The identify that story/book thread: Home of the gas pump boy

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The identify that story/book thread: Home of the gas pump boy

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

A young adult fantasy novel with two teenage boys who don't like each other very much that get sucked into fantasy land. They each have, for some reason, a magical stone, each one like half of a yin-yang. They also have magic bottles and bowls that become filled with whatever food/drink they want. They have to learn to work together so they can fight some wolf thing. Fenris, I just remembered, that was the name of the wolf-thing.

Edit: I read it in the '80's, based on the barely remembered cover art I'd say it's from the '70's.

Ballsworthy fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Jun 21, 2008

# ¿ Jun 18, 2008 22:06

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 16:56

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

LittleSunshine posted:

Aha! Hero From Otherwhere by Jay Williams. Knew it rang a bell, but took this long for enough to click in my memory so I could find it.

Awesome. The name didn't quite click, but then I looked up the cover art.

Yup, that's the one, thanks. Now to decide whether the nostalgia value is high enough to pay a ridiculous amount of money for an out of print mass market paperback.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2008 18:37

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

JoeNotCharles posted:

"Young adult" fantasy that involves "groin ticking" which is completely non-sexual, no, it's "just to mess with him"... that's definitely Piers Anthony.

Yeah, but how do you read a Xanth book and not know it's a Xanth book?

# ¿ Jun 26, 2008 17:10

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

A book I read in the early '90s, I believe it's a little older than that. It was written by a Canadian teenager, he had won an award for the novel, and it was about a teenaged boy who made life-sized dragon-men out of metal exoskeletons and rubber skins. He went to a rock concert and got a concussion, and after this his dragon-men creations started coming to life and tried to kill him. It was really loving good.

Edit: answered my own, it's called Dragon Fall, by Lee J. Hindle.

Ballsworthy fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Jun 29, 2008

# ¿ Jun 29, 2008 10:09

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

A book or story in which a son is forced by his (rich) father to eat strawberries wrapped in gold foil. I think it's something I've read within the last few years. I'm not really looking to re-read it or anything, I've just been bugged because I can't remember what the hell it's from.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2008 23:41

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

yaffle posted:

Maybe "Arthur Rex" by Thomas Berger?

http://www.amazon.com/Arthur-Rex-Legendary-Thomas-Berger/dp/0316091464/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1225078380&sr=8-1

which everybody should read...

Seconding the "everybody should read", it's very funny and one of the raunchier books I've ever read that weren't full-fledged erotica. Was the one you read full-on filthy-durty, Commissar? Because if not, A. Rex is not the book you're looking for.

Ballsworthy fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Oct 27, 2008

# ¿ Oct 27, 2008 16:31

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

Commissar posted:

drat. I'm never going to find this book.

Throwing out one more: The Boy's King Arthur? It's pretty much a direct retelling of Malory, with some ridiculously good artwork. I can't recall specifically if it has sheet music in it, but I would be the opposite of surprised to find that it does.

http://www.amazon.com/BOYS-ARTHUR-DELUXE-Scribner-Classics/dp/0684191180/ref=ed_oe_h

If that's not it, this volume will almost certainly help in your search: http://www.amazon.com/New-Arthurian-Encyclopedia-Paperback-Humanities/dp/0815323034/ref=sid_dp_dp

I'm actually thinking about picking up that Encyclopedia myself, it looks pretty interesting.

Edit: should have thought of this earlier, but I just sent an email to my mother, who happens to be a middle-school librarian with an Arthur fixation (which is evidently a congenital disorder).

Edit the 2nd: She didn't know off the top of her head, but is going to do a little research.

Ballsworthy fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Oct 28, 2008

# ¿ Oct 28, 2008 22:32

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

AlbinoHagfish posted:

This one has been driving me nuts. A while ago I remember reading a Cthulhu-mythos based short story that I just can't find in any of my collections.

It's about a future/world where gods are purchasable as pets, and a boy is denied his request for a dog in favor of a pet god. His parents take him to a sort of god dealership which I remember as a cavern. They travel past a variety of gods from different pantheons and end up in a weird side chamber with the more messed up Lovecraftian types. He picks up one of them and takes it home.

