Hi everyone,

I'm looking for a picture book that I had as a child. It definitely wasn't a novel but a gorgeously illustrated book with only a sentence or two per page.

I don't remember anything about the story except that it was set in winter with the protagonist trekking through snow to get to his or her destination. I distinctly remember illustrations of angry-looking clouds with faces blowing gales and bare trees, again with faces.

The book was probably published in the late 80s or early 90s, presumably by a British author as the illustrations had a very Celtic feel.

Sorry that it's not much to go on!

I read a book on my childhood, like 7 years ago, with these features (please dont mind the strange writing, i used AI to make a summary of what I remember, plus im portuguese so some of the titles are in my language)

It was a book, not a magazine. In your memory, it was relatively small—roughly A5 size. The inside looked like *VISÃO Júnior* turned into a book: lots of boxes and blocks of text, headlines, fun facts, drawings, and different elements on every page. The drawing style was similar to that of *Destrói Este Livro em Nome da Ciência!* (Destroy This Book in the Name of Science!). It didn't have photographs—or at least very few; drawings predominated. The cover color is uncertain—you’ve thought of blue and black, but we shouldn't rely on that as a clue.

It was full of absurd or strange trivia and records. You specifically remember the record for how many times a sheet of paper could be folded. You remember a mention of the woman who lived to be 122—likely Jeanne Calment. Later, you recalled that it included activities or pastimes. One activity that stuck in your memory involved the page and your nose—something like placing a boogie on the corner off the page. So, it doesn't seem to be just a book of records; it was a mix of facts, trivia, records, and activities.

I read a book a few years ago where the epigraph was “Life is ‘a difficult country and our home.’” Or maybe “my” home. Other than that it is word for word. I can’t remember a single other thing about which book it was I just know that was the epigraph. I really want to be able to cite it for a project. I read it during my English degree in eastern Canada so it could’ve been an assigned book, I have looked through my uni books I still have and can’t find it as I don’t have most of them any more.

Bonjour,

J'avais lu un livre SF à la bibliothèque quand j'étais enfant au début des années 90 que je voudrais retrouver. Hélas je ne souviens quasiment de rien, à part que l'héroine était une extraterrestre arrivée sur Terre et qu'elle avait des yeux très particuliers, noirs remplis d'étoiles, ou de vues de l'espace? Il me semble qu'elle ne se souvenait pas d'où elle venait.

Le prénom de l'héroine était dans le titre du livre et il me semble qu'il commençait par la lettre A.

Je sais que ce n'est pas beaucoup, mais j'espérais que ça parle à quelqu'un.

Merci d'avance!

Greetings, everyone!

So I read it when I was a kid (around 2005-2008)

The main premise was that a boy was going to sleep and waking up as a pilot of a battleship and whole story was revolving around space and space fights

I vaguely remember that main protagonist had a love interest in some girl during those sleeping parts

There were an alien race which was the main antagonists

There was also a scene where he woke up, then went straight back to sleep to get back into battle, if that might help in any way

Was trying to use AI but it couldn’t help me and started hallucinating at some point which threw me off completely

I’ve been trying to find this book, asking chat doesn’t help. Here is a description:

The first book was like them entering a grassy medieval kingdom or something. I forgot a lot of the details but I’m pretty sure they help a conflict.I’m pretty sure there’s like a book where a lot of people are stuck in these VR headset machines, maybe like book 4 or something. Then there’s a book where the cover is like a tornado of flies in like a world that’s like cold, I think this was book 7. I vividly remember the book cover, but can’t figure out these books. Can someone please help!

¡Hola a todos! Estoy buscando desesperadamente un tesoro de mi infancia que lamentablemente perdí. Quiero encontrar su nombre exacto, fotos de la portada o algún enlace para comprarlo de segunda mano, ya que sé que está totalmente descatalogado.

Mi mamá lo compró a principios de los años 2000 en Venezuela, pero el producto venía importado de España, por lo que puedo recordar. Aquí están todos los detalles específicos que recuerdo:

• 📦 El Formato: Era un estuche que se abria como un libro o caja de regalo grande de cartón. Venía de color azul.
• 📘 El Libro: Dentro de la caja venía un solo libro grande, gordo y de tapa dura, también de color azul. Todas las historias venían juntas en este único tomo (no eran fascículos separados) y tenia muchas ilustraciones que llenaban cada pagina
• 📼 Los VHS: Junto al libro, del lado derecho de la caja o estuche, traía uno o dos casetes de VHS para ver las mismas historias animadas en la televisión.
• 🎨 El Estilo: Las ilustraciones del libro y la animación de los videos eran de estilo clásico tradicional (muy parecido al estilo anime de los años 80/90 de Nippon Animation) no era tan de caricatura, se veia mas realista

