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openNo Title Literature
Here's a myth/legend I read a long time ago, but I don't know from which mythology it is and I'm not sure who to ask. Googling the bits I do remember doesn't give me anything. Possibly Greek? Maybe Jewish.
Anyway, (at the tail end of a longer voyage?) this man is told he must slay a monster (residing in a well or some other water source, I think), but that once he kills it he must then kill the first living thing he lays eyes on or else there will be consequences of some kind. He was actually smart and let all the villagers know, but his daughter was so overjoyed at seeing her father again that she rushed out to see him once the monster was dead. I distinctly remember someone other villager calling out "No! Send a dog!" The man can't bring himself to kill his daughter so he kills the dog instead, but bad luck befalls him/his village anyway.
The version I read was in a picture book maybe? It was written more prosaic and and not just summary the way most myths are. Anyone heard anything like this?
openNo Title Literature
Medium Literature/Music
- I got something that I want to know. The second verse of the song I Am I Said (Neil Diamond, 1971) begins with the line "Did you ever read about a frog who dreamed of being a king, and then became one". So is that a real story or not. full lyrics here
openNo Title Literature
Okay, hope you can help me with this one. I've Googled every possible combination of the elements I remember with no luck. This was a children's/young adult book, probably aimed at girls, about a girl who moves to a new school and starts making up stories to impress the kids there. Among other things, she tells the kids that she's from Hollywood, California, but when caught in the lie, she says that it's a _different_ Hollywood from the one where movies are made - someone asks her if it's "above or below the elbow," and she says "above" without knowing what they're talking about. She also tells the kids that her father plays for the Washington Redskins, thinking that the team's based in the state and not the city. Sound familiar to anyone? It's driving me batty.
openNo Title Literature
This must have been the early nineties, USA. There was this children's book, which I believe was an adaption of an episode of a Saturday-morning cartoon series (possibly live-action), that starred a boy and his tiny imaginary friend. This tiny friend was blonde, big-nosed, and Totally Radical. (I'm pretty sure he wore sunglasses, a baseball cap, and skateboarded.)
It was, to my greatest recollection, strongly "Christian values"-based, with the boy and his (magic?) friend learning a moral lesson at the end of each "adventure". I think the imaginary friend mostly represented the boy's conscience, trying to nudge him in the right direction but ending up tagging along for the trouble.
The specific story I remember was about the boy wanting very badly to see a (possibly zombie) movie that was rated higher than his parents liked and was filled with sex and violence. He and his (not imaginary) friends snuck out to go see it against their parents wishes, but what was happening on the screen made him scared/nauseous and the main boy (and possibly the imaginary friend) covered their 3D-glasses clad eyes.
Once they got out of the movie, the boy talked to his imaginary friend about how much he regretted going to see the stupid thing and how his parents were right. He may have been having nightmares too, but the main thing was the burning shame he had about lying to/disobeying his parents. I think this went on for a few days or a week, with him feeling worse and worse, until finally confessing. And presumably learning a lesson.
I specifically recall a scene (possibly when he is feeling bad about disobeying) where the boy and his imaginary friend are brushing their teeth together and discussing the predicament.
Despite my great detail, it wasn't long at all and was a picture book. For the longest time I thought the title was "Mac and Me", until I found out that was an eighties ET ripoff. So, that may have been the name or something similar. And it was definitely a Christian children's piece, because I received/read it (maybe watched the real episode as well) in Sunday School. And it was about the commandment of "honoring thy father and mother". Or something.
Edited by MaybeBabyopenNo Title Literature
I've recently been remembering a Science Fiction short story I once read, where the idea of Solar Systems being encased in Crystal Spheres was right. Trying to move past the crystal sphere (they may have called it something different) would cause it to shatter and condense into lots of comets, which nearly wiped out humanity when they tried to travel past their own sphere.
openNo Title Literature
I am trying to remember the name of a book I read as a child (mid 90's) about a girl who decides she can help solve everyone's problems for them at a price, I think she charged 50pence. I remember her brother and mother arguing over laundry, a friend needing to paint, something about tomatoes and I think someone with acne. Every single time she tries to help it backfires on her, the one I remember is that the tomatoes in question were green (which is probably why that's stuck in my mind).