It ends up getting jealous of his other friends and devouring them or something. I don't really remember. It was a weird mix of animal loyalty and malevolent intent. I worry sometimes I dreamed it up, but I'm dead certain I read it somewhere. I tried Google and got nothing. Does anyone remember anything like this?

Well, you didn't dream it, I've read it too, but I'll be damned if I can remember anything more than what you posted. That's the problem with being a short story junkie, I guess; they're a lot harder to keep track of than novels.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2008 18:39

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

Atimo posted:

I read a Dean Koontiz (spelling??) book when I was about 12 that featured a womans ex-husband die, but then turn into some weird monster thing and chase her around trying to kill her.

For the life of me now I can't remember the name of it, or even if thats the right author, i've looked at booklists from him and not found anything that sounded right.

I want to read it again after my grandma took it away saying it was evil and handed me a Daniel Steele book in return years ago.

Any ideas?

If it was Koontz, and you do manage to find it and read it, you'll just end up posting about it later in the "Horrible Books" thread. Serious.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2008 17:15

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

Ballsworthy posted:

A book or story in which a son is forced by his (rich) father to eat strawberries wrapped in gold foil. I think it's something I've read within the last few years. I'm not really looking to re-read it or anything, I've just been bugged because I can't remember what the hell it's from.

Reposting this because it's still bugging me. A couple more details: the scene above is a flashback, and boy becomes very ill.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2008 18:01

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

A short story about a boy that gets a fancy Koi that turns large, amphibious and carnivorous. Told from the POV of the boy barricaded in his bedroom, the fish starts bashing down his door at the end of the story. I read it when I was fairly young, in the mid-late 80's.

Also, a collection of horror stories centered around children that I am pretty sure did not contain the story above; I read it in the early 90's, probably, and it may have been YA, but it just as easily could have been adult. (Well, not adult adult. You know what I mean.) It was all horror stories that used children as a major plot focus, which means, of course, that they were all loving terrifying.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2008 04:24

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

Iraff posted:

There was a short story I read quite a while ago about a dystopian future where everyone is the same. Ballerinas all wear masks so that no one is prettier than anyone else, and they all wear sandbags so that none are more graceful than the others. The main character is exceptionally intelligent, so he has something in his ear that periodically scrambles his thoughts.

He and his wife are watching a ballet on TV when someone comes into the ballet hall. He has apparently escaped from jail, and he's covered in chains due to his copious muscle matter. He ends up taking one of the ballerinas as his bride, and they began to dance, unmasked, on live television. Regrettably, some authority figure comes in and kills them both immediately.

The man watching television realizes that it's his son on TV, but his thoughts become scrambled before he can completely realize it.

Kurt Vonnegut, can't remember the name of the story, but it's the same as the name of the man that gets taken by the police. I think it's from Welcome to the Monkey House.

Edit: Harrison Bergeron is the name of the story.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2009 17:55

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

Mikey Purp posted:

Aren't they making a movie based on this short?

Edit: NM, they already did, in 1995 apparently.

No, you're right, there's a short film coming out this summer based on the '95 made-for-TV movie.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2009 00:15

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

This just came up in the PKD thread and now it's bugging the poo poo out of me. A Dick short story, probably early but I cannot confirm this, in which he espouses the idea that paranoia is really just ESP and a paranoid is picking up the negative thoughts people have about him. No idea what the actual plot of the story is, although I have confirmed that it is not Retreat Syndrome.

VVV That sure sounds right, and until I can verify I'm willing to call it right, thanks.

Ballsworthy fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Feb 9, 2009

# ¿ Jan 30, 2009 00:41

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

A book (novella, really) I read a couple years ago that I'm pretty sure was written in the sixties. Italian author, I think, but written in English. I don't remember the details of the plot, but it's a mother and her son at a boarding house, the mother is getting involved in an affair with a traveling salesman(?), there's a disapproving Eastern European woman involved as well, possibly runs the boarding house. A ridiculously good book, very funny and sad and sexy, I think the title contains the word "starlight", but I haven't been able to find it by that.

Another book (a massive tome this time) by the same author that I never finished was very funny and absurd, but failed to keep me interested. It was just about a group of acquaintances that hung out at a bar (or possibly a cafe) in New York, they all had nicknames, and nothing much really happened.

