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There was this book in middle school where all I remember happening is that some bad dude was remotely controlling traffic lights to deliberately cause car crashes. The protagonist was either out there on the streets or too helpless to do something. Let me know if this rings any bells.
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Aug 30, 2016 00:17
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Stuff posted:There was this book in middle school where all I remember happening is that some bad dude was remotely controlling traffic lights to deliberately cause car crashes. The protagonist was either out there on the streets or too helpless to do something. Let me know if this rings any bells. That was Die Hard 4 by Bruce Willis
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Aug 30, 2016 00:25
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Bruce Willies, you say? I'm gonna check out some of his works.
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Aug 30, 2016 00:29
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Ein cooler Typ posted:it's Cam Jansen I think it was mentioned already I read the Cam Jansen book with a dinosaur-related mystery and... I think I would've remembered dinosaur-people so it's probably not that. 
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Aug 30, 2016 06:21
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there was one where some kind of captain wore underpants on his head
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Aug 30, 2016 06:25
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extra stout posted:there was one where some kind of captain wore underpants on his head Got you covered 
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Aug 30, 2016 07:07
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Legend of Krunth, the Ellsinara Trilogy I think it was about a boy who discovers he can read peoples minds? The main character mind-reads and blackmail his way out of being an orphan peasant into being a powerful member of the royal court of Ellsinara. Halfway through the first book he meets a dwarf named Bunkwaddle and a drakkon named Fistula the Fierce. They have many fine adventures with lusty maidens and busty tavern wenches. The three lifelong friends contract demonic venerial diseases and commit suicide by holding hands and sticking thier heads into a pyroclastic lava flow at Mount Gloom. Oops, spoilers!
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Aug 30, 2016 07:22
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I think there was a book about two twins who fall backwards through time to Moses times and it's like the book of Enoch where there's angels loving a bunch of tiny women (because everyone in moses' time was a little person) and the twins have a crush on a lady an angel's trying to gently caress and they save her and Moses from the flood by helping them build the ark. I think it might have been a Wrinkle In time sequel.
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Aug 30, 2016 08:03
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I have vague memories of some UK/European book/graphic novel from the early 80s. I sort of vaguely remember it maybe being about some cadets in space, one of them knocks a bully in the group into a tub of waste and they end up finding some giant Soviet spaceship or something. I sort of want to say it was maybe painted art. The thing is that I can't really remember if the whole thing was comic style or if it was half-comic panels, but mostly actual novelization-type text filling the majority of the pages. I was about to look for it myself because I happened on a book of painted SF artwork from the era and thought about doing a search on books associated with the artists because I thought the chances were good that they might have similarly produced something for that book, as well.
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Aug 30, 2016 08:42
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JediTalentAgent posted:I have vague memories of some UK/European book/graphic novel from the early 80s. I sort of vaguely remember it maybe being about some cadets in space, one of them knocks a bully in the group into a tub of waste and they end up finding some giant Soviet spaceship or something. I sort of want to say it was maybe painted art. You're just remembering watching Infinite Ryvius.
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Aug 30, 2016 11:59
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I remember some oversized comic book from the early 80's that was an anthology. One of the short stories in the front had a frame with a kid looking at a dog under a dome of glass, and saying 'can I pet it, please?' and some adult saying 'no, that's the last one alive in the northern hemisphere'. One of the stories was about some astronauts - several humans and an alien with a trumpet-like face - landing on a planet with even weirder aliens. The aliens looked friendly, but were holding knives behind their backs (oooh foreshadowing) and tried to kill the astronauts. For some reason, the astronauts turned against each other (maybe it was mind control?) and the trumpet-face alien blasted one of the people with a sonic boom (a really loud shout I guess) that ended up blowing out the dude's eardrums with blood flying out and incapacitating him. The whole thing was horror-based. I forgot the other stories, but the whole thing was pretty disturbing as a kid.
