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openNo Title Literature
This was a children's book that was read to me in the '80s. Only a few pages long, with big scary colorful illustrations. It was about a boy who met a Goblin and told him his name was "Me Myself." Near the end the boy burned the Goblin and escaped, and when the Goblin's mother asked who did this to him he said "Me Myself." I'm pretty sure this was the whole book, and not a story in a collection.
It seems to be a retelling of the tale of the Brownie of Fincastle Mill, but I remember distinctly that the creatures were called Goblins and not Brownies. I've done a lot of searching online, but come up with nothing.
Edited by FloydPinkertonopenNo Title Literature
A few years ago I read this story, not sure whether it was a novel or a short story. It was definitely science fiction, though.
There's a planet with two lifeforms on it, and one takes care of the other. The one that's being taken care of has three 'genders': Parental, Rational and Emotional. The main story focuses on an Emotional who acts a lot like a Rational. She (Emotionals were referred to as 'she') grows up, finds a Parental and a Rational to be with. They merge, black out for a while, and end up with a baby Parental. Every family has one baby of each gender, in the same order each time. A while later, they merge again and have a Rational. About this time, there's this being of the other species that has discovered a new power source: the human universe. But the main character never gets to meet this being. The Emotional has heard that the families disappear when they've had an Emotional, and she tries to put it off for as long as possible. Eventually, though, she's forced into it and they have the Emotional. Afterwards, they find out that there is really only one species on the planet, and that the ones that take care of the others are the adult ones. They also find out that the mysterious being that discovered the power source was actually them all along. They also find out that using our universe as a power source makes our universe less dense and theirs more dense. The humans end up finding out and search for a universe more dense than their own to gain power from. Also, I'm not sure whether this was implied or explicitly stated, but the act of using a universe as a power source and reducing its density causes its Big Bang.
openNo Title Literature
From the Lawful Stupid page:
- An Eberron novel averts this: The main character is a paladin, who is traveling with a prostitute. While she never stops belittling his beliefs, he keeps giving her calm and rational arguments as to why selling her body may be a bad idea in the long run. At the end of the book, the paladin and his warforged companion confront the employer who double-crossed them. The employer is unarmed, with no guards around, and happily turns his back on them, since he knows no paladin would ever kill a defenseless man in cold blood. The pair leave. As they exit the compound...
Guard: Hey, didn't you have a big axe with you when you came in?Warforged: I left it with your boss.
Does anyone know what book this is? It sounds intriguing, but I had not luck with google or with the Eberron page [and subpages] itself... ^^;
openNo Title Literature
I'm struggling to remember this one book someone recommended to me a while back, so here I go (keep in mind this is recreated from memory, so much of it could be wrong): It's about an Alien Invasion of Earth with a quirk. Basically, every other species in existence is supposed to have psychic powers, and as such no conventional weapons are ever developed as lifeforms can use their mind-powers against each other. Then some alien race gets to Earth, but finds out that humans are not psychic, and cannot use their powers against them.
openNo Title Literature
Years ago I read a children's short story about a selfish princess. Her name was Emeralda or Esmerelda or something like that. At some point she was sent to live with a woman and her five daughters and learned not to be selfish. The daughters were named something like Annabell, Christobell, (two other ...bells) and Echo. "Four bells and an Echo" was the phrase used.
Does anyone remember this?
openNo Title Literature
I read a short story and I don't remember the exact title or the name of the author. The title was something like "I'll Meet You on Uranus" and it was in a collection of short stories (all by the same author) that may have been named after this particular story. It was an epidemic of people coming down with what was called "suit," in which a silver spacesuit grows onto the person's body and ultimately they float up into space. The main character was a man whose wife had contracted suit and he kind of realizes how much he loves her as the suit grows onto her body and he has to deal with the fact that she'll float away. When she finally does, he tries to grab a hold of her to keep her on earth, and there's a Title Drop when she floats away.
I read it online on Google Books or something like that, I don't remember, and I tried to search for it on Google Books and couldn't find it. I read it in 2008 but it had been out for a while by then. I want to say it was written in the 90s but I can't be sure.
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
A book that was part of a Kid Detective type series, which used the Goosebumps-like trick of ending chapters with a Cliffhanger that's quickly resolved by the first page or two of the next chapter. This is the specific chapter-ending cliffhanger I remember: The main character comes to suspect the owner of a local fried chicken restaurant of poisoning the food. The owner acts as a spokesman in his own commercials, and when the main character sees him filming an ad, he notices that he takes a bite of chicken on camera, then immediately spits it out once the director says cut. Of course, the opening of the next chapter has the main character confronting the restaurant owner, only to be told that it's actually common practice for actors in food commercials to do that, due to the many takes of eating that have to be filmed.
openNo Title Literature
It's a fantasy book for teens or children. Baby foxes are being born deformed. As foxes are beings of magic, this means the magic of the forest is dying.
An olive skinned witch meets with her human friend to try to find how to restore the forest's magic. She goes to find her aunt(?)/teacher in her snail-shell shaped spiraling house only to find her dead as a pile of dust.
