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I remember reading a book as a child, there were pictures and you had to guess what it was. One I remember, was two horizontal lines with two circles on it, and the answer was "An egg on a sidewalk." Thanks for any help.
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Oct 4, 2010 01:41
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Morgan_ posted:I remember reading a book as a child, there were pictures and you had to guess what it was. One I remember, was two horizontal lines with two circles on it, and the answer was "An egg on a sidewalk." Thanks for any help. A book of droodles, as explained here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droodle I think I recall that particular droodle, although I don't what particular book it would have been in.
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Oct 5, 2010 02:32
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Casu Marzu posted:I'm glad to see this thread. Contact is on, and it reminded me of a book I read when I was younger. Did it have some connection to Kabbalah? I think I read this too - it was a really bad book. The wormhole thing is in the grounds of Auschwitz, and the scientist linked up with an old Torah scholar who was investigating a 'miracle' at Auschwitz, where a number of prisoners disappeared through the wormhole. Then at the end, on the hell-planet, you find out that the chief torturer is one of the escaped Jewish prisoners who has for some reason become the most evil guy there. Does this sound familiar?
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Oct 5, 2010 12:18
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EvilMoJoJoJo posted:Did it have some connection to Kabbalah? I think I read this too - it was a really bad book. The wormhole thing is in the grounds of Auschwitz, and the scientist linked up with an old Torah scholar who was investigating a 'miracle' at Auschwitz, where a number of prisoners disappeared through the wormhole. Then at the end, on the hell-planet, you find out that the chief torturer is one of the escaped Jewish prisoners who has for some reason become the most evil guy there. Does this sound familiar? Why yes, that does ring a faint bell.
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Oct 5, 2010 17:12
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OK, I am about to provide you with virtually no useful information and ask you to identify a book based on that lack of information. I do not expect success, but this has been bugging me for years. I read this book perhaps fifteen or twenty years ago. I think it was some sort of social satire, that followed some guy around as he bounced in and out of weird situations. I seem to remember that the main character was often lost in "reverie" (I quote it because reverie was the actual word used, not just a general concept of daydreaming.) I remember that the description on the back of the book included something about insurance being the work of the devil. I don't remember if this was some lesson the main character learned, but I think it was something like that. It might have read something like, "[X] does this, learns that, and discovers why life* insurance is the work of the devil." Yeah, that's not a lot to go on. * Not 100% sure if it was life insurance, or insurance in general. Oh, while I'm at it, here's another: I don't think this is Logan's Run, despite the similarities, but I could be wrong. The story revolves around a youth who has reached his "half life" at the age of fifteen. Normally, everyone in this future society is euthanized at age thirty. You can, however, tack a year on to your life by hunting down people who have escaped society and lived beyond their allocated thirty years. This might be a big event everyone participates in when they reach half life, I don't remember. Anyway, the main character finds an old man secreted away somewhere, and plans to bring him in (or bring in his hand as proof. something like that) to get his own life extended. It _may_ have been that the old man was actually worth more than one year because he was so far past his expiration date, but I forget. Anyway, the old dude charms to kid by playing piano, I think, and at the end, not only does the youth not turn in the old dude, but I think he ends up withdrawing from society to live with the old guy.
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Oct 6, 2010 06:17
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Need help identifying a book I read in middle school. It's a book about a kid who runs away from home and comes across a house (on a hill?) that has magical properties. There are other children living in the house and he is welcomed with treats and all sorts of goodies. Later we come to find weird things are happening and eventually the main protagonist leaves the house to seek out his parents, who have aged considerably since he left (although he stays the same age). I read this book in middle school and I remember my English teacher mentioning there were talks of a movie based on the book, but obviously they never came to fruition. If anyone remembers this book I will be thoroughly impressed and very grateful. Edit- Wrong description. LiterallyAnything fucked around with this message at 07:34 on Oct 6, 2010 |
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Oct 6, 2010 07:14
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Here's one that has stumped a whole lot of people: The book was a Young Adult Sci-Fi novel that was published in Britain somewhere around the late 80's/early 90's. It concerned a futuristic city under a dome, the outside world apparently reduced to a nuclear wasteland. The inhabitants of the city were immortal, thanks to robotic exoskeletons they wore which made them look like the robot from Metropolis only bright gold in colour. Most people went their whole lives rarely if ever revealing their faces. The society was a dystopia, where all thought of the outside world was banned. This included dreaming of the outside, or possibly dreaming at all. I vividly remember a scene where several charaters are asleep in a communal dormitory while a robotic eye-machine floated around the room scanning people for subversive dreams. The main characters were a pair of twin women who were celebrating their 100th birthday at the start of the story (the both appeared and I think were mentally around 16-18). One of them was a Singer/Dancer and the other was an academic. They had a telepathic bond, which was highly illegal. Things go bad for them when the mentor of the academic, who she sees as a father figure, discovers that the dancer has been dreaming. He consideres sweeping it under the rug for his adopted daughter's sake, but eventually decides to turn her in. The dancer is sentanced to death, which involves being taken outside the dome to a mockup of a farm, complete with animatroic animals, stripped of the armour and left to die on the suface. The other sister follows her twin to the surface and they are reunited. Then they both fall unconcious for some reason. They wake up from to discover that they are being watched by a group of children who tell them that the nuclear wastelands have been clean and habitable for hundreds of years - the society under the dome have sealed themselves in so completely that the danger they fled from has past.