openNo Title Literature
For a long time now, I've been looking for a childrens'/young adult sci-fi novel I read several years ago. It was in the 'new' section of the library when I found it, so it was probably published between three and seven years ago. I remember the plot pretty clearly, but not any useful keywords like the names of the characters or the author. The first chapter began with something along the lines of "For (main male character) and (main female character) the end of the world began with..." and the two characters are staring at the sky and discussing the possibility of time travel and/or sending messages back in time. It was from the point of view of the main male character (I think he might have also been the narrator) and the female main character was a bit of a scientific genius. She builds some sort of device to recieve messages from the future. About a week later she starts getting messages from her future self, warning her about the how the world is about to end. They start investigating, following the clues their future selves are giving them, and find out that there are these strange creatures attacking the human race. I think there's some sort of scientific experimentation on an island(to find some cure for a disease or something) which is where they first run into the creatures. Another message tips them off to the fact that these creatures are actually Earth's antibodies, ridding Earth of the 'cancer' that is the human race. The creatures start completely decimating the world. Someone(I think it's the main character's brother or cousin or something. It's definitely a guy.) finds out about the messages and begins helping them. Near the end, where things are looking pretty hopeless, that guy decides to go do something dangerous which I'm pretty sure involves climbing to the roof of some important building. The main character gets a message telling him to stop the guy, but says nothing because he overhears the guy and the main girl talking and gets jealous. The guy gets killed and the main girl and main guy end up in a sub together, the last humans alive in the world, with the machine for sending messages back in time. They plan to send the messages they recieved(which the girl has been keeping written down) and hang around in the sub for a couple years until the world is safe again, but the girl realizes that they don't have to send the same messages they recieved. The last chapter is almost the same as the first chapter, but instead of "For (main male character) and (main female character) the end of the world began with..." it says "For (main male character) and (main female character) the saving of the world began with..."
openNo Title Literature
So in middle school I had read a 200 page-ish sci-fi type book, and the only plot action I can remember from it was the protagonist and I guess the antagonist were playing a table-top game where they were given a set of cards chosen at random of differing animals and they had to place the animal cards into a receptacle for each body part (giving the attribute of said animal) so the game would create a battle avatar in a sort of 3-d sphere to battle each other to the death. Thanks for all the suggestions in advance.
openNo Title Literature
When I was a young kid I had a book of cat stories that may have been the first book that included The Cat From Hell by Stephen King.
In that same book was a story about a World Gone Mad in which a yappy little dog attempted to perform the Schrodingers Cat experiment, but the cat wandered off in mid-experiment. The moral was that we need better boxes.
What was the name of the book and the story?
Edited by GuesssWhoopenNo Title Literature
title: had something with doon or something like that
Genre: fantasy
Plot: it had three kids that I don't remember the name of finding a world beneath the earth by going into their closet and turning of the light. then they could go down a rainbow staircase and they had a princess friend who knew magic and the main kid got hit by a magic spell and got magic as well. They had a Merlin like wizard friend and the main bad guy was this evil wizard who had fins for ears and then he got turned into a kid and became good.and the last book I remember had them being trapped in doon because someone destroyed the rainbow staircase.
Number of books: AT LEAST 24, all the books had a connected story line but they sort of went in an episodic order, such as a few books would deal with one problem and then leave a cliffhanger for the next problem.
and that's all I know. Can anyone help me?
openNo Title Literature
A series of Choose Your Own Adventure books (at least two, possibly more) in which the protagonist is... touring a military facility, I think? Anyway, he gets into some kind of suspended animation in an AI Powered Armor and wakes up after a nuclear war. Due to having been elected assistant dogcatcher, he is now the President of the United States. Also there are robots that hate walls, due to a rather convoluted misinterpretation of "AWOL".
openNo Title Literature
There was a book I read in grade school/middle school. All I remember about it was that the protagonist was a young boy and somehow he was around the test sights of the nuclear bomb. (his father worked there perhaps?) There was a scene where the little boy goes to a creek and the water is warm and there is a tadpole with two heads. I can't remember exactly what the plot was, but the antagonist was alsoa little boy and that little boy got ran over a by a train and his shoe was left on the tracks.
Anyone?
openNo Title Literature
A Sci-Fi short story about Ret-Gone weapon. There is a war, and the enemy country bombs where the characters live. Whatever blown up by the new weapon (I think it was called "existence-destructive bomb" in my language), be it a mountain or a half of the human body, is not lamented. Everybody are just confused, being unsure if it ever existed.
Edited by MomochiopenNo Title Literature
This is a young adult book I had to read for school in 7th grade or so (about 1995). It was about a girl who went to her family's Passover Seder dinner at her Holocaust-survivor grandma's house and is being a snot. When they say the traditional prayer to Elijah, she's transported back to early-1940's Poland and put in a concentration camp. She's reliving her grandmother's exact experience from her grandmother's point of view. I'm sure this was a Newbery Award winner, as we had to read it for an English Festival or something like that.
openNo Title Literature
~*~*solved, mother truckers*~*~
There's these two books I read as a kid in middle school that I've been dying to read again, but I literally can't remember the titles or the character names or authors. It kills me.