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Aug 30, 2016 18:03
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I remember some weird first book in a fantasy series that had a cool title and decent cover art, but 99% of it was this boring group of teenagers getting gathered to a place under a mountain where you could still see stars. The only cool thing I remember about it was a kid realized he had powers by accidentally winning 3-card monty on the street by turning every card into a queen. I also read tons and tons of garbage YA Christian fiction. Standouts were the Wally McSomething series where an awful unloveable jackass fucks up his life on the reg before learning a bible verse or two and magically being okay. This included stuff like a jar of homemade jam being mistaken for radioactive waste, resulting in a national terrorist emergency. Or the Forbidden Doors series by Frank Peretti, which starred two annoying goody-two-shoes kids who were going to ~~public high school~~ for the first time and had to deal with their friends doing evil things like dating and playing Dungeons and Dragons. The D&D book was particularly great because the author clearly had no idea how D&D worked at all so the game the kid gets addicted to is lovingly described in detail but makes absolutely no goddamn sense and sounds kind of awesome. Also notable was that the main characters' dad just completely abandoned them and occasionally got in touch via cryptic emails. Like, it was a major running theme of the series that their dad just disappeared like a shithead, but everyone still thought he was like the most pious amazing dude ever.
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Aug 30, 2016 18:12
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some picture book about monsters. i think it was sort of like a where's waldo/wally only with better artwork there was one about the abominable snowman that i remember being really well drawn
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Aug 30, 2016 18:15
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One I bring up every time there's a discussion like this: A dystopian YA novel, published back in the 90s. Set in a city sealed of from the apparently devastated post-apocalypse earth by a dome structure. The inhabitants were immortal thanks to outfits that make then look like the robot from Metropolis. Dreams and memories of the outside world were banned. The main characters were a pair of twin sisters with a telepathic bond; one of them was a dancer and the other is an academic or similar. The villain is the academic's mentor, who starts of as a father figure until he discovers that the dancer has been having illegal dreams. She's sentenced to death, which involved being taken out of the dome to a bizarre mock-up of a farm (complete with anamatronic animals), stripped of the suit and left to die on the surface. The other sisters goes to rescue her and it turns out that the surface is liveable and populated by humans. I think there was a scene where the main character was trying to sleep in a communal room/barracks, where a drone floated around the room and scanned people for illegal dream activity.
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Aug 30, 2016 18:20
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I've been trying to recall the name of a book where this girl goes to stay a summer in the country and finds a stopwatch or something in the linoleum floor. This thing sends her consciousness back in time to observe her mom as a child and it brings her closer to her family. It's significant to me because it taught me what linoleum was, and also that you can develop calouses on your feet. Any ideas?
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Aug 30, 2016 18:50
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aurasuvi posted:
This is Betty Ren Wright's The Dollhouse Murders. She wrote some poo poo that I remember being really creepy when I was a kid.
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Aug 30, 2016 19:15
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:I think there was a book about two twins who fall backwards through time to Moses times and it's like the book of Enoch where there's angels loving a bunch of tiny women (because everyone in moses' time was a little person) and the twins have a crush on a lady an angel's trying to gently caress and they save her and Moses from the flood by helping them build the ark. Yeah that's Many Waters, it's like 3rd or 4th in that series.