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Oct 6, 2010 11:52
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I might be thinking of a website, but it was similar to this: http://www.amazon.com/101-Things-Before-You-Die/dp/1582344930 It might have been more like a calendar which gave you suggestions for extraordinary things to do each day/few days/week.
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Oct 6, 2010 13:28
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This book is about 4 years old I think. It's an autobiography by a woman who grew up in a very strict christian family, possibly some weird cult. She was sent to some reform school thing on a Carribean island, this reform school was more or less a prison colony with torture like punishments for tiny ruleninfractions. There was something about her not being allowed contact with her brother. Sorry, very vague, but I just half read it at a very extreme time in my own life.
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Oct 6, 2010 13:40
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BattyKiara posted:This book is about 4 years old I think. It's an autobiography by a woman who grew up in a very strict christian family, possibly some weird cult. She was sent to some reform school thing on a Carribean island, this reform school was more or less a prison colony with torture like punishments for tiny ruleninfractions. There was something about her not being allowed contact with her brother. That sounds like Jesus Land: A Memoir by Julia Scheeres.
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Oct 6, 2010 13:44
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I remember reading a series of children's books - I think they were written in the 70s. They were kind of similar to Harry Potter. A young kid moves in with his uncle (I think), and he learns that he's in some way magical. I also think umbrellas were involved in some way. I figured out what it was a few years ago, and I remember reading that the author died in the middle of writing the series, so it was never completed. I've forgotten it again since then, though.
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Oct 6, 2010 16:09
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Brady posted:Need help identifying a book I read in middle school. This would be the young-adult novel The Thief of Always by Clive Barker. Yes, young adult fiction by Barker. It is... not as head-smashing as it sounds.
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Oct 6, 2010 16:47
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fahrvergnugen posted:This would be the young-adult novel The Thief of Always by Clive Barker. Yes, young adult fiction by Barker. It is... not as head-smashing as it sounds. That's it! Thanks a bunch.
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Oct 6, 2010 18:15
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craptacular! posted:I read the rules thread and don't see any kind of rule against a thread such as this, yet I apologize in advance for any shittyness of it, real of perceived: I need help. Years ago, a friend suggested a sci-fi novel to me. Since then, I have forgot it's title.
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Oct 6, 2010 19:55
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Rough Lobster posted:A book I read where some guy found these metallic buglike or crablike things in his basement that his grandfather knew about. They were intelligent and began constructing some kind of machine or clock down there. The book you're thinking of is called The Boxes by William Sleator. It actually has a prequel called Marco's Millions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco%27s_Millions_(novel) Both are pretty good reads.
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Oct 7, 2010 01:39
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morestuff posted:I remember reading a series of children's books - I think they were written in the 70s. They were kind of similar to Harry Potter. A young kid moves in with his uncle (I think), and he learns that he's in some way magical. I also think umbrellas were involved in some way. Wild-rear end guess, but maybe The House With a Clock in its Walls by John Bellairs? Lewis is an orphaned (goony) kid who moves in with his uncle, who turns out to be a warlock. There are several sequels.
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Oct 7, 2010 08:32
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Casu Marzu posted:Why yes, that does ring a faint bell. I googled "science fiction book planet wormhole Kabbalah" and found it - Dante's Equation by Jane Jensen. Think that's probably the one.
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Oct 7, 2010 11:02
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timefly posted:That sounds like Jesus Land: A Memoir by Julia Scheeres. Looks like the same, but I could have sworn it had a different title. Hm...
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Oct 7, 2010 12:16
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I remember reading a short story told from the point of view of the Thing from John Carpenter film. Can anyone help me out?
