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openNo Title Literature
During the 90's (probably 1993 - 1998), a classmate was reading a book that he described as having the following plot (from what he had read so far): A man is either summoned because a group of college kids summon a demon using a ritual, or because he was the creature that was summoned. The man then is described as murdering the kids, with one passage describing him as (the classmate read the passage to me, and it roughly followed this paraphrase) pounding one of the kids' heads against the ground repeatedly until there is a soft, wet sound instead of a hard thud.
I know this isn't terribly too much to go on, but perhaps it's unique enough that it will stir someone's memories. Thanks in advance!
openNo Title Literature
Years ago I read this series where there were lots of parallel worlds, and you travel between them by cutting holes with infinitely sharp blades. In one world there were familiars, in another world, the native beings moved like cars using large tree-nuts as wheels. Any clues?<br /> Edit: In the world with familiars, they're called daemons, and it was in an icy, northern climate, but the book wasn't Golden Compass<br /> Edit2: Wow, I feel stupid. After a bit more research, it turns out it was Golden Compass, I had just known it as Northern Lights.
Edited by TreeofRaiuopenNo Title Literature
Hello,
I remember a sci-fi story perhaps a short story that may or maynot have a entry on this wiki about a self-replicating missile launcher that after a few thousand generations started to look like coral, however it's Identify Friend or Foe system had mutated to uselessness and started attacking everything. It may have been a alien device or human made, I'm not sure.
Anybody know the title or the author?
Thanks ahead of time.
openNo Title Literature
It's a book I read about a carnival that if you go there you have to ride seven rides before midnight or you become one with the carnival. It has a guy getting ready to go off to college and has to now face his fear as he rides each ride. Can't think of the name does anyone know of it?
openNo Title Literature
I seem to recall reading a story where someone was punished by being locked inside a living suit of armor (Animated Armor). The suit of armor moved under "its" own will and the person inside had no choice but to go along.
openNo Title Literature
This has been bothering me for quite a while: I'm looking for a book a teacher read to the class when I was about 7.
It was most likely aimed at children, although it was just an average book, a reasonable size and unillustrated, with just text. The cover consisted of an average-looking (probably watercoloured) hedgehog who was smiling, and possible standing (on all fours) in the street.
If I remember correctly, the characters were not Civilized Animals, other than the fact that they spoke to one another. The whole novel was based on realism, not fantasy... aside from the talking hedgehogs of course, but they HAD to communicate somehow.
At one point in the novel, the main hedgehog got a "headache" and kept saying "KO" instead of "ok". Near the end of the novel, he exclaims, "my headache! It's gone!"
The teacher read this to us shortly after we learned about Road Safety, so that makes me think it was about this
hedgehog.
Can anyone help?
Edited by Blue4OrangeopenNo Title Literature
A rather disturbing short story in which it is revealed that the Mona Lisa can eat people. Anyone?
openNo Title Literature
I remember reading a recommendation about a book, but I can't remember the title now that I'm ready to check it out. It involved a future (dystopian?) society where everyone had to choose a virtue to build their lives around. The main character is a girl who chooses a virtue different from everyone else in her family (altruism? It started with a and was basically "helpfulness").
And that's all I remember. Anyone?
openNo Title Literature
Trying to remember a book about a cryptozoologist called Wolfe that has his two nephews come live with him after their parents go missing and then they go into the jungle to find the last dinosaur.
openNo Title Literature
I'm looking for science fiction/fantasy a book series (3 or 4 books) that I read one or two years ago. The main character who I think was a writer was mugged in an alleyway and even though he knew some kind of martial art he passed out.
In his dream he's trapped in a desert with another guy (who eventually dies) and is being chased by these bat things. Every time he falls asleep again he has a continuation of the same dream. In the dream world when he falls asleep he wakes up in the real world. In his dream he eventually escapes the bat things in a forest where he falls in love with a girl (the chief's daughter?). The forest has magical powers. The bat things attack the forest and destroy it. The girl gives him something to make him sleep without waking up in the real world and the forest people go to war against the bat things. I think there was some good version of the bat things.
Meantime, in the real world, the guys who mugged him are working on creating a virus and selling the cure to different countries, but the haven't developed a cure yet. They release the virus and the main character is immune. They find out that his blood is a cure for the virus and other people can come into his dreams if they have made contact with his blood. He goes back into the dream world to spend the rest of his life (time flows more quickly in the dream world) so they can drain him of his blood.
It was a fairly new series when I read it I think. I remember pretty much everything but the title and author so I can give more details if necessary.
Edited by heartsincupcakesopenNo Title Literature
A book series featuring a Kingdom made up of a few clans of royalty, specializing in warfare through horseback. A merchant (Formerly a silvermith/blacksmith) sells out the secrets of this kingdom due to an arm injury sustained due to a member of a royal family disliking the price for his sword. He gets a brand on his arm to show that he works for the invading empire. The invaders win with their knowledge and a stronger type of metal that is stronger. The royal family members are sold into slavery and the common people are adopted as new members. Two royal family members (A sister and brother) escape and seek refuge from a clan of people capable with communicating with elements, and the sister learns she has a gift. The merchant from earlier comes to regret his deeds when he sees the royalty in slavery, and begins to help the remnants of his kingdom resist, due to the empire having a rule that all kingdoms not completely vanquished within a year be left alone afterwards (A strong history of success though). The merchant is shot by the brother while talking to the invaders, and much later when he is smuggling food into the city the people find out about his brand and the significance. He is sent away and also seeks refuge with the clan where he learns that he can communicate with metal. They forgive him for some reason, and he teaches the people to craft the same type of metal that the invaders had been using. He's captured and tortured for information, but is freed when the sister uses lightning to kill those guarding him somehow. They go for one final battle and the sister uses her lightning to disable them and the year is passed, allowing them to survive.