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Aug 31, 2016 02:30
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Girl gets hit by car, wakes up in hospital and turns out they transplanted her brain into a chimp body and she's a chimp now and the chimp brain transplant operation was paid for by TV executives so now she rides a tricycle around on TV in her gimp chimp body, for entertainment Boy's family operates a circus and they move around a lot and their pride and joy is a hosed up sasquatch creature and they're staying near a bunch of christian fundies who find out about it and want to kill it because it's proof of evolution and they can't have that Boy wins a quiz game show and the prize is a trip to anywhere on earth, but he's done his homework and low earth orbit is legally considered "on earth" so he gets to go hang out on a space station and later on he gets to go to Mercury I think Girl from middle class background makes friends with a Bad and Evil girl who is a Poor, whose family reuses the same wrapping paper every Christmas and boils kittens alive on the stove
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Aug 31, 2016 10:19
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sinking belle posted:Girl from middle class background makes friends with a Bad and Evil girl who is a Poor, whose family reuses the same wrapping paper every Christmas and boils kittens alive on the stove woah is that some kinda Protocols of the Elders of Harlem jazz
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Aug 31, 2016 10:31
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I tried asking Book Barn for help on this one but couldn't get a title for it, maybe GBS666 can help: This was a Sci Fi short story that I read in Grade 8. The story takes place in the near future where prisoners on Death Row are sent to an apartment (I originally thought that the main character was sent to the apartment while their trial took place, another goon remembered it as them spending 1 week in the apartment and getting to leave if they made it) that had a very disguised and super efficient way of killing them instantly, so the main character has to be very careful. In the end, the green light above the door turns on and they go to turn the handle and BAM, there is a poisoned needle in the handle that kills them instantly. Does anyone know it?
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Aug 31, 2016 11:44
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Professor Shark posted:I tried asking Book Barn for help on this one but couldn't get a title for it, maybe GBS666 can help: I know you spoiled it.
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Aug 31, 2016 12:42
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Zorodius posted:woah
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Aug 31, 2016 13:25
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Applewhite posted:I know you spoiled it. Take a few shots of Forget Me Juice (Scotch)!
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Aug 31, 2016 13:38
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Alabaster White posted:I remember some book about some girl at her bat mitzvah who daydreams her being shipped off to a concentration camp and then she almost escapes but then realizes she's just daydreaming and gets on with her life Could this be The Devil's Arithmetic? I'm not sure if the setup is quite the same, but the general idea is pretty similar: A modern-day girl wakes up and is suddenly living the life of a girl whose whole family ends up in a concentration camp. If it's the same book I'm thinking of, at the end it's revealed that the girl was specifically reliving the life of her aunt's friend who had been executed, so throughout her trip back in time she ended up meeting a lot of her relatives that didn't survive. She also told some of the other girls with her stories from future movies and books. (I want to say Star Wars was one she retold, but I'm not sure.) - The Girl Who Owned A City has been brought up already, but I wanna add on that it stuck with me too even though I only remembered a couple of parts: 1) the titular girl breaks into an abandoned farm for supplies and she reads the owner's will while solemnly eating the leftover food; and 2) a rival kid gang shoots her in the loving arm and other children have to perform surgery to save her. Some other stories I remember to varying degrees (just barely enough to figure out their titles): - Things Not Seen, where a boy woke up invisible one morning and had to be kept home from school because he was worried The Government would vivisect him. Among the things that happened were that he befriended a blind girl who found out very awkwardly that her new friend was running around naked, he learned of another invisible woman who was basically now a shut-in that would only go outside (dressed head to toe in robes) for shopping and otherwise didn't maintain her health or relationships, and near the end of the story CPS busted their way into the house because they suspected his mother was lying about him being sick away from school. It turned out that the invisibility was caused by a defective electrical blanket interacting with solar storms or something, and all he had to do was sleep under the blanket again to turn back to normal. (Apparently this book has two sequels?) - Some kind of Depression-era story that I never got to see the ending of? It was about a family living out in a rural area and the narrator was a girl who could play piano. All I remember is that early on, her father left kerosene by the stove which caught fire, and in the panic the daughter accidentally spilled it on her pregnant mother. Mother and baby die horribly over the course of a few days, girl's hands are burned beyond repair, and everyone silently blames her for killing them. (I just looked this up; It's called Out Of The Dust and apparently it ends with the daughter apologizing for running away and reconciling with her father, even though he was a shithead that spent all his daughter's education money on alcohol and went out drinking while his daughter spent all night taking care of his dying pregnant wife, despite being in agonizing pain herself every time she held something.) - I used to be really into Judy Blume's books, but I don't remember much of anything from them except small details. The one scene that stuck out the most was when that little poo poo Fudge killed his brother's pet turtle by eating it alive, and no one would even spare a thought to the horrible death of an animal or the older son mourning his dead pet. Eventually they bought him a puppy as a replacement, like an afterthought. He named the dog Turtle so that no one would ever forget. - The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, about a huge group of children who were troublemakers beating everyone up. I forgot if their parents were just absent all the time, or in total denial of their hellions' actions. I think I remember it being mentioned that there were so many of them that the youngest had to sleep in dresser drawers. At the ending of the book the little jerks all get a role in the nativity play, and the narrator realizes that they're actually very good at setting the mood and making the story feel human and relatable... then he realizes the girl playing the Virgin Mary has a black eye from fighting.
