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That sounds very pIausabIe, yes
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Jan 30, 2023 13:30
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It reminds me of an Encyclopedia Brown story wherein young Encyclopedia is convinced that his neighbour is a spy, and it turns out that he's a member of Overeaters Anonymous but is also sneaking out to eat cake.
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Jan 30, 2023 15:54
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A book I read about six years ago but it's probably a bit older than that. Set in the UK, it's bunch of letters between old friends who have drifted apart. One dude is a total rear end in a top hat and is cheating on his wife with one of the female friends. They have sex in a tent in a public park and are nearly caught when a dog walker stumbles on them. Two of the male friends exchange letters and there are some really funny exchanges where they're both oblivious to how gay they are and they eventually end up in a loving relationship with eachother. I think the group initially start writing to eachother because one of their old female friends died in mysterious circumstances? I read this the same time I read The Curious Case of The Dog in the Nighttime.
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Jan 31, 2023 02:13
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Kosmo Gallion posted:A book I read about six years ago but it's probably a bit older than that. Set in the UK, it's bunch of letters between old friends who have drifted apart. One dude is a total rear end in a top hat and is cheating on his wife with one of the female friends. They have sex in a tent in a public park and are nearly caught when a dog walker stumbles on them. I doubt this is it but maybe 'Unfaithfully Yours' by Nigel Williams.
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Feb 3, 2023 22:13
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I read this book a few years ago on mybooks so it is out of print and was written in the 1800s possibly early 1900s. It’s about a man who is falsely accused of a crime or framed or something by his friend. I think they are both lawyers. He is sent to Australia and is a convict and the friend steals his fiancée. The convict eventually makes his way to India, I think, and gets a job as a bookkeeper. There he reunites with the girl but she doesn’t recognize him and now she is engaged to the backstabbing friend who works for her father’s shipping company. The fiancé is importing 2 boats from India, one carrying lead and one carrying gold, but arranges for the cargo to be switched for an insurance scam and plans to sink the boat carrying “gold”. The fiancée is supposed to travel back to England on the boat that isn’t going to sink, but she gets sick and misses it so she gets on the other boat instead. The convict also gets on the boat. When it sinks they end up shipwrecked and fall in love. Meanwhile her father goes on a mission to search for her and finds them and then eventually they both return and the fiancé/backstabbing friend gets his comeuppance at the end. Ring any bells? Please help.
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Feb 5, 2023 04:48
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Lot 49 posted:I doubt this is it but maybe 'Unfaithfully Yours' by Nigel Williams. Oh wow, it was this! Thank you. I went through a huge list of epistolatory novels but nothing jumped out at me. I'd completely forgotten the private detective thread.
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Feb 5, 2023 14:44
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Purple trillium posted:I read this book a few years ago on mybooks so it is out of print and was written in the 1800s possibly early 1900s. 'Foul Play' by Charles Reade and Dion Boucicault. This was hard to find.
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Feb 8, 2023 12:59
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Lot 49 posted:'Foul Play' by Charles Reade and Dion Boucicault. Yes! Thank you!
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Feb 8, 2023 22:00
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I read a science fiction book a few years ago, which was a vaguely cyberpunk story about a private detective in a fictional city. I remember very little about the actual plot, but a significant feature of the world was that almost every woman in the city was effectively transgender, including the protagonist's initial love interest. For some reason, it was vanishingly rare to run into a cisgender woman. It wasn't dealt with that delicately, of course, which made me think the book might've been older than I thought; the topic was in this strange place where it was both a constantly-discussed part of the narrative and also not particularly relevant to what was ostensibly the main storyline. (I'm trying to be delicate about this. I apologize if I've failed.) Any ideas what book this might've been? Edit: Someone DM'd me, and I'm now reasonably certain this was George Effinger's When Gravity Falls. Thank you. Wanderer fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Feb 16, 2023 |
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Feb 16, 2023 03:47
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Nobody in the horror thread responded so maybe someone here knows. I definitely read this in the last 2 years but I don't see it in any of the anthologies I read, might have been an online thingOpopanax posted:That's reminding me of a short story I read recently but can't remember now, it was basically just an insurance form drawn up for a tour through a real haunted house, but I can't find it in any of the books I read last year, anyone know what I'm talking about?
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Feb 16, 2023 05:40
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Opopanax posted:Nobody in the horror thread responded so maybe someone here knows. I definitely read this in the last 2 years but I don't see it in any of the anthologies I read, might have been an online thing Are you sure it was a work of fiction? A "real" haunted house had it's waiver leaked a few years back and it went viral. Here's a reddit thread talking about it with links to some of the more extreme clauses. https://www.reddit.com/r/horror/comments/dn0sef/mckamey_manor_waivers_leaked/
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Feb 16, 2023 10:36
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That reads like some dude watched hostel a few times whole hammered and thought he could goon zipline the project along.
