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openPrisoner can see everyone's crimes except his own Literature
I'm 90% sure this is a Kafka story but for the life of me I can't find it. A man awakes inside an iron maiden and can see other iron maidens in front and to the side of him. Each one has a crime displayed on it, and people are walking past the iron maidens and sneering, jeering, etc. The man looks around but cannot see his own crime. When the crowd gets to him, they give the most exuberant display of distaste with his crime and react almost violently. The crime is never revealed to the character or the reader.
openAgency that handles runaway nightmares. Literature
Ok I might have dreamt this up but does anyone know a book about a guy who works for an agency that tracks down nightmares? Thanks in advance
open(SOLVED) Kids short stories, set at a school where spernatural things happen (NOT wayside) Literature
A while ago (grade 3 or 4) I read this book. The book is a collection of short stories happening at a certain school (no, not Wayside School) that all involve kids learning a moral through magic stuff. I remember four chapters:
1. Some girl has mastered cutting in lines. But then she gets this weird curse where whenever she tries to cut she end us up at the end, and eventually finds out that being last (or nearly last) has its advantages.
2. Some girl hates taking tests. Gets assigned (secret agent style) to be the test tester, so she grades how good the test questions are. Agent Moe (eeney, meanie, miney, moe) makes an appearence.
3. Some boy is assigned to clap out the erasers. Chalk dust genie appears, gives him three wishes. Standard “be careful what you wish for”.
4. Some kid (don’t remember if boy or girl) finds hidden attic with “cool old guy” inside. He explains to them that there’s some special formula that makes school “special” (causing the kind of funny coincidences that happen at school). He made an extra-strength version, and that’s why all the supernatural stuff has been happening. No moral, just tying the stories together. (Or the lesson is “school is cool”)
There might be a sequel, but I’m not sure.
Edited by sRAMrelevratopenChildren's Story About A Grey Kingdom Literature
I've tried here before and got no response, so I'll try again. I recall this children's story from when I was around nine or ten, so I assume it was released prior to 2009 (Rough estimate). It was about this man who I think was the king of a kingdom of music and color who wanders into a different kingdom where color and music are banned, so his kingdom is grey and silent. The colorful king gets caught whistling and is imprisoned in a dungeon with a woman who tells him the grey king is going to force her to marry him.
The two escape from their cage and meet another woman, a very confused chief for the grey king who turned dinner into breakfast. Later in the story, some people from the colorful kingdom who are named "Do, Ri, Mi, Fa, So, La, and Ti," that musical scale, go to save their kind. But Mi gets captured and has their voice stolen. So the colorful king says to the guy (who is also mute) that if he gets Mi's voice back, the colorful king with help him get his back.
At the end of the story, the grey king gets tricked into marrying the chief lady instead of the first woman, while the colorful king and the rest of the gang head back to their colorful kingdom.
openStory About A Kid Getting Vivisected Literature
I haven't read this myself but I saw a post on tumblr where someone asked "did anyone else read a book as a kid where they like dissected a kid for his organs and he was aware the whole time, until they like took his brain and he couldn't physically be aware anymore? like? unraveled or something? unwound? whatever"
So yeah now I'm curious; is anyone else familiar with this particular story? Apparently the title is something close to "unraveled" or "unwound". They said they read it as a kid but that doesn't strictly mean it was from a kid's book.
openOld kids' novel about a boy named Sam who fears he's overweight Literature
There's this boy named Sam, who's staying with his grandfather. Sam nervously asks if he's fat to which the grandfather replies, "You're solid, Sam!" and the narration notes that he didn't really think that response through.
Also, at one point, the grandfather says, "Oh hell, I don't want to lecture you", which shocked eight-year-old me, since for a kids' book, that's a Precision F-Strike.
The visit ends with the grandfather offering a peppermint to Sam and the narration notes that "Sam took three, thought about fatness, and put one back".
openBoy's Blood Looks Like Airplane Glue Literature
This was a paperback sci-fi novel. I think it was a lesser title by a famous author.
The part I remember was a boy at the doctor's office. He'd been injured, and his clotted blood was distinctly nonhuman due to some secret alien mumbo jumbo. The doctor wondered if this kid was dumb enough to seal his cut with modelling cement.
The language was old-fashioned, but I couldn't tell you what era it came from.
openPicture book with machines and stuff. Literature
I was thinking about a picture book I found in a library when I was around 10. It was somewhat like a look and find book but it had detailed pictures of elaborate machines and contraptions and would ask questions like "Where will this wheel emerge from this machine?" Does this sound familiar to anyone?
