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Alterian posted:Haha yes! I recognize the covers. Do you know if these books are any good? I feel like reading them as a big old middle finger to my past. Yeah, like NinjaDebugger said, they're very teen girl oriented. But they're good! I still enjoy them, but I probably do have the soul of a teenage girl. They're not as good as her first series, Song of the Lioness, but still pretty neat and fun for a bit of light reading. 
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May 4, 2011 23:38
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This is another kid's book, I remember it very clearly but it's entirely possible I slammed a few different books together in my head. As I recall, it's about a kid who steals some magical orb from a goblin, and realizes he can stop time by saying the word "stop." He has some fun but abuses the power and then the goblin starts hunting him while the world is frozen. Anything?
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May 5, 2011 03:24
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This has been bothering me for years now. Never thought to ask you guys. I went through a phase when I was in elementary school where I loved ghost stories, specifically the Scary Stories series and the 13 (state) Ghosts by Kathryn Tucker Windham. My school's library had a good number of these types of books. Soon, though, I had read them and wanted more. I found this huge book that had a collection of all kinds of paranormal stories in it, supposedly all "true" accounts. It covered things from ghosts, to aliens, to the turin shroud. I remember it being written in a language a little above an elementary school student, kind of journalistic in nature. It was an older looking book, the cover was just the title in large text, although I think I faintly remember a photograph of a UFO on it somewhere. It was a longer title too. It had black and white photographs in it at regular intervals. The way it was set up, and how dated looking I remember the photographs being, I'd guess it was published in the late 70s to 80s. Blind guess, though. Some of the specific stories I remember from it: -A family that's tormented by a ghost in their house. A distinct scene I remember (mainly because it terrified me) was one of the daughters going into a trance and bouncing up and down on the bed as the ghost spoke through her. -Faces appearing on a family's kitchen floor that couldn't be washed away. (I know I've seen the pictures from it around) -Multiple encounters with a sasquatch. I remember one that went into detail about how a camper was attacked in the middle of the night by one. -The Turin Shroud, as mentioned above. -The Solway Firth Spaceman I can't find any traces of this book anywhere and it's driving me absolutely insane.
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May 5, 2011 07:43
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Speaking of puzzle books, here's another one I now recall owning but I don't know the name. It was an illustrated 'maze' book, but each maze was some sort of real-life situation, not arbitrary walls all over the place (navigating the rooms of a ship, hedges outside a castle combined with the castle itself, pipes that drip into a vat, etc). There were 3 siblings that traveled to all of these locations of 3 ages, each page had 3 puzzles, with the oldest one being assigned the most difficult one. Anyone?
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May 5, 2011 15:47
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ce gars posted:This has been bothering me for years now. Never thought to ask you guys. So that sounded really familiar to me but the only thing I could remember about the book I was thinking about was that it was a red hardcover. No way I'll ever find it, I think, but I go looking anyway and I loving found it. Or mine at least, there's a ton of books like this but this is the one I remember and it matches your description. http://www.amazon.com/Strange-Stories-Amazing-Facts-Astonishing/dp/0895770288/ref=pd_sim_b_7
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May 5, 2011 16:56
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penismightier posted:This is another kid's book, I remember it very clearly but it's entirely possible I slammed a few different books together in my head. As I recall, it's about a kid who steals some magical orb from a goblin, and realizes he can stop time by saying the word "stop." He has some fun but abuses the power and then the goblin starts hunting him while the world is frozen. Tony Abbott? Something about goblins and stopping time.
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May 5, 2011 18:23
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Ballsworthy posted:So that sounded really familiar to me but the only thing I could remember about the book I was thinking about was that it was a red hardcover. No way I'll ever find it, I think, but I go looking anyway and I loving found it. Or mine at least, there's a ton of books like this but this is the one I remember and it matches your description. This could definitely be it. The one I remember checking out had a faded cover, so my memory of the specific color of it is hazy. It's cheap on amazon so I'll get it and see if it's the one. Thanks! 
ce gars fucked around with this message at 20:46 on May 5, 2011 |
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May 5, 2011 20:42
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ce gars posted:This could definitely be it. The one I remember checking out had a faded cover, so my memory of the specific color of it is hazy. It's cheap on amazon so I'll get it and see if it's the one. Thanks!
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May 5, 2011 21:31
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gvibes posted:Kringle Nah, there was no Christmas theme. The crazy goblin time orb might have been in a hollowed out tree.