I should have been able to get the name with this information, but I can't use google well enough apparently.
openNo Title Literature
Let's see, I remember erading this book in my Middle School years, from the very late 90's to the early 00's. It was a Choose Your Own Adventure book the library had, and I read it to death. It had the main character in space for some reason, and I remember parts of it talking about other forms of lifeforms not carbon based, and your blood boiling off if you chose to go to Venus and landing near its equator.
The other was a Greek based myth comic on Heracles my school's history book had. It was crudely drawn, with some fairly realistic peach colors for the humans, and I remember blue for Heracles' family after Hera ordered to slay them (you know why.) It was fairly detailed to the point of being kind of gory, while keeping all the drawings very simplistic and rough. It implied it was from a larger collection of comics, and I've been meaning to look it up for some time.
And it covered the entire tasks of Heracles, usually devoting 3-10 panels a task.
Edited by AsuyukaopenNo Title Literature
I remember this tale of a massive norse warrior who wanted to die fighting, and so arranged to die in a fight and tried to kill his slayer with the weight of his own corpse. I cannot remember any names, or if it was in a saga or not.
openNo Title Literature
A book I remember reading as a kid. It was about a kid who goes to a boarding school for the first time. His new roommate is a crazy kid inventor type of guy, and his main project (as I remember it) was a weird "flight suit" type of thing that would allow him to fly. I believe he crashed it into the bushes.
The cover of the book depicted the two kids in front of the school (which was old-fashioned looking), with the kid in his suit. It was a "bird wing" type of thing combined with a full-body jumpsuit.
Edited by FreezairForALimitedTimeopenNo Title Literature
A story I read with my granama a long time ago. There was a boy who was playing with lizards and a girl sitting by a river. The girl was singing the word arroyo so the boy called her a wetback and she get really mad at him.
openNo Title Literature
This is about a book that I read when I was in elementary school (early- to mid-2000s). It was a library book.
The characters that I can I remember are a girl, her mother, and a man of unknown age. The girl and her mother keep some sort of a second-hand goods shop. They sell several items, and the strange man tells a creepy story about each of them, much to their customers' discomfort.
One of the stories was about a mirror, which belonged to a vain girl who gets switched with her mirror image. Another was about a grandfather's clock which belonged to a superstitious man who locked himself in his house after a fortune teller tells him that he will have bad luck for a certain amount of time and is killed just as that period is about to end by getting crushed by the clock.
One of the things I remember distinctly is the ending. It was a little meta. We see a man typing the story, and he says he doesn't like the ending. Someone says that he should change it if he doesn't like it, and the man goes "ah, of course!" and grabs the signature hat of the strange storyteller (implying that they are the same person) and goes off, much to the bewilderment of the other person, who thought he'll just delete the ending he typed on the computer and write another one.
I read the book in Japanese, but it was translated from another language. I'm pretty sure it's British - if not, from some other European or English-speaking country.
Edited by nemui10pm
openNo Title Literature
There's a Sci-Fi book I read a few years ago, involving twins who were telepathically connected, though they didn't know it, and the government is trying to find methods of FTL communication, so the protagonist, one of the twins, is sent on a spaceship, and sends reports back through his brother and eventually his brother's children, since the still-on-Earth brother aged faster than the out-in-space brother. The last one was a girl, I think, and eventually, when he got home, they possibly got married? And/or she was his great-granddaughter or -niece?
The other thing I really remember is that the brother who stayed on Earth had really wanted to go, but ended up falling (while skiing, maybe?) and injuring himself right before he'd have to leave, and it was only years later that the protagonist realized or learned that in fact, he'd done it at least somewhat deliberately because he didn't really want to leave Earth... I think he'd always been sort of the "dominant" brother, always choosing first, getting his own way, etc., and by the time they were allowed to choose which one of them would go, he felt almost forced into it, or something like that?
Also, one of the twins (the one on Earth, maybe) might have been named Patrick, and the girl might have been named Victoria, though I could be thinking of something else.
I wish I could remember more, but I read it while I was sick several years ago, so my memory's kinda fuzzy.
openNo Title Literature
A really vividly illustrated picture book.
It was about children/a child and they found a full length magical mirror in an antique shop. Inside the mirror was this place these unicorns lived. The rest I remember is that some guy had stolen all but one of the unicorns and had them tied to to be sold or something. In the end the kids freed the unicorns and they went back into their mirror portal thingy. Unfortunately in the ensuing fight, the mirror was smashed. The kids glued the mirror back together but they couldn't go into the portal anymore, but they could still sometimes see the unicorns through it.
openNo Title Literature
A young adult book where the main characters were secretly maintaining a greenhouse full of mutated meat-eating plants, which were described as growing on vines but otherwise looking venus-flytrap-like. It must have been part of a series, because I remember a lot of exposition about the backstory. The main detail I recall is that when one of them fed a plant, it burped, then said "Skoo!" - it was explained that they'd been trying to teach the plants to say "excuse me", and that's the closest they could get.

Hopefully someone can help me with this:
A long time ago, a friend described a book to me. I only remember this short excerpt, but am hoping someone will be able to identify what my google-fu has been unable to :) :
The plot involved a female robot, and it was important that the robot had no emotions. At one point in the book, the robot has sex with a man, and the scene describes how she brutally mutilates him (tearing off his genitals, possibly ripping out his spine) because she has no sense of pain/emotion and can't comprehend how he feels. Much of the narration (possibly first person?) is stylistically cold and emphasizes the robot character's complete lack of emotion/empathy. It's also possible that it was part of a short story, and not a full novel.