I never finished the book. If it helps the main characters were no older than teenagers and I think the witch was described as plain. It mentioned her olive skin a lot.
openNo Title Literature
This was a children's book. I recall very little about this...had it as a young kid in the 80's. The book contained a lot of colorful cartoon creatures that looked like household objects (I remember one looked like a phone) but looked like a different object when they flipped upside down.
openNo Title Literature
I read a story in Russian once, I believe it was a translation. A man is playing a computer game, apparently a third person shooter with a cowboy protagonist. Some people who played it were found shot at their homes. Suddenly, the cowboy starts speaking to the player, criticizes his playing skills, and points a gun at him. I don't know the year, but I remember the game was stated to be enormous... took up eight whole diskettes.
openNo Title Literature
A very strange book about two kids (one male, one female, narrated by the female). The female kind of knows this kid, and... I don't remember exactly what happens, but the line "(name) could be in cahoots with singing fourth-dimension monsters!" or something to that extent. The word "cahoots" was definitely used, as was the singing. Eventually both kids get transported to the fourth dimension, and I remember them being put in a cage by giant people. It's hard for them to make anything out, because they are in the fourth dimension and their eyes can't see it right. The giant people feed them a food that "tastes like ginger bread" and isn't too bad, and then the giants laugh because they can see the food traveling through their digestive systems. The kids somehow get out of the cage, on purpose or not, and end up finding a fourth-dimension snake that really scares them. They escape it, but that's all I remember of the book.
openNo Title Literature
A book of paintings, mostly (or entirely) of anthropomorphic (but not cartoony) animals. Probably mid-90s. The picture that sticks in my mind is a scene from the film M with the characters as cats. The killer has four mouse-tails sticking out of his pocket, forming an "M" to match the one chalked on his coat.
Also, I think there was one of a lion and an elephant on a see-saw?
Edited by DaibhidCopenNo Title Literature
I found this example in Pet Heir, and want to label it properly. Any idea what the book is called?
- A young adult novel (the title of which this troper cannot recall) featured a variant of this trope. A wealthy old lady left her estate and house to her cat for the rest of its natural life, under the care of a trustee; after the cat's death the house is to go to the city for a park. The book opens with the protagonists becoming suspicious of how long the cat has lived under the guardian's care, and they start to investigate.
Another example from Trash-Can Band:
- This troper can't remember the title or author, but knows she once read a picture book about a family where the four kids go down to the junkyard and find a bunch of trash that they use to make instruments. Their father is a painter and wants them to be quiet so he can work, and the parents are also none too thrilled about them building drum sets out of the kitchenware.
openNo Title Literature
Trying to remember a short story I read back in 7th grade.
It takes place sometime in the future, and I think starts off with a family sitting at the breakfast table reading/watching the news. Apparently some sort of bill was passed that turns the US into a police state. The family seems uncaring, but the grandfather is really mad about the situation. He remakes that the flag "which currently has 56 or so stars" use to mean something. He then dresses up in his old clothes which happen to be that of a hippie, and travels to the town square to burn a flag. The flag doesn't catch fire due to it being made out of fireproof fabric, and a new police force shows up, and shoots the grandfather with laser guns.
The whole point of view was the grandsons.
I'm sorry if this is too vague
openNo Title Literature
I'm trying to remember the name of a YA science fiction novel that came out sometime in the 90's. It revolved around two boys, one who was the narrator (who I don't remember much about.) The other was named Aaron Zinger, and was a child prodigy who somehow developed a way to time travel using his computer.
I also remember that Aaron mentioned that his screename is A2Z, and that the book had a sequel, which I don't really remember anything about.
That's as far as I've got.
Edited by CountSpatulaopenNo Title Literature
I just remembered this because somebody else's query reminded me of it.
This was a children's book about an explorer who collected rare animals. The animals were outlandish fictional creations. He had all the rare animals from A-Y, and was on the trail of one that started with Z. He came up empty handed, and decided it must be extinct. The last page showed that there were some living in his house, and they danced around after he went to sleep.
The illustrations looked like Sven Nordqvist, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't him.
Edited by FloydPinkertonopenNo Title Literature
I remember a children's story where a cat hero is in the presence of someone important (like a king or queen). The cat misjudges a pounce and lands on the important person's lap, offending them.
openNo Title Literature
I have two here:
1) A (I believe) historical fiction book with little stories about a Tom Sawyer-esque figure. The narrator of the book was his brother or something. Th Tom Sawyer-esque kid was something of a smart aleck genius type and well liked by other kids...two subplots I recall occurring was that one, they had a schoolteacher they all hated, so the main kid came up with a plan to frame him as an alcoholic, like putting beer cans into his coat. The second was how one of their other friends had lost a leg in a farm accident, so the Tom Sawyer-esque guy and his brother helped him train the other leg to be this really good leg wrestler. Or something. My fifth grade teacher read this to our class (I'm in university now), but I forgot to ask him over the summer what it actually was.
2) A beautifully crafted picture book that has to do with the alphabet. The entire story is that it's a message left behind from some explorer guy who tells you at the beginning that he's rediscovered a species everybody thought was extinct, but to make sure it stays safe he left clues in the pictures. Every picture is themed with a letter (A, B, C, etc.) and you need to find little clues. At the end, it turned out you needed to go back to the front cover, with all your clues, and the extinct animal is hidden in the picture...all the pictures were so vivid and colourful. I did solve it in the end, but I remember it was a super fun and intense time for me as a child...it took me WEEKS to solve.

I remember reading about a local legend where a rich man/Knight/Lord/Duke married a beautiful lady but the lady wouldn't go to church. After a long struggle with trying to get his wife to the church, the lady eventually stayed for church, but disappeared during the prayer. When the lord prevented the lady from leaving one last time, the lady turned into a demon and fled the church as it'd been banished.