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May 5, 2011 23:52
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I read this passage a while back and it seemed pretty interesting, but I can't really remember the explicit details about it. It said something like, "The best thing (Name), the man, ever did for (name), the artist, was to die," as the first line. Also it talked about how he was abusive to people, and how he went to Mexico for a while and then he died there. And the last few lines were about it causing a national disaster in Mexico and then something about Arlington. Thanks in advance.
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May 6, 2011 04:33
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ce gars posted:This could definitely be it. The one I remember checking out had a faded cover, so my memory of the specific color of it is hazy. It's cheap on amazon so I'll get it and see if it's the one. Thanks! Could it also have been Mysteries of the Unexplained?  I own it and definitely remember all the stories you mention.
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May 6, 2011 15:58
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Orzo posted:Speaking of puzzle books, here's another one I now recall owning but I don't know the name. It was an illustrated 'maze' book, but each maze was some sort of real-life situation, not arbitrary walls all over the place (navigating the rooms of a ship, hedges outside a castle combined with the castle itself, pipes that drip into a vat, etc). There were 3 siblings that traveled to all of these locations of 3 ages, each page had 3 puzzles, with the oldest one being assigned the most difficult one. Anyone? Amazing Mazes, by Rolf Heimann. I was asking for that same book earlier in the thread.
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May 6, 2011 22:10
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I'm trying to remember a couple books I read back in 5th or 6th grade. The first one was about three sisters who were supposed to go to their aunts for the rest of summer vacation for some reason, but they snuck back to their island cottage and had to fend for themselves for like the last few weeks of their summer vacation. I remember that the oldest sister was named Alice, and wanted to be an actress and the youngest liked to glue periwinkles on things. The other book I'm trying to remember was called "ten speed babysitter" about a guy who was looking after somebody kid, but whenever I search for that title I come up with some totally different book. It was in the same vein as 'Johnny's in the Basement' if that helps. I remember also that there was something about heating up rocks to keep newly hatched birds warm.
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May 7, 2011 17:16
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FetusSlapper posted:I'm trying to remember a couple books I read back in 5th or 6th grade. The first one was about three sisters who were supposed to go to their aunts for the rest of summer vacation for some reason, but they snuck back to their island cottage and had to fend for themselves for like the last few weeks of their summer vacation. I remember that the oldest sister was named Alice, and wanted to be an actress and the youngest liked to glue periwinkles on things. Anne Lindbergh's The Worry Week "'Just think - we'll be on the island and we won't have a worry in the world.' When her parents are forced to cut short the family's visit to their summer cottage on a Maine island, eleven-year-old Allegra Sloane and her sisters - thirteen-year-old Alice and seven-year-old Edith (aka Minnow) - decide they'd much rather spend a week alone on the island than languish in steamy Boston. So the ever resourceful Allegra concocts a plan for herself and her sisters to surreptitiously remain behind. "At first everything proceeds according to plan; the girls slip away from their parents (and avoid a visit to stuffy Aunt Edna) and the promise of freedom beckons brightly. Unfortunately, their plan has a few holes in it; when the girls return to the cottage they find it emptied of food. Allegra realizes it's up to her to provide for her impractical sisters. The bookish Alice is more interested in reading Nancy Drew stories and declaiming Shakespeare and Minnow is preoccupied with gluing seashells to every canister in the house."
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May 8, 2011 00:12
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I'm trying to remember a kids' picture book that was basically space aliens trying to explain cat behaviour, but being aliens they hilariously misinterpret everything. The illustrations are simple and sketchlike, with the same sort of feel as a New Yorker cartoon. The only thing I'm 100% sure about is that it appeared (in its entirety, I guess) in an issue of Cricket magazine, which I stopped getting in the early 90s so it's definitely nothing all that new. Any ideas?
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May 16, 2011 00:45
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This one has been annoying me for a while! I read it maybe 15 years ago. The book is set in the prehistoric world, and there is a tribe at the centre of it. It's a cold and wintry setting, perhaps in a forest. Twin boys are born - one of them is good and strong and tall and handsome, the other is evil and dark and weak and runty and so on. There's something about a raven feather, too. They grow up as rivals, and I think they're both in love with the same girl? Anyway, the shaman of the clan (who might be the runty twin - I'm not sure) rapes her, and she runs away, but I think she miscarries. Then another tribe comes into it somehow. I think there are light fantasy aspects (with prophecies, visions and so on) but mostly it's played straight. I'm sorry this is so vague. For years I thought it could be the Jean Auel books, but it's not. I think the paperback had a blue-ish cover with a picture of mammoths on it? It was also a terrible book. Even little 12-year old me could work that much out. I'd like to find it again for the comedy badness value.