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Oct 7, 2010 13:49
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wheatpuppy posted:Wild-rear end guess, but maybe The House With a Clock in its Walls by John Bellairs? Lewis is an orphaned (goony) kid who moves in with his uncle, who turns out to be a warlock. There are several sequels. This is it exactly. Weirdly enough, two people mentioned Bellairs to me in the past week, without me knowing who he was. I must have subliminally made the connection and started thinking about that book.
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Oct 7, 2010 15:22
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Panorama posted:I remember reading a short story told from the point of view of the Thing from John Carpenter film. Can anyone help me out? This one? http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/
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Oct 7, 2010 17:57
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EvilMoJoJoJo posted:I googled "science fiction book planet wormhole Kabbalah" and found it - Dante's Equation by Jane Jensen. Think that's probably the one. I've read Dante's Equation recently and I can tell you there's no need for 'probably'. It is the one, the plot description above matches it exactly.
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Oct 7, 2010 17:57
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Phantom LOLbooth posted:OK, I am about to provide you with virtually no useful information and ask you to identify a book based on that lack of information. I do not expect success, but this has been bugging me for years. Super long shot here, but possibly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Walter_Mitty
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Oct 8, 2010 01:30
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Abugadu posted:Super long shot here, but possibly: Thanks for taking a stab, but no. I actually expected someone to suggest that because of the reverie thing. This was much more recent, I think, and there was the whole insurance/devil thing.
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Oct 8, 2010 05:21
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This illustrated book chronicled a palace or castle gradually descending into some sort of entropy, whether it be magical or weird things happening, or the basement flooding (This is all in a cross section view of the palace/castle). By the end of the book, things had gotten really really out of hand at that place. I am sure that there was little to no written narration. Each illustration took up both left and right pages. The illustrations reminded me of the DK Publishing books (Like the cross sectioned ones they had about castles, or the ones I had about the Man o War & the Titanic!), where no detail was really too small. That's about all I can remember. I read it all the time at the library in elementary school, like 12 years ago.
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Oct 8, 2010 06:50
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deety posted:This one? That's the one, many thanks.
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Oct 8, 2010 08:36
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EvilMoJoJoJo posted:I googled "science fiction book planet wormhole Kabbalah" and found it - Dante's Equation by Jane Jensen. Think that's probably the one. Awesome. Thanks a lot!
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Oct 8, 2010 19:07
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The New Scum posted:The book you're thinking of is called The Boxes by William Sleator. You, sir, are a champion among princes
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Oct 8, 2010 22:24
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Little Treasure posted:This illustrated book chronicled a palace or castle gradually descending into some sort of entropy, whether it be magical or weird things happening, or the basement flooding (This is all in a cross section view of the palace/castle). By the end of the book, things had gotten really really out of hand at that place. Not a castle but a hotel? http://www.amazon.com/Full-Moon-Soup-Wordless-Brimful/dp/1856020711
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Oct 9, 2010 03:53
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Ahh, so it was a hotel, not a castle. That's totally it! Thank you much and I'm totally going to buy it.
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Oct 9, 2010 23:03
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I've asked about this in one of these threads years ago, but lost track before I saw an answer and can't find it in archives. It was a CYOA type book, and it began with the main character visiting his uncle at a military base. There was an attack of some kind or something similar, and he steps or is knocked through a door into what turns out to be a suspended animation machine. He comes out in the distant future, into a post-apocalyptic world. Searching around the base, he comes to a room with an active computer interface that asks him to identify himself. He tells it that he is a municipal dogcatcher. It then tells him that as the last living member of the US government at any level, and gives him a suit of armor/biosuit intended for the president. Two other small things I remember are one near the beginning (stepping into the forested wasteland and seeing a tiny moose run by being chased by a tiny hunter) and one even more vague from later in the book (in one of the storylines the armor is damaged, and brings out nanomachines to repair itself). I've tried googling it with several combinations of keywords and haven't been able to find anything yet.
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Oct 10, 2010 00:02
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I read this book in fifth grade that I just cannot find. It takes place during World War I. A boy is on a cruise ship and the boat is attacked. Him and an older Black crew member manage to get themselves trapped on an island. The boy is blinded and pretty racist, but learns to love the man that becomes his caretaker. At the end of the novel a hurricane hits and the man shields the white boy with his own body, dying in the process. The boy is eventually rescued. I could have sworn it was called, The Reef, but I cannot find it. It had a sequel that was about the kid recovering and goes into the backstory of the man. Timeless Appeal fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Oct 11, 2010 |
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Oct 11, 2010 01:22
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Timeless Appeal posted:I read this book in fifth grade that I just cannot remember. It takes place during World War I. A boy is on a cruise ship and the boat is attacked. Him and an older Black crew member manage to get themselves trapped on an island. The boy is blinded and pretty racist, but learns to love the man that becomes his caretaker. At the end of the novel a hurricane hits and the man shields the white boy with his own body, dying in the process. The boy is eventually rescued. I could have sworn it was called, The Reef, but I cannot find it. The Cay! I read it too, completely forgot about it until now.