Edited by CHClausenopenUnknown Antimatter work Literature
Antimatter mentions this unknown work:
openLilliputian-sized people fight horde of goblin-type creatures Literature
Children's chapter book that was read in 90s but possibly older
- The main characters are lilliputian-sized people who live in fortress/castles in (I think) rubbish tip
- They live in a fortress because they come under regular attack from hordes of goblin creatures with green skin and red or orange hair
- There are multiple fortresses and they have an alliance to send aid to each other during the attacks by the goblin creatures
- At the start of the book, the horde attacking is bigger then usual and a group of the main characters are sent to the allied fortress to get help
- The group gets to the allied fortress but finds that the fortress has already been destroyed by the horde
- The group encounter two surviving knights of the fortress. The two knights ride cats - as in domestic cats. The others are shocked at this cause cats are generally seen as a danger to them but the knights raised them from kittens.
- The knights offer to come with the group back to their fortress, saying the cats are worth an army by themselves and the only reason they couldn't save their own fortress was because they were out on patrol at the time.
- They return to the fortress and defeat the horde.
openGerman fantasy novel about tunnel constructors that come across a time/space anomaly Literature
Those are the story elements I remember (warning, spoilers, and some of it may be not quite correct, I read it years ago):
- A tunnel construction project comes upon a time and space anomaly
- The engineer that finds the anomaly with his laser, gets framed and then kicked out of the project. His wife divorces him, as well.
- The head of the project goes to the government and IIRC intergovernmental bodies (possibly the UN) with his discovery, and gets an insane amount of power by them.
- A journalist joins the engineer, and during his investigations, gets his dictaphone ripped out of his hands and destroyed by the goons of the project head. The journalist makes comments about them not being in the Wild West, to which the project head replies not to be so sure about that.
- The team (engineer, journalist, and a woman who is looking for someone, IIRC) come upon a shaman with real powers who is connected to the space-time anomaly in the mountain
- The space-time anomaly gets out of hand, starts sucking up the oxygen of Earth and fucking around with time (e.g. rapidly aging and de-aging people)
- The aforementioned shaman and a ton of others, who joined in earlier, pull something out of WH 40 K and sacrifice themselves to stave off the space-time anomaly
- The journalist gets killed in a helicopter crash
- The engineer, project head and the woman on a quest become the world's new shaman guardians, and reshape it into a form that is not revealed in the novel
openPunished for the C-Word Literature
I once saw a book review on Common Sense Media that I thought had the phrase "vs. the World" in the title, but I can't find it now. In this book, the potty-mouthed characters are this one girl along with the people who bully the main character. The main character doesn't swear much, but he ends up calling one of his bullies the C-word, which he gets punished for.
open[SOLVED] [Unknown year] Book with a realistic lion on the cover Literature
I remember reading it a while ago and it stuck out to me, but because of my poor memory, I can't really remember much.
I believe it was set in Africa, and the cast was a group of high school or college students. There was a disease going around that caused peoples' skin to turn to metal or something, I think. I wish I could remember more details, but it's been several years since reading it.
Edited by mitzioletopenkids science books Literature
Series of science books for kids who had distinctive covers with the subject of the book "ripping" out of the page.
I think the books were also oversized?
openSuperman origin story. Literature
Picture book aimed at children. I try to look it up and get others like it... but. I specifically remember the version where Lara shoots down going on the rocket because it's set up for one, and the description of how the young Clark could see further than Martha using her "field glasses." That phrase, "field glasses."
There might have been another one about the origin of Hal Jordan as Green Lantern, with the crashed spaceship.
Looking for a title, publishing information. Something to find this exact one.
Edited by CaswinopenAnyone know what fairytale this is? Literature
Every now and again I remember reading this epically screwed-up fairy-tale in the Chinese translation as a kid. It's possible this was a Chinese original, in which case I'm screwed on finding the source, but something about it feels like a translated... possibly Grimm story?
Anyway, it was about a little girl on a farm who was just screwed from day one: a toad stole her beauty, a goose stole her intelligence, and an old witch her strength. Her parents, with a daughter that was all but useless, tied her up in the yard to use as a scarecrow. There was a happy ending with a prince on a white horse carrying her off, I guess, but I don't remember the back half clearly at all...