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May 16, 2011 12:58
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EvilMoJoJoJo posted:This one has been annoying me for a while! That sounds like the Gears' People of the Wolf. There's a whole series of them. It definitely is, I looked up the cover and it's blue with mammoths. It's gotta be it.
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May 16, 2011 14:18
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A book I read ten years ago or more. Some kind of sci-fi, there was a war going on. Due to the immense distances involved forces would reach a destination to find that the whole scope of the conflict had changed, and many thousands of years had passed since they started their journey. I can't remember if this was due to stasis/sleep chambers or relativistic affects of lightspeed travel (or both). The main characters were a couple, seperated by the war and I think they each accepted that the other was probably dead. The woman possibly begins a lesbian relationship because everyone else is doing the same, but she's not really into it. By some huge concidence they both survive and end up in the same region of space and time. By this time heterosexual relationships are all but unheard of and their coupling is seen as a somewhat grotesque abberation. I think they retire to a planet/region specially set aside for ex-soldiers who have been seriously displaced in time. Some, all or most of these details may be incorrect. Any ideas?
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May 17, 2011 14:04
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Sanford posted:A book I read ten years ago or more. Some kind of sci-fi, there was a war going on. Due to the immense distances involved forces would reach a destination to find that the whole scope of the conflict had changed, and many thousands of years had passed since they started their journey. I can't remember if this was due to stasis/sleep chambers or relativistic affects of lightspeed travel (or both). Sounds like The Forever War.
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May 17, 2011 14:11
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Piell posted:Sounds like The Forever War. I would say that is most definitely it, I just finished it a few weeks ago and matches word for word with his description. Excellent book to boot.
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May 17, 2011 14:16
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That's it! Thanks guys 
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May 17, 2011 14:28
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I would have read this book in the early to mid Eighties in the UK, but I think it was set in the States. All I remember was the opening where a detective (private or police I can't remember) is shown a video that begins like a porno, with a man (I think he might have been the detectives partner) strapped down with two or three women surrounding him. One of them gives the man a blow job, and at the point where he's about to climax, she looks at the camera and puts in a set of metal teeth and proceeds to bite his penis off. I think the cover was blue.
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May 17, 2011 16:12
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Cavenagh posted:I would have read this book in the early to mid Eighties in the UK, but I think it was set in the States. All I remember was the opening where a detective (private or police I can't remember) is shown a video that begins like a porno, with a man (I think he might have been the detectives partner) strapped down with two or three women surrounding him. One of them gives the man a blow job, and at the point where he's about to climax, she looks at the camera and puts in a set of metal teeth and proceeds to bite his penis off.
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May 17, 2011 17:44
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2 books for the price of one! Ok, the first one I read maybe 10 years ago and from what I remember it was set in the near future. Someone created a plague that killed off non-whites or maybe just blacks? He set a failsafe that didn't kill people with green eyes. There was also a computer that changed numbers randomly on the side of a building that people thought was advertising. Also this one wealthy guy kept bragging how he could build up his fortune from selling pencils (libertarians yay) so someone dressed him like a hobo, hosed up his vocal cords and glued a cup full of pencils to his hand. If he fed a certain amount of money into his collar, then he would be free. Otherwise it would explode. Unfortunately I don't even remember the general plot. I have even less details on the second book unfortunately. It's a sci-fi novel with a an all-consuming alien force and a group of people, possibly from a military ship, are stranded in the alien world/ship. One guy interfaces with the alien technology somehow and gets his personality zapped because he absorbs too much information and becomes a human encyclopedia. I believe the book ended on a depressing note with the aliens being unstoppable. Sorry about the vagueness, I don't even know if these are good books or not but it's been bugging me.
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May 18, 2011 03:16
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Tagichatn posted:2 books for the price of one! Ok, the first one I read maybe 10 years ago and from what I remember it was set in the near future. Someone created a plague that killed off non-whites or maybe just blacks? He set a failsafe that didn't kill people with green eyes. There was also a computer that changed numbers randomly on the side of a building that people thought was advertising. Also this one wealthy guy kept bragging how he could build up his fortune from selling pencils (libertarians yay) so someone dressed him like a hobo, hosed up his vocal cords and glued a cup full of pencils to his hand. If he fed a certain amount of money into his collar, then he would be free. Otherwise it would explode. Unfortunately I don't even remember the general plot. Sewer, Gas, Electric
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May 18, 2011 04:50
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Engelbrecht posted:Philip Jose Farmer, Image of the Beast. (Or possibly the omnibus of it and its sequel, Blown.) That's the one. Thank you so much.