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Feb 16, 2023 12:53
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Lot 49 posted:Are you sure it was a work of fiction? It was definitely fiction, the place was actually haunted and people would usually die a few days later if they saw the ghost so there were all kinds of rules
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Feb 16, 2023 17:13
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So a discussion with some friends about alien first contact reminded me of a short story I read ages about aliens visiting us for some reason and the President showing footage of war, including child soldiers, show show that humans are all brutal and horrible, in order to dissuade them from invading us or something. Then the whole thing ends with the aliens being so impressed by the footage that they're taking everyone in as soldiers instead. Can't for the life of me remember what it was called though. The only other thing I can remember is that it was in a published anthology about aliens that also had the following stories that I can remember: -A boy finds a large talking alien spider in his attic, it ends with him being captured after finding out it had cocooned his parents. -A story about an alien ship coming to earth and the president being hesitant about doing something about it, much to the frustration of one of his generals. It ends with the general shooting the president and taking his position.
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Feb 17, 2023 18:03
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One or two short stories I read at least 5 years ago. Don't remember if it was online or in an anthology. One might be a flashback in the other, or they're different stories entirely. I think they were written in English, but it might have been Swedish (they take place in Sweden, or maybe Norway). A: An author or historian, something like that is staying in a remote cabin to write. There's only one neighbor who lives miles away, who delivers mail or groceries, or maybe the narrator goes to pick up stuff? There's a lake, and something mythological about it, and about how when the light is just right a kind of vague magic thing happens. I seem to remember it both being winter and there being fireflies, so I can't trust either of those "hints". B: A woman is looking back on when the whole family went to the family cabin after her grandma died. Every item in the cabin (dresses, furniture, tools) bring little flashbacks of her interactions with her grandma, and the weird stories she heard, hints and allegations, that maybe she was an elf or a selkie who was taken by her grandpa (or maybe it was grandpa that was a jotun or something, either way). Might be Karin Tidbeck, but I can't seem to find any that fits? Carthag Tuek fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Mar 3, 2023 |
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Mar 3, 2023 21:18
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I got a request from my cousin:quote:Once again I am playing with the vague shadow of a memory of an enigma of a mystery of a book I once read long ago as a youth and all I remember is that like the academic kids like rebelled against society and started a new one and it was like in the sewers and like one of them was like really irritating cuz he kept being late since they were like living in the sewers restructuring society and was it a fever dream This also sounds vaguely familiar to me, but I can't place it. Any ideas?
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Mar 3, 2023 21:22
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John Lee posted:I got a request from my cousin: was it like written in like the valley in like the 80s?
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Mar 3, 2023 21:24
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sorry thats mean
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Mar 3, 2023 21:24
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Carthag Tuek posted:sorry thats mean lol it's fine
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Mar 3, 2023 21:52
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Carthag Tuek posted:One or two short stories I read at least 5 years ago. Don't remember if it was online or in an anthology. One might be a flashback in the other, or they're different stories entirely. I think they were written in English, but it might have been Swedish (they take place in Sweden, or maybe Norway). The second one is almost certainly "Some Letters for Ove Lindström" from Tidbeck's "Jagannath" collection. The first one sounds similar to "Brita's Holiday Village" from the same collection, but there aren't any fireflies. Lots of pupae, though.
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Mar 4, 2023 13:49
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John Lee posted:I got a request from my cousin: The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids?
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Mar 4, 2023 14:41
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A short story about a family moving in to a new house and discovering a small spot of mold that they can't get out of the wallpaper no matter what they try, it eventually turns out to actually be an alien organism that takes over the father of the family, who gets chained up in a spare room, eventually luring in the son to whom it explains that the mold can only infect men, and needs them as hosts... I forget whether it's purely for survival or explicitly to reproduce. The story ends on a dark note, with the son failing to escape and ending up as the next host of the mold.
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Mar 5, 2023 23:27
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Runcible Cat posted:The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids? No dice, but that book sounds weird as hell, thanks!
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Mar 6, 2023 01:17
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SimonChris posted:The second one is almost certainly "Some Letters for Ove Lindström" from Tidbeck's "Jagannath" collection. Nice, thanks! 
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Mar 6, 2023 09:10
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I'm looking for a book - that was probably also a trilogy or at least had more than one entry - that was a sort of sci-fi/fantasy story about an advanced race from another world (that may or may not have had blue skin?) that conquered another, more primitive world and its people, and it was set some time after the conquest. I can't really remember many details other than all the native animals of the conquered planet had six legs (and I think the invaders' had four), and there might have been a thing about an invader turning into one of the conquered people or having their body switched or something. This was a very long time ago so I'm sorry for being vague, I just remember it being interesting as a teenager and never getting around to finishing the book - I think it was quite long. It may also be obscure and/or bad, I really wasn't that picky back then.
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Mar 7, 2023 10:29
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This absolutely sounds like the plot of Avatar half remembered.
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Mar 7, 2023 10:58
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The_Doctor posted:This absolutely sounds like the plot of Avatar half remembered. It was definitely written before Avatar, but who knows, maybe James Cameron stumbled across it in a fever dream and mashed it up with Pocahontas and Dances with Wolves.
