compete in some wacky, overly-complicated radio station contest with a prize they both really want, and they basically start sabotaging each other and jeopardizing their friendship. While one of them does win, the station never even gives out the prize: They ultimately decide their friendship is more important, and at the very end one of the kids laughs aloud because the radio station was called KNIF and he suddenly realizes that "KNIF backwards is 'fink'". Googling KNIF only got me a few different organizations, and funny enough, also an actual radio station.
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 recall reading a comic book in the... 7th grade, perhaps? It was written by an Iranian woman and was a summary of her life during the Iranian protests when she was child, and a second part of the series soon followed, in which she wrote about her experiences outside of the country, after having to leave it in order to continue her studies. The comic book was colored in black and white, with red here and there. It was adapted into a movie, and I remember most of the book, I just can't remember the name for the life of me. Can anyone help me out here? I would be forever in debt to you. Also, if it helps, the book starts out with demonstrations of women protesting both for and against the veil that they were forced to wear.
Edited by SukaopenNo Title Literature
I have two books to remember.
The first was a short book I read in elementary school, so it would have been the mid- to late 70's. A boy is reading a book in school, and the word 'roc' gets blurry then starts to jump around the page, and even grows a beak. Soon, it starts to grow into an actual roc.
About the only other thing I remember about it was the description of the roc. It had bright blue feathers, and at full size its eyes were as big and as orange as basketballs.
The second one, also from my elementary school days, was about a family who adopted an injured baby owl, and named him Lwo, because that was 'owl' backwards. That's really all I remember about that one because we all thought it was funny to hear the teacher try to pronounce "Lwo."
Has anyone else heard of these?
Edited by EricaBopenNo 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.
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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 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
(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'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
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.
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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
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)
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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'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.

A book I started reading some time between 2nd and 5th grade about two brothers. Weather prediction of some sort was a family trait and I think only one of the brothers had it. They may have been raised by a grandfather? I remember them heading off to a Springfield and realizing they had predicted an event in the wrong one. I believe I read it sometime between 1995 and 1999.
Edited by northernspy