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May 18, 2011 16:10
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I have one: This was a very short story that I read in the late nineties, that was from a collection of short stories by various authors. The collection was aimed at young adults and I think another of the short stories in there was "The White Circle" by John Bell Clayton. Anyway, the story I'm thinking of was about a boy who lives in a forest with his parents and he wears a silver (possibly golden) spoon around his neck at all times. He befriends a girl who is a magician's servant and she convinces the boy to steal her master's magical eye.. for some reason (I'm a bit hazy on that part). The wizard has one eye that he uses to see, like normal, and the other eye keeps all his magic in place... Anyway, I'd love it if anyone could tell me the name of the story and/or the compilation.
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May 18, 2011 19:13
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This ones been driving me nuts for ages and I need to relocate it, I got it out from the public library a few years ago: Basically it is set in eighties communist China where the Olympics has been replaced with a system of cruel comedy and the government is desperate to find a champion who is infact related to a almost hundred year old Boxer Rebellion Monk. They 'aquire' him and do all sorts of things to gently caress with body and his head for his training. He then peels his face off at the end during the Olypmics on international TV and the final paragraph is about a nuclear war between China and the rest of the world.
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May 20, 2011 23:36
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This was a book I read maybe 2 years ago. It's set in a train and have a short text on all the 250 (roughly) passengers aboard the train. Including one pidgeon. Ring any bells?
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May 24, 2011 15:59
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BattyKiara posted:This was a book I read maybe 2 years ago. It's set in a train and have a short text on all the 250 (roughly) passengers aboard the train. Including one pidgeon. vvv Cheers! vvv Runcible Cat fucked around with this message at 18:06 on May 24, 2011 |
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May 24, 2011 16:12
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Engelbrecht posted:Geoff Ryman, 253. Yes! Thank you!
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May 24, 2011 17:26
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posting for a friend: I remember aaages ago someone on LJ describing a book (or was it a short story), not interested in the book but I want to see the cover again. It was about a dog that drowned and stayed at the bottom of the river and the cover had a dog skeleton with all the water forming it's fur and such sounds morbid but it was really pretty
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May 24, 2011 21:07
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Read a book way the hell back in middle school, can't remember what it was and the memory of it's been plaguing me for years. The detail that sticks out the most at me is that it took place on some other planet or some other world, where there was a sort of dog-like (?) creature referred to as Miacis? I think that was its name? According to Wikipedia that's the genus of a prehistoric carnivore, but I was hoping it could help me with like "references in pop culture"...no dice. There may have been like psychic powers involved or something like that. Vague memory of being like "dang this book is wack."
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May 26, 2011 04:28
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I just started thinking of a book I read in high school but I'm realizing how vague it all sounds. It's basically the story of this older hobo/tramp. He had a family but hosed it all up somehow and I don't really remember him doing much throughout the story but talking to other homeless people on streets and in shelters. Toward the middle-end he goes back to his family but I don't remember it being a happy reunion. I thought he brings them a turkey or something. I can't remember the ending, if it was happy or if he stayed homeless. It was very far from riveting and I'm pretty sure it was one of those books that is mostly read by students or book groups. I know I don't have much but try any story with a homeless protagonist, because google is giving me nothing.
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May 26, 2011 08:00
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my dog boyfriend!!! posted:Read a book way the hell back in middle school, can't remember what it was and the memory of it's been plaguing me for years. The detail that sticks out the most at me is that it took place on some other planet or some other world, where there was a sort of dog-like (?) creature referred to as Miacis? I think that was its name? According to Wikipedia that's the genus of a prehistoric carnivore, but I was hoping it could help me with like "references in pop culture"...no dice. Could it be this? Prehistoric Earth + psychic powers, but I don't remember Miacis specifically.
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May 26, 2011 09:04
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my dog boyfriend!!! posted:Read a book way the hell back in middle school, can't remember what it was and the memory of it's been plaguing me for years. The detail that sticks out the most at me is that it took place on some other planet or some other world, where there was a sort of dog-like (?) creature referred to as Miacis? I think that was its name? According to Wikipedia that's the genus of a prehistoric carnivore, but I was hoping it could help me with like "references in pop culture"...no dice.