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Mar 7, 2023 11:18
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Autisanal Cheese posted:I'm looking for a book - that was probably also a trilogy or at least had more than one entry - that was a sort of sci-fi/fantasy story about an advanced race from another world (that may or may not have had blue skin?) that conquered another, more primitive world and its people, and it was set some time after the conquest. I can't really remember many details other than all the native animals of the conquered planet had six legs (and I think the invaders' had four), and there might have been a thing about an invader turning into one of the conquered people or having their body switched or something. Made me think of Fenrille by Christopher Rowley (I don't think its it but might scratch a similar itch)https://www.goodreads.com/series/97573-fenrille The war for eternity and the black ship were written first, the two before that were later prequels.
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Mar 7, 2023 11:50
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looking for the name of this: 1. black woman author, people lived in space inside whales. the main character worked in the bloodstreams/arteries for awhile. then i think she found a whale fetus and started talking to it. she finds another space whale society but they do everything differently.. somehow the fetus whale is key to the plot.
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Mar 9, 2023 00:54
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Edgar Allan Pwned posted:looking for the name of this: Escaping Exodus by Nicky Drayden.
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Mar 9, 2023 01:02
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Trying to remember the name of a book I read sometime in the early to mid 2000s. I went to look up the title yesterday because I was SO confident that it was either a Ursula K. Leguin book or a Madeleine L’Engle book but I scoured the synopses of their bibliographies and nothing similar turned up. I must have misremembered because I could not find this thing anywhere in there. It was a science fiction/fantasy juvenile or YA book, I think probably written in the 70s or 80s based on the style/content but I’m not 100% positive. The main thing I remember was that it was about two siblings who rode around on giant sentient blue butterflies (who were also siblings.) The butterflies were named Morpheus and Orpheus and at one point I’m pretty sure one of the butterfly bros was injured and/or died. The sibling protagonists flew on the butterfly bros' backs to different worlds, possibly thru space but maybe just like going to alternate dimensions I don’t remember--They went a lot of places but the only one I really remember is they went to the surface of the sun and found 2-dimensional triangle beings living there. Does anybody know what I’m talking about?? Was sure I could find this with a google search but so far no luck.
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Mar 10, 2023 19:27
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Owl at Home posted:Trying to remember the name of a book I read sometime in the early to mid 2000s. I went to look up the title yesterday because I was SO confident that it was either a Ursula K. Leguin book or a Madeleine L’Engle book but I scoured the synopses of their bibliographies and nothing similar turned up. I must have misremembered because I could not find this thing anywhere in there. Heartlight by T.A. Barron
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Mar 11, 2023 23:27
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A shorter book, maybe novella, where one of the side plots was that the dead in a town come back to life, but they are all trapped in their graves, and cant get out but can communicate to one another with their minds. This was a side plot not the main plot, which iirc (and I could be wrong) was less supernatural or not supernatural at all. Had a rather lighthearted feel too iirc.
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Mar 12, 2023 18:44
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A friend of mine is looking for a short story about an amnesiac shapeshifting alien who landed near a lumberjack camp, and ends up working with a psychiatrist under the assumption that restoring their original shape will also restore their memories. They read it back in the late 70s, so it's at least that old. Jonathan Hoag has been tentatively ruled out already.
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Mar 12, 2023 22:32
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Kvlt! posted:A shorter book, maybe novella, where one of the side plots was that the dead in a town come back to life, but they are all trapped in their graves, and cant get out but can communicate to one another with their minds. There's something like this in The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore.
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Mar 13, 2023 04:13
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BlankSystemDaemon posted:A friend of mine is looking for a short story about an amnesiac shapeshifting alien who landed near a lumberjack camp, and ends up working with a psychiatrist under the assumption that restoring their original shape will also restore their memories. I think I read something like that in one of the early Asimov/Greenberg, Great Science Fiction Stories anthologies which fits the time period Here's the sf database entry for the series https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?8662
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Mar 13, 2023 12:03
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fez_machine posted:I think I read something like that in one of the early Asimov/Greenberg, Great Science Fiction Stories anthologies which fits the time period Needless to say, if anyone remembers the exact title, that'd be helpful too.
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Mar 13, 2023 12:15
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I swear I asked this before in this thread but can't see it... Short story, was first in an anthology, the narrator visits an old friend at an observatory and learns that when a person dies, their soul travels out into space and becomes trapped inside an alien creature, where it remains for all eternity. The friend explains that these aliens are actually the physical manifestation of the soul and that they are all around us, undetectable until they consume a human soul. In the story, the narrator is able to observe the aliens and sees the souls of many historical figures, including Adolf Hitler. The story explores themes of mortality, the afterlife, and the nature of the soul.
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Mar 14, 2023 04:20
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Hughlander posted:I swear I asked this before in this thread but can't see it... I have no idea but this sounds an awful lot like it might be by L. Ron Hubbard...
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Mar 14, 2023 05:36
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yaffle posted:I have no idea but this sounds an awful lot like it might be by L. Ron Hubbard... I think I'd remember if it was.... I'm thinking like 70s new wave, James Tiptree Jr or something. It's really driving me crazy, it was the first story of the anthology I was reading and I read it like 13 years ago but I have no idea what it was.
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Mar 14, 2023 06:57
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