They are both childrens books. The first one is about a girl whose sister is studying for finals and turns the entire house into a post-it mania, with each room having a different theme for each class. Her name and all her siblings names are after different colors of paint, and she meets a girl who can't walk and they go to Italy to find something in an old house, but I don't think she finds it. Or maybe she does. I feel like this is really specific, so maybe someone can help?
The second one was about a girl who lives in Vienna with two old ladies and then her real mother comes to take her away to some huge German manor. The lady turns out not to be her real mother, the "mother's" son is some fanatical military nut, and the girl is really kindhearted and at some point teams up with a stable boy or a gypsy or something. There is some kind of crazy treasure involved here at some point!
If these books do not exist I am going to feel completely insane but also kind of impressed at my imagination.
Edited by emmilionsopenNo Title Literature
Okay I'm looking for the titles of a few books
The first was about a girl who when she was little she was in a helicopter going over the ocean with her parents. The helicopter crashes, her parents die, and she gets adopted by dolphins. Years later, she is found by some scientist lady who takes care of her and teaches her how to speak and read and stuff. She wears these rain boots or something, that squeak and remind her of her dolphin family. At the end they are in a boat, the girl spots the dolphins and then runs away with them.
The second is about this girl who is a ghost. She doesn't know she is a ghost and makes friends with this kid (a boy I think) who is the only one who can see her. I cant quite remember if he knew all along that she was dead or not, but I think not, because I remember there was some part where he mentioned to someone 'that girl who sits next to me in history class' and they told him that the desk next to his had always been empty. At the end I think he told her and she moved on. If memory serves, the ghost or the kid, or both lived in an apartment building where I think most of the story took place. I think the title was the girl's name or something incorporating her name. I'm also pretty certain that is was illustrated with fairly stylized drawings.
The third I can't remember much about. There was this man who was some kind of wizard who lived in an old house that I think was special or strange in some way, but I can't quite remember. There was a boy and a girl who befriended him and I think he taught them a bit of magic, and they had some kind of goal that they had to accomplish with magic (might have had something to do with the house or a villain I can't remember). I think there may have been a certain time involved like midnight on a certain date. I remember that one of the characters (I think the girl) had a hat with some pins on it. I think it might have had something to do with ghosts also.
Thanks for the help :)
openNo Title Literature
A children's book with Quentin Blake-esque drawings. It was about a family who runs into a mermaid at the local pool, but doesn't make an appearance for the rest of the book. The front pages shows two mermaids holding something.
openNo Title Literature
I remember a children's book - or at least, I think it was a lower reading level - where this boy (with a couple others. I think maybe a guy and a girl?) goes to a Magical Land and everyone in the party gets powers. I think. This part is what I'm least sure of, actually.
The boy is an Idiot Hero who gets a book that updates itself with a spell every day. Each spell can only be used once, and in order to cast a spell the boy has to put a finger on the page. The finger glows blue.
The Big Bad was the mysterious Emperor, who turned out to be the (disguised) boy Aiden (Aidan? Something like that), who had been with the party "helping" almost the entire book.
There's a time when the group is in the mountains/travelling and the mage boy gets into a fight with the other members of the party. He might have felt useless/like he was underappreciated? Anyway, he throws a hissy fit and won't help out with ANYTHING for the next ten days, not even using his spellbook. At the very end, there's a monster (or something) and Achilles finally stops sulking in his tent and presses all his fingers on the unused pages and beats the monster with the spells. He only needed nine to defeat the monster, so he uses his tenth spell (one with a title referencing monkeys or bananas) to trip up someone very obnoxious who had witnessed the event. I want to say his principal, perhaps? Adults Are Useless was in full effect.
So, um, yeah. Help remembering the title (and the boy's name) would be very much appreciated.
Edited by AruciaopenNo Title Literature
Trying to find the author of this story on the Pineal Weirdness page. "The Rose" is such an incredibly hard name to track down.
"In the SF short story "The Rose", the two protagonists (a ballerina/opera singer and a composer) "suffer" from an odd form of cancer: their pineal glands grow rather impressively, forming a pair of "horns" which curve around and over the brain before bursting out of the skull (but not skin) at the temples. They also get a kind of hunchback from a tumour that appears to contain brain tissue it does, and if the skin over it gets split, it can engorge and tumesce from blood flow, although this may kill the person in question. They get a weird kind of projective telepathy apparently based on musical and colour theory, and spot patterns that no-one else can see."

A stranger at a party a few years back told me about a book, and all I can remember was that it involves an Alien Invasion. The aliens have no weapons, though, as they are powerful psychics, and every sentient race in the galaxy has crumbled before their might... except for some reason humans aren't developed enough to utilize this sort of psychic form of communication, and are therefore immune to attacks that utilize it.