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May 26, 2011 11:48
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Fatkraken posted:posting for a friend: Dave Eggers wrote a short story from a dog's perspective called After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned (which you can easily find online), but I do not recall coming across such an illustration. Fanart, maybe?
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May 28, 2011 16:06
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Hi Book Barn, Over in the CAD Mock Thread in BSS, we're trying to remember an old science fiction story I read when I was a kid. Society had invented regeneration/resurrection technology and put it to work for entertainment. Actors got lucrative contracts to star on a network that made old-fashioned TV serials, where their in-story fates were decided by audience voting. Is the fort's door strong enough to hold off the attack, or is it overrun and everyone inside shot full of arrows? Does the hero save the girl in time, or is she hit by the oncoming train? Does the hero escape, or does he suffer through a half-hour unbroken-shot torture scene? All the action is real, for maximum entertainment. Call 1-800-555-1234 to vote. Everything was fine for actors when they were fresh and new and the audience was sympathetic, but eventually they got boring and familiar, so detached sadism started to kick in. The scenes got worse and worse, and the thing nobody told the actors up front was that all that they would remember all that pain (and never get used to it - the nerves regenerate too). Eventually some of them went crazy, trying to find increasingly gruesome deaths in hopes that maybe they'd find something so complete that the resurrection machine couldn't bring them back. We remember that the viewpoint character watches the Western serial and realizes that the fort is doomed, because they have women and children and that kind of gore always sells, and that one of the actors finally escapes, by feeding himself whole and alive to a lion, so there are no body parts left to regenerate. A few of us have been puzzling over this for the afternoon now. Can anyone here help us out?
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May 31, 2011 00:58
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I was wondering if you guys could help me with the name of a children's series of books I read back in, like, second grade. I think they were written for like a 10-12 range, but it might have been younger. It was about a group of kids who could travel to another world by touching a soccer ball (I think) in one of the kids' basements. In that world they met up with a woman who I'm pretty sure was a princess, I think she was kind of Arabian and had a magic carpet--I'm reasonably sure about the princess part, almost sure about the magic carpet because I seem to remember a scene where they all fly on the carpet up a mountain, but the Arabian thing might just be because I remember that my mental image immediately became Princess Jasmine from Disney's Aladdin once I read the "princess with a magic carpet" bit. They had to fight against a villain that I remember being pretty goofy-looking. I'm pretty sure he had a real generic villain-name with a title in front of it--General or Lord or whatever. I remember his introduction was him rolling across a bridge in a tank or tank-like vehicle. Does anyone know what I'm jabbering about, I'm just kind of throwing out all my scattered memories that gave been retained for over a decade? Sorry for being real vague and for all the "maybe but I don't remember  " but like I said it's been about 12 or thirteen years and I was like seven when I read them. Hopefully the magic soccer ball being a portal to another world is distinctive enough that all the vague nonsense is just supplemental information. Anyway, don't stress it too hard because it's not like I want to rush out and buy these books for eight-year-olds right now, but something made me think about them the other day and I loved them as a kid, it would be nice to look them up.
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May 31, 2011 01:35
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WeaponGradeSadness posted:I was wondering if you guys could help me with the name of a children's series of books I read back in, like, second grade. I think they were written for like a 10-12 range, but it might have been younger. It was about a group of kids who could travel to another world by touching a soccer ball (I think) in one of the kids' basements. In that world they met up with a woman who I'm pretty sure was a princess, I think she was kind of Arabian and had a magic carpet--I'm reasonably sure about the princess part, almost sure about the magic carpet because I seem to remember a scene where they all fly on the carpet up a mountain, but the Arabian thing might just be because I remember that my mental image immediately became Princess Jasmine from Disney's Aladdin once I read the "princess with a magic carpet" bit. They had to fight against a villain that I remember being pretty goofy-looking. I'm pretty sure he had a real generic villain-name with a title in front of it--General or Lord or whatever. I remember his introduction was him rolling across a bridge in a tank or tank-like vehicle. Does anyone know what I'm jabbering about, I'm just kind of throwing out all my scattered memories that gave been retained for over a decade? This one? http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Stairs-Magic-Carpet-Secrets/dp/0590108395
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May 31, 2011 01:45
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