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Oct 11, 2010 01:25
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Hedrigall posted:Not a castle but a hotel? http://www.amazon.com/Full-Moon-Soup-Wordless-Brimful/dp/1856020711 "The baroque goings-on at the Hotel Splendide demonstrate what might happen if the lunatic Monty Python crew were let loose in the Twilight Zone." I have never seen a sentence that made me want to read a book so badly. I'm not sure how I feel about a book with a narrative composed entirely from pictures.
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Oct 11, 2010 23:34
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Phantom LOLbooth posted:OK, I am about to provide you with virtually no useful information and ask you to identify a book based on that lack of information. I do not expect success, but this has been bugging me for years. Sounds like "Job: a comedy of justice" by Robert Heinlein. At least so far as I remember.
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Oct 13, 2010 02:53
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This has been floating around in my head for the past 10 years and its been killing me! Children's picture book that I read in the early 90s (had to be 1993-94 because I remember reading it before the big blizzard that swept across the east coast). The book was about a creepy mansion and the residents inside with large, detailed and colorful pictures that showed a sort of cross section of the mansion. Each page was one of the residents going to sleep in a humorous fashion. The last few pages are really ingrained in my mind because it depicted a kid jumping on his bed while a couple of ogres who lived underneath the mansion were getting pissed off. The ogres climb up every floor in the mansion and scold the kid. I remember this in detail because the ogres were super loving creepy with big eyes, sharp teeth, and were about 20x larger than the kid. If I could only find what this book is I'll be able to die peacefully.
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Oct 13, 2010 08:33
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al-azad posted:This has been floating around in my head for the past 10 years and its been killing me! Is it the book that's linked two posts above yours?
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Oct 13, 2010 19:55
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Ballsworthy posted:Is it the book that's linked two posts above yours? The preview pages don't trigger any memories. I remember this book being darker (but still noticeably cartoony) with crude, heavily cross hatched drawings. It was like someone took Edward Gorey and threw some watercolors over it.
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Oct 14, 2010 02:06
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Here's one I heard referenced by Ishmael Reed once but absolutely cannot remember the title or authour of. The idea is that this authour writes a book. The book is largely inspired by his life as a middle-class black guy in America, but gets rejected by publishers for not being authentically 'black' enough, so he writes this disgustingly racist and stereotypical book called 'My Philofy' or something (I googled that, but I'm either spelling it wrong or I've got the title wrong) and becomes a massive success and is hailed by critics as capturing the true 'black experience.' It's written by, I believe, a black [literature?] professor. Thanks.
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Oct 20, 2010 03:41
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Years ago, I read two stories in different issues of a sci-fi anthology magazine (Asimov's, Fantastic, &c.), which I no longer own. I know the plots, but not the titles or authors. Do these sound familiar to anyone else? They both just occurred to me recently and not finding them anywhere is like having just a few bars of a song stuck in my head. The plots: - An spaceship/time machine is sent back to prevent The Asteroid from wiping out dinosaurs. The people inside then hop forward many years at a time, watching the dinos develop culture and tech, and hit a "go home" button before they might be detected by telescopes on the ground. Mission's a success, big party to celebrate all they've learned - and it's interrupted by "aliens". They explain that they're actually the descendants of the dinosaurs, and with their 65-million-year head start on us, they'd developed time travel long ago. At one point, they decided to sent a spaceship/time machine back to see what would happen if An Asteroid wiped out their ancestors... - A device is being demonstrated, which sends a pair of spheres far through time (one back, one forward) and they kind of "bounce", losing temporal momentum and eventually coming to rest back where they started. The idea's to show that sending stuff into the past can't affect the present, but of course each jump makes a little change - deflecting a chunk of volcanic rock here, distracting a hunter there, and by the time they settle down the experimenters and their surroundings are completely different. On a related note: Searching has turned up a couple of purported "short story finder" services, but these seem to be subscription-based. Has anyone run across a free method for searching for stories based on keywords? It's not something I would use regularly, is all.
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Oct 26, 2010 04:42
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