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Sep 1, 2016 06:25
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The teacher was reading us Paddle to the Sea towards the end of 2nd grade. It's about a little toy Indian in his canoe who paddles around the Great Lakes. Then I got chicken pox and missed the rest of the year. I never found out if he made it to the sea and that's probably why I'm a broken excuse for an adult now.
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Sep 1, 2016 06:36
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I think I figured out what book it might have been I was thinking about, but not which one specifically: A Stewart Cowley spaceship book. The thing is that the description, art, and covers all seem very familiar, but since there are so many of these I can't figure out which one it might have exactly been.
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Sep 1, 2016 07:50
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Back when i was 10 or 11 i read this Tom clancy-esque military spy thriller book, where terrorists flew over the oil wells in Saudi Arabia and sprayed highly radioactive materials all over them in order to make them deadly to life for centuries and thus useless, and destabilize America's power or something. I think the first chapter might have included some sexy super assassin spy lady from the terrorists side sneaking aboard some important dudes boat and killing him in an overly sexual way, but that might have been a different book. Anyone know what that was?
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Sep 1, 2016 07:57
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skeletonotherkin posted:There is one book from my childhood that I'm curious about. It was post apocalyptic, taking place after a nuclear war. Humanity had been reduced to a roughly neolithic stage of civilization with humans utilizing stone tools, being capable of a limited amount of metallurgy, and dwelling in primitive cities. Some how the protagonist happens upon a nuclear holocaust proof briefcase computer created by NASA to help rebuild modern civilization. At some point in the plot humanity comes into conflict with a race of mutant rat people, who conveniently live in the sewers beneath human settlements, and are eager on recovering the computer for themselves. There is an ensuing conflict, and at first the ratkin have the upper hand, but then the humans venture beneath the surface and napalm the ever living gently caress out the rat people dwellings with greek fire esque Molotov cocktails. In the end some rebel faction of the rat people take charge of their species, make peace with humanity, and agree to vacate human settlements as a result of their desire to progress without utilizing past human technology. I remember this book to but I can't think of the name. I remember a few specific scenes: the NASA briefcase mentions the nuclear war being started by the 'Islamic Brotherhood' or something like that which I thought was weird because I knew it was written before 9/11. I also remember some of the characters discussing a shiny substance they found in an old world ruin that must have been plastic. The cover art was painted, and depicted the characters with pointed ears like elves, and I'm pretty sure it was a series. Also: I remember there was a YA novel, from the 90s or maybe 80s about this teenage girl who was turning into an alien or something. I remember she had a craving for raw meat, like I think there was a scene were she was in a drive through and asked for uncooked hamburger. I think it was written in the first person and the changing into an alien was caused by a meteorite that fell into a lake. Don't think I ever ended up finishing it.
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Sep 1, 2016 08:46
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It's weird to read books from the 80s sometimes referred to Arab terrorists, but of course it's handled WAY differently now.