Edit: It just came to me, Aberration of Starlight, by Gilbert Sorrentino (I was wrong about publication date). Goddamn it's a good book.

Holy poo poo, his son was the guy that wrote Believeniks!: 2005: The Year We Wrote a Book About the Mets with Jonathan Lethem. I guess I should read some of his son's books, then.

Ballsworthy fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Mar 17, 2009

# ¿ Mar 17, 2009 18:46

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

Unkempt posted:

An old SF book, 60s or around there. It starts in a magazine office, National Geographic or Nature or something, and they're trying to find their oldest subscriber; someone notices that there's a guy who's had a subscription for around a hundred years. They think it's probably several generations of people with the same name but go and meet him anyway, and of course it turns out it's just one man who's been getting it all that time, and after that I can't remember a thing about the book. Anyone?

Kinda sounds like an A E van Vogt story, but I'm not sure. I'll poke through my van Vogt collection when I get home, I'm pretty sure he had something that was at least similar to this. I'm definitely thinking of a story, but a lot of his shorts got expanded into novels so that's not necessarily a deal-breaker.

# ¿ Jun 16, 2009 20:23

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

Incitatus posted:

Looking for a book where a pawn shop owner is feeding books to demonic dogs that he keeps and there is one character who is buying up the books in town to save them.

For a second I thought this was the recommendation thread and was all, drat, that's pretty specific.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2009 16:31

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

screwtape posted:

Been occasionally seeking this book out over the years. Read it when I was around 9 or 10, so 1991-92. Horror book, the author was popular back then, I remember waiting a couple weeks to get the book. There's possession (demonic perhaps), a possessed house, a young student and maybe an older professor. it was a friend of the student that was possessed.

I wish I had more details. I remember the book creeping me out. Want to figure out who the author is. Like I said, popular kids author, late 80s- early 90s. not rl stine goddammit.

John Bellairs! I can't remember which one that is specifically, but it's one of the Johnny Dixon novels, possibly The Spell of the Sorceror's Skull or The Revenge of the Wizard's Ghost.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2009 16:54

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

fahrvergnugen posted:

Okay, here's one:

The title is something along the lines of "The Horrible Teachers vs. the Splendid Children," and it's about teachers using mind control to corral in creativity and brightness among unruly classrooms.

As I recall, Evil Won, which blew my mind when I was 9 years old. No luck looking for the title and googling has given me bupkis, anyone have an idea?

Bang: http://www.amazon.com/Between-Pitiful-Teachers-Splendid-Kids/dp/0380578026

Great book.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2009 21:27

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

NinjaDebugger posted:

There's no earthquake sword, but there is Stonecutter, so it sounds pretty much like you're looking for Fred Saberhagen's Books of the Swords series.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_of_the_Swords

Be forewarned: they are not as good as you remember them.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2010 16:42

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

Mnemosyne posted:

Your description was way more detailed than most of the posts in this thread (or similar groups around the internet). "I read this book, and it was blue. I think there was a boy in it. I really liked it, do you know what it was?"

Lonesome Boy by Arna Bontemps

# ¿ Feb 22, 2010 21:16

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

Ara posted:

I vaguely remember reading this choose-your-own-adventure book in my middle school library that was maybe set on an island with dinosaurs. At least I remember that there was a part where you're running away on the beach and maybe got eaten by an Allosaurus. I have no idea if this was a bigger-name book or one of the thousands of

There were a couple Time Machine (which was a subset of the CYOA line) books about dinosaurs, I think the first one, Search for Dinosaurs, had a pretty prominent Allosaur encounter.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2010 01:14

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

al-azad posted:

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.

Is it the book that's linked two posts above yours?

# ¿ Oct 13, 2010 19:55

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

wheatpuppy posted:

I think you're looking for The Diamond in the Window, by Jane Langton.

I can confirm this is it, the nautilus part freaked me the gently caress out as a kid.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2010 19:08

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

Hughlander posted:

It's a really famous short story and I just read it in the last month...

http://www.webscription.net/chapters/0743498747/0743498747___5.htm Black Destroyer by A.E. Van Vongt.

