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openNo Title Literature
I'm not sure if requests like this are ok to post here. If not please let me know.
I'm not looking for a specific thing I remember, more for something I would like to read but haven't found yet. Does anybody know any books which feature a lesbian relationship and are NOT set in real life? Fantasy, historic, sci-fi, anything. The relationship doesn't have to be the main topic, but it should also not be mentioned in just one sentence or based on vague implications. I can read German and English. Anything else is not really important. If you have any matching recommendations, I'd be forever grateful.
openNo Title Literature
Somebody posted this on the Something Awful forum, and I'd love to find the story in question.
" I read a short story once that messed with that idea. A pastor buys an android to help around the church and starts discussing theology with it. He tells the robot that it doesn't have a soul but as a thinking being it should be able to earn one through good works. Then a child dies and at the funeral the pastor tells the android that children automatically go to heaven when they die. Since going to heaven is a good thing and seeing as it doesn't have a soul so it can't sin the android starts a murder spree, killing children. "
openNo Title Literature
Two things. Fantasy. There was two series with unicorns in them that I came across as a preteen. One I could've sworn was called, "Unicorns of Avalon," was from the point of view of unicorns. I don't remember much about it, only that the cover of the book had a bronze brown impressive looking unicorn on it.
The other was from the point of view of a teenage girl who had a normal nickname which was short for a fancy royal-ish name. Something starting with an A. There was a portal or something that was in the woods close to the house/ranch the girl lived in with her aunt and uncle, and a unicorn came through it looking for her. There was another girl who was a real brat and hated the main character, until she eventually got roped in the adventuring too and threw a mighty huge fit and cried about wanting to go home.
Any takers?
openNo Title Literature
I remember an audiobook I listened to at some point and it's horrible because I'm sitting on a cliffhanger.
In the first part, I think there was a girl who found out she's a witch or had magical powers or something. There were also two or three other women who were also witches and looked out for her. Her mom was gone or missing or something, but still alive. I think she had a pendant with a streak of her hair inside (that at the end turned out to be her own, since her mother had changed the main character's looks because someone/something wanted to find her or something). Also there was some guy or woman who was very nice to the main character but it was just acting, and I remember that they gave her a bra at some point. Another detail that comes to my mind is that illusions made by magic would start to crumble once somebody started doubting them.
I also remember something about the sequel, which was in the end more of a prequel because most of it was the main character's mother telling her daughter that as a teenager, she had accidentally summoned a goddess or something, and the goddess ended up haunting her. At one point she was on a ship with her boyfriend and the goddess was a guinea pig, and also they spent a lot of time near the north pole. I think I found the sequel a lot darker.
The last thing I remember is that magic originated from some people whose name were only one or two letters, I think there was someone whose name was M who had kids named Ma, Mo and so on, and also, there was a wizard named S. That's as much as my memory can get together.
Edited by JarinaopenNo Title Literature
When I was in high school we had this book of short stories. The one I'm looking for was some story from Buddhist Mythology that's something about this bad guy who went to hell when he died, however since he once saved a spider from being squished Buddha sends down a giant strand of spiderweb to give him a chance to escape.
openNo Title Literature
This was a short story in a collection of Science Fiction stories aimed at children/young adults which was in my high school library in the UK (I attended 1980-1985). It was about a teenage boy who plays an arcade game which turns out to be a recruitment tool in an interstellar war. I know what you're thinking, but I'm positive this pre-dates The Last Starfighter by several years. It's also definitely not connected with Terry Pratchett's Only You Can Save Mankind.
The main detail I can remember is that the protagonist notices that the background stars in the game don't twinkle but shine with a hard, constant light, like you how you would see them when viewed outside the Earth's atmosphere. I think the story may have been set in Britain and had an anti-war tone. I want to say the story was by Nicholas Fisk, it seems like the kind of thing he would write, but can't find enough detail in entries for his short story collections to confirm.
Edit: I've just checked the And You Thought It Was a Game trope, and it's not there.
Edited by AspectiferopenNo Title Literature
I had these books as a child in the early 90s, but they may be older. They revolved around a bunch of stuffed toys and the illustrations look like photographs. There was a brown dog, a bear in red pants, a zebra, and maybe a sailor doll. In one book, the toys were playing hide and seek and the bear was hiding in a picnic basket. And I'm about 90% sure these books were British.
openNo Title Literature
(Comic book, but that's not an option! Literature is the Closest Thing We Got.)
I asked about this quite a while back on the old format YKTS but never got a good answer.
In 2003 an acquaintance mentioned that he had read a comic book many years earlier where Batman and Superman fight, and Batman ends up using a nuclear bomb on Superman. When I previously asked about it The Dark Knight Returns was suggested, but I don't think that's it - it'd've been even older than that.
PS What happened to the old format YKTS & LNF archives?
openNo Title Literature
A very odd one. I have this memory of a play being done at my old school called The Shirt. The story involved someone (a king?) who had a shirt which may or may not have been made by a mad scientist. There was definitely a scientist in it. The main plot involved this man taking this shirt around the world and encountering various people. I don't know if they were signing it or what. The only other details I remember are a scene with some people gambling and a man (I think the scientist) whose wife constantly shouted at and berated him. Is it possible that this was an actual play, or a children's play of some sort? It may have just been invented by the school. I know it's not much to go on.
openNo Title Literature
This was a fantasy novel with a memorable cover that I saw at a bookstore ca. 1997. It featured a giant goddess with curved horns. I think she's emerging from a riverbed and there's a normal-sized human in the foreground looking at her in astonishment. I ran across the cover art online recently (but didn't think to save it) and now I'm curious who the author and artist were.
openNo Title Literature
A book about a very VERY poor family, focusing on the son. The boy is ostracized by his peers because he smells bad and rumors say his family all sleep on the same mattress, covered in bugs. The boy adamantly denies this, but later, the family does clean out the room, and they do find the place swarming with bugs they never noticed and wind up sleeping outside for a night.