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Sep 1, 2016 08:50
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Casimir Radon posted:The teacher was reading us Paddle to the Sea towards the end of 2nd grade. It's about a little toy Indian in his canoe who paddles around the Great Lakes. Then I got chicken pox and missed the rest of the year. I never found out if he made it to the sea and that's probably why I'm a broken excuse for an adult now. Paddle to the Sea has some loving kick rear end illustrations, hope your teacher showed you those. Wish I could find a picture of the one with the frozen ship sinking in Lake Superior, it scared the poo poo out me as a kid. he makes it to the sea but he was made of wood all along
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Sep 1, 2016 12:33
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I do remember No Coins Please, where this kid on a coast-to-coast trip runs cons on people in every city they stop in, and I remember the first one was taking bets on slot car races he ran on the sidewalk with, I guess, a battery powered slot car track? apparently it's out of print because HOLY poo poo THOSE PRICES There was another one where the depressed main character had a best friend who was a super-weird artist who built his own car and the hood ornament was a tiny venus de milo? Also I think he did an art project where he drove through the car wash with a wedding cake strapped to a canvas attached to the top of his car?
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Sep 4, 2016 05:01
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cmndstab posted:I also once borrowed a poo poo book called Bananagram about someone writing a message on a banana. Brocky's Bananagram
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Sep 5, 2016 15:23
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I read a few books that were the older teen version of animorphs, written by the same guy. The only thing I remember was that some dude was about to get lucky in the back of a car at some point. I don't even recall if they could turn into poo poo, or if I'm just remembering it that way because it was the animorphs guy.
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Sep 5, 2016 15:48
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This was a short series of four books that I read in the 1980s: the US had undergone a military coup and was now the "United Secure States of America" and the teenage protagonist who was caught in the middle of it. I can probably find this easily enough by googling it, but I was curious if anyone else had read this.
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Sep 5, 2016 17:32
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The series I'm trying to remember involved a group of teenagers escaping an asteroid strike by getting on a Noah's Ark esque spaceship. Lot of detail about the world, San Francisco getting destroyed by The Rock and drama about selection to be on the ark. Once they arrive, the series shifts into a battle against a god-AI which runs the planet style thing. Google doesn't yield anything but I remember more detail.
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Sep 5, 2016 18:21
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radiatinglines posted:I read a few books that were the older teen version of animorphs, written by the same guy. The only thing I remember was that some dude was about to get lucky in the back of a car at some point. I don't even recall if they could turn into poo poo, or if I'm just remembering it that way because it was the animorphs guy. I always assumed K.A. Applegate went by her initials so elementary school boys wouldn't refuse to read her books because they're by a GIRL and I'm not GAY which according to my older brother is when boys pee in each other's mouths
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Sep 5, 2016 18:33
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Some like post apocolypti series about a group of kids sent into the future and they all have psychic powers and poo poo. Aliens invaded and took over earf and they are fighting them. I wanna say mindwarp or something like that. Another one where like a kid in a small town is an alien, with a purple glove on the cover and everyones satellite dishes in the town are pointed the wrong way
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Sep 5, 2016 23:18
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bensnotacat posted:The series I'm trying to remember involved a group of teenagers escaping an asteroid strike by getting on a Noah's Ark esque spaceship. Lot of detail about the world, San Francisco getting destroyed by The Rock and drama about selection to be on the ark. Once they arrive, the series shifts into a battle against a god-AI which runs the planet style thing. I think you might have just been watching TV? this is the plot of the show The 100, season 3 is even about a killer AI that runs the planet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Puak7IC7P0
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Sep 6, 2016 00:18
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Applewhite posted:This isn't a Kurt Vonnegut book but it sounds like a Kurt Vonnegut book. it was called like Eve or something, it had two human eyes on the cover, over a seascape or a shorescape
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Sep 6, 2016 00:27
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OtherworldlyInvader posted:Around 4th grade I read some book set in the US in like the early or mid 1800's or something. I think the premise involved some teenage kid being sent to a new homestead or property or something in order to fix or build a cabin, ahead of the rest of the family arriving like a year later or something. Since I guess that's a thing that makes perfect sense in the 1800's or whatever. I think the kid was alone, maybe had a dog. I distinctly remember the character got really excited over the idea of installing greased paper windows in the cabin. Sign of the Beaver? Kid gets stung by bees, falls out of a tree, Indian boy saves him and they become friends, right?
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Sep 6, 2016 02:52
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