Ring any bells for anyone?
openLooking for an old TV tropes article about a weird dark fantasy premise full of mind bending nightma Literature
I will admit up front I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this question but I wanted some help finding a particular TV tropes page I remembered reading back in 2014 that touched on a particular... literature I think? It was such a weird, confusing, dark and messed up story, one which I came across one night during a very long and twisty wikiwalk on TV tropes by pure accident back in 2014 that it became something of bile fascination to me and I told two of my friends about it but for the life of me I wasn't able to the find the TV trope article about the story in question again afterwards and one of my friends is half convinced it was a story I "dreamed up while asleep" despite the fact I was very much wide awake when I read the TV tropes article when I happened upon it during the aforementioned wiki walk.
I admit that I sadly don't remember the name of the series or the author nor the name of the protagonist of the series but I do (mostly) remember the premise very vividly. The premise from what I recall features a protagonist who died and wind ups with amnesia in a dark afterlife where he only his name and the memory he had of this Jewish girl and he sets off on a quest to find his memories and find the Jewish girl.
But one of the things that becomes apparent about the afterlife of the setting is that; it is an afterlife where those who were good in life become ugly and are faced with an afterlife of suffering, misery and squalor, while those who were evil in life in the afterlife become beautiful and live a relatively better afterlife that not only is more cushy in this hell-scape but have much more social status and power. The setting of the afterlife is a messed up one where things that would have been good undergo untold horror and are jeered and punished while evil is not only the norm but virtue. There is even this weird and gross bit out of nowhere where in the setting any fetus that was aborted in life or miscarried end up in the afterlife as some kind of ugly never-borne creatures... for some inexplicable reason??
A bit of foreshadowing for the Protagonist is that while on his quest for his memories and finding the Jewish girl, who is the only thing, much less the only person; he remembers; he was walking the true neutral alignment for most of his time of the afterlife... but given he was in this afterlife and looked very handsome than what he looked like in life; hints at the fact he was likely a bad person in life before arriving in the nightmare fuel afterlife at least to some degree.
After several adventures through this hell-scape the protagonist eventually ends up finding the Jewish girl, but finds that she is some kind of lamina-type creature who I *think* was enslaved by someone else and the protagonist goes on another quest to both free her and than help her "move on" from the horrible nightmare fuel afterlife. After of which point he does so he finally gets his memories back... and it's revealed (and this was a big narrative reveal) that he was actually a Nazi during WW 2 and I think not only that; but worked at one of the death camps where he crossed paths with the Jewish girl I think? And after he gets these memories of his identity back and after helping the Jewish girl move on from the nightmare fuel afterlife; he gleefully jumps off the morality cliff and becomes a pure evil bastard.
It is one of the weirdest and messed up dark fantasy stories I have ever heard of and to this day after telling my one friend about it he is still unsure wither I actually saw the TV tropes article. It's hard to remember the name or the author of the story or the name of the protagonist but I want to cite it just so my friend knows that this isn't something I dreamed up in a weird nightmare in my sleep. I know it may be of dubious help to only cite the premise of the story without a story title or author or even protagonist name to go off of but I hope the premise might help ring someones bell and they might be able to recall the name and author and provide a link to the TV tropes article for the weird, nightmare fuel story and it's TV tropes article so I can can confirm it's existence to my freinds so they know it wasn't something I dreamed up in the bed one night; given I was wide awake at my laptop when I first stumbled on it.
So yeah; if this whole plot premise rings any bells in anyway; could someone let me know the title and author and point me to the TV tropes page of it? I need a citation of the story desperately.
openFairy tale (or folk story?) where a bread boy eats everything Literature
There's several variants, i think. He might not be made of bread in all of them?
A couple who want a baby make one out of bread(?) but he keeps growing and his appetitite is insatiable. He eventually eats animals and people, including his parents, before somebody finally kills him. Cutting him open might or might not have saved his victims.
openMan injured in factory machine Literature
My aunt was reading it and read a bit aloud to me but that was ages ago and now we don't remember what it was and I'd love to finish it.
I think it was a short story or novella and based on the opening it seemed fairly light in tone; don't know if it stayed that way. A man fell into or got caught up in some kind of machine in a factory and got injured but, again, I remember the tone being light so maybe not too seriously injured? I think he was pursuing legal action.

Beautiful book I never got to finish many years ago. YA Novel, published before 2009 but probably not much older. It is about a black girl and her white classmates in 1960s (perhaps 50s) southern America. Various story elements about race tension, but the major arc of the book is that the black protagonist sings behind the curtain at a school play while a white classmates lipsychs and plays her part onstage. I also remember a scene where the protagonist mentions a scene where her family have to go to bathroom in a can while travelling because the gas stations won't let black people use their bathrooms. Includes stuff about the klu klux klan I believe, discussion of black household help. The edition I remember that an African American girl wearing a dress and had a pink cover.
Thank you !