The boy befriends a middle-class (or wealthier) girl who takes him to a hamburger place. She's so busy talking about something (school related?) that she gets excited and doesn't finish her hamburger. He stuffs it into his pocket to eat later while she's not looking because his family can never afford to get fast food. Later, they're at the girls house, and as an experiment she has them each take a shower with all their clothes on so they can weigh the before and after, and the boy is terribly embarrassed when the girl's mom comes home, finds the place filthy, and the hamburger floats out of his pocket.
At one point, a social worker or a teacher actually looks over the boy's case file, but decides that it's too much effort or the family was too much trouble to actually do anything about, and just hides the folder in the back of the drawer.
I read this sometime in 2002-3, so whatever it is, it's older than that.
openNo Title Literature
I actually remember the cover of this one. It had a picture of a girl on the cover making the 'gun' motion with both hands (you know, clasping your hands together with the pointer fingers making the barrel?). The whole story is about how she's planning on killing her ex-best friend because she thinks he killed her twin brother. When she asks anyone about her brother's death (he was shot) they simply sigh and tell her it was an accident- which of course convinces her that they're covering for the friend.
She takes a gun and goes to the friends house and tries to kill him. He tells her how her brother actually committed suicide while the friend was in the same room. She has a bout of Heroic BSOD and fires off the gun. A minute later the friend's aunt comes upstairs to see what the noise was, and faints when she sees the gun. Turns out the girl had missed the friend entirely, and he tells his aunt that the gun was a toy and that there isn't anything to worry about.
openNo Title Literature
This book is by the son of a baseball pitcher who was known to hit batters. His father hit an up-and-coming baseball star and permanently ended his career. The book is about this son retelling the story and distancing himself from his father before bringing the two former baseball players together years later to reconcile.
I cannot remember a single name for either player or a single team for which either player was on, unfortunately.
I think the book was published in the last ten years.
openNo Title Literature
A book I saw in a bookshop once. From what I remember from the back, the story goes a little something like this:
Around 200 years ago, a human colony ship crashed on an alien planet. The natives upper classes are all scheming, backstabbing folk, but eventually an island reservation is created for the humans. In the years since the crash, humanity has recovered and now have a space station in orbit. The main character is a diplomat, and the only one who is allowed to leave the reservation.
I think I saw the third or fourth book first, and then checked the first book in the series, so I might be mixing plots a bit.
All suggestions are welcome!
openNo Title Literature
As my earlier post seems to have vanished...
Three books. The first one was a series of at least two entries, the covers were red and white, and were similar to A Series Of Unfortunate Events in style, and one character was a boy who couldn't feel pain, nicknamed Rubberboy. I also remember there being an evil teacher, and a tower full of pterodactyls.
The second book is about a girl who discovers rodents are sentient, the cover was orange and black, and I'm pretty sure it was called Rat, but Google was unhelpful. The main thing I remember was a scene with a chinchilla being forced to put its pawprints on pastries for some reason.
And the third is a fantasy book, mostly a satire, that features a girl who makes a deal and has to give up her sarcasm.
openNo Title Literature
A book where there's a lot of snow. A girl meets a mystical kid who has a snowflake shaped ocarina. She goes out in the middle of the night to meet him. She has a dad but no mother.
Edited by acekanigirlopenNo Title Literature
A book where a girl "dies" and winds up in some weird ethereal realm where she can touch objects from throughout her life. Girl's name was something like Madison...
openNo Title Literature
If I can brag for a moment, then I'm slightly proud of my book-finding skills. Last month, I found a book that I had been searching for for years by looking up a few key words. Earlier, I rediscovered a different book by typing in a partial quote from a review. When I was at the library today, I found a book that I think I've read before. If I remember correctly (and I don't think I do), I read it on a trip with my religious school. The same day, I read a book about a teenage girl in a writing class. She starts a blog and strikes up a friendship with one of the commenters. After many months of joking R Ping, she discovers that the R Per is not the gender they said they were and gets uncomfortable. (Part of the R Ping involved a fantasy story where they were nude, for some reason. I think it involved a river and hygiene.) I can't find the book, despite many different searches. Can you help?
openNo Title Literature
So. My mom used to have this book, I THOUGHT it was called "The Encyclopedia of the Cat," but none of the searches I've tried using that phrase or any variant have turned up any results.
But anyway, it's a fairly hefty book (a coffee table book, perhaps,) with a light gold fabric cover decorated with a gold embossed image of a long-haired cat.
Most of the interior content is pretty standard catcycolpedia fare, including information about cat breeds, cats in movies and comics, cats in advertising, etc... but - and here's where it seems to be pretty solidly different, and I haven't seen this in any other books - there's also a section about "monstrous" cats. Not just legendary/mythical "demon" cats, but deformed/"monstrous" real cats as well. I distinctly remember a photograph of a two-faced kitten lying on its side (with a face at both the front and back of the head,) and an old illustration of a six-legged cat (with two sets of back legs and one set of fore - it was standing on its hind legs with the front half of its body raised up, like a cat version of a centaur.
There was also a French illustration of a cat with a cannon (rocket?) strapped onto its back.
Pretty specific, I think...
Can anybody help me? This has been driving me crazy for YEARS and I would like to find another copy of this book for my mom.
Edited by BlackCoyote

There was this series of children's books (I think it was a trilogy). It started in a society that used a color-coded caste system. Every year, every person was tested to see if they could ascend/descend/stay in their caste. The main character was in a family with her mother, father, brother, and their baby. It was ruled by someone called the Emperor. I think the main character left this city about a quarter of the way through, but I can't remember what happens after that.