He also turned it into the first part of the novel Voyage of the Space Beagle, which is largely cobbled together from earlier shorts, so you may know it by that name instead of Black Destroyer.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2011 21:31

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

Wildtortilla posted:

Last week I saw a book in Barnes & Noble about a black, former boxer, who is now a detective (in NYC I believe). The author is a black, friendly looking fellow. I have not the slightest idea what the title was or the author's name. It was on a "new titles for $6.99 and under" display and I didn't buy it... today I returned and it wasn't there and I've been kicking myself in the rear end since. The entire display was the same, except the book I was going to buy wasn't there.

Does anyone know what book I'm talking looking for?

Fiction? Sounds like it could be Walter Mosley.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2011 16:16

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

^^^ John Collier's pretty much my favorite short story author and he wrote for Twilight Zone, check him out.

titus androgynous posted:

1. A short story I first read about in a thread here. It takes place in a small town on a future Earth in which the laws of physics are subject to change randomly and without warning. A load of people have died that way and the remaining citizens are pretty nihilistic about it. I distinctly remember one scene where a man's beer changes into something unstable and explodes in his hand, and another scene where the sidewalk suddenly melts and a guy is sucked into it before it changes back.

Robert McCammon, Something Passed By is the name of the story I think, it's from his collection Blue World.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2011 17:57

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

katka posted:

Thanks, that's it exactly. I'm not familiar with the author however, is he not very good?

He's pretty much the definition of hack.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2011 23:29

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

The Duke of Avon posted:

I'm not holding out much hope on this one, but on the off-chance someone's read it:

I'm looking for a kids book (middle-grade, I guess, separate chapters but not very long) that had to have been published prior to the 1990s. It's about a boy whose parents have to go away for a day or two, so they get this older girl to look after him. The kids somehow end up in the woods in the middle of a blizzard, and they run into this pilot who's also stranded there because he crashed his plane. Eventually they get rescued (by helicopter, I think).

...Anyone? The only reason I'm convinced this thing is real anymore is because my cousin claims to have read it.

It sounds like it could be a Gary Paulsen novel, he wrote a ton of books like that going back to the 70s.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2011 16:10

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

nucleicmaxid posted:

1. I was listening to NPR the other day, and a woman was on reviewing a book. It was kinda post-apocalyptic, or maybe sci-fi-ish and the author was like Kommik? Or Cohmicks or something? It was written in the 20's or 30's, I think? Anyway. One thing that stands out was that they worshiped a Carburetor as a God, and it was kinda satirical or something? It was on My Favorite Books last week, or the week before, I was just driving and not paying a lot of attention.

Yeah I wanna read this now.

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/21/135241076/a-rollicking-critique-of-absolute-religious-fervor

# ¿ Apr 26, 2011 03:25

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

Pretty sure that's Moorcock's Black Corridor.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2011 23:33

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

ce gars posted:

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.

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

# ¿ May 5, 2011 16:56

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

The Encyclopedia of Things that Never Were?

http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Things-That-Never-Were/dp/0140100083

# ¿ Jun 25, 2011 01:36

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

Whoops try the hardcover, first American edition was 1987. There's a few examples of the artwork there too.

Ballsworthy fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Jun 25, 2011

# ¿ Jun 25, 2011 01:55

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 16:56

Ballsworthy: Apr 30, 2008; yup

Wapole Languray posted:

When I was a kid, I had a book about these really stupid fake dinosaurs. Like, it was about a fictional dinosaur-like species that liven on a fake not-Pangaea called Thingamajiga or something. They were all horribly designed fake dinosaurs and were like, all stupid puns and jokes. It was written like an introductory children's science book, walking through the evolution of the fake-dinosaur things. Some of them I remember was a T-Rex thing that was a big dinosaur with a tiny head giving a piggyback ride to a tiny dinosaur with a giant head. One was a Duodiplodicus, which had tails on both ends. The Triceratops analogue had the horns and crest on its butt instead of its head. I can't find it because the name was a silly pun, and I can't remember it.

Dodosaurs

# ¿ May 18, 2013 01:37

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The identify that story/book thread: Home of the gas pump boy