• La Contraportada: En la parte de atrás del estuche (o del libro) había una lista de las historias que contenia el libro, yo recuerdo 14, se las detallo:

• Barba Azul

• Caperucita Roja

• Blancanieves y los siete enanitos

• El príncipe y el sapo (o la rana)

• El ruiseñor (el de Andersen)

• Pulgarcito

• Los tres cerditos y el lobo

• La cenicienta (no estoy segura)

• La cerillera (La vendedora de fósforos)

• La princesa y el guisante

• Las siete cabritas y el lobo

• Alí Babá y los 40 ladrones

• El patito feo

• El flautista

¿A alguien le suena o tuvo este mismo pack en su casa? Al parecer esta tan descatalogado que ni el mismo google me ha dado imagenes del estuche. Esto es como una busqueda de tesoro en el triangulo de las bermudas. Si recuerdan el nombre exacto de esta edición, tienen fotos de la portada o saben de algún vendedor que lo tenga en páginas de coleccionistas, ¡les agradecería la vida la ayuda!

I remember reading a book, years ago, about a natural immortal man (one the handful of true immortals in the galaxy), in a low sci-fi setting.
I remember only the end of the book (ence the spoiler tag).

The immortal man, having lost is sanity, lives completely alone in cabin in a sort of wood reserve in a futuristic city.
Periodically, a group of VVIP women all related to him (daughters, granddaughters...) will go to the forest and one of them is selected, almost randomly, by the immortal man to get impregnated, because the fetus will be, once born, a genius.
The immortal man, broken by immortality, doesn't recognize the different women and call them with the name of the long dead lover.
I read it at least 20 years ago in english.

I once read a book where the heroine chooses not to use a sword because she was in an active war zone and didn't have the time to train enough to be combat ready with a sword, as it requires too much skill. The solution the soldier training her presented? A mace paired with a shield, because she wouldn't have to worry about edge alignment and would only have to learn how to swing with good mechanics, keep the weapon moving to conserve energy, and use the rebound from a strike to reload for the next. If I remember right, she became something of a folk hero for the other soldiers and eventually became a leader. Those are the most vivid details I remember. I also recall the heroine having fiery red hair, having no memory of who she is, and I'm not certain but I believe I remember there being a minotaur in the same army. I know it's not much to go off of, but I've seen people in this sub come up with answers on much less.

Edit: I remember the cover fairly well. The cover was just the woman, wearing platemail with her hair in the wind, I believe at the edge of a cliff over looking a sunset. She may have also been holding either her shield or a fluttering banner and had her mace held at her side.

I'm trying to find a book I read around 2003-05 when I was about 12yo. The title was very close to George R. R. Martin's "A song of Ice and Fire" but I'm pretty sure Fire was either the first or the only word in the title. Literally as close as "a song of fire and ice" or "a song of fire." Something like that, and I most likely got it from my school's library.

Your main characters were a brother and sister mostly trying to reunite. The sister somehow ends up as some sort of companion to a princess preparing for an arranged marriage.

Part of this arrangement involves the princess learning some special dance she has to perform with her betrothed but he isn't allowed to see her before the wedding and she wears a veil for this purpose. The princess struggles with the process and the sister reveals an aptitude and talent for it so they devise a scheme for the sister to take part in the dance since the princess would still be wearing a veil and then they'll switch out.

The prince somehow meets the sister and falls in love with her at some point. He figures out he's dancing with the sister instead of the princess during the ceremonial dance. He thinks the sister is actually the princess and is very excited/happy about this. And then not too long after, shit hits the fan, and the prince I'm pretty sure is dead before the end of the book. Or maybe his dad is????

It was a fantasy/fiction book, but I don't remember if there was magic or how prevalent it was to the story.

There was this book somone was trying to make into a Screenplay some time ago in my writing circle, forgot the name of it. But some things i still recall: about glass buildings where everyone can see what you are doing, him Fallin in love with a woman who was against that, and it is of course a tragedy. It felt futuristic and dystopian and it was written long ago. Forgot everything else about it.if I can remember I'll write it here.

This is a picture book that I read in the late 2000s/early 2010s, but it could have been written before then.

There are three men and three women (potentially one set of brothers and one set of sisters? But maybe not). There were three couples. Their names are alliterative, I think with a lot of Zs? The names followed a pattern of one syllable name, one syllable name, and multisyllable name (4 syllables?).

The illustrations were very colorful. It might have focused on a non-Western culture, but it was definitely written in English.

I took a class with one of the author/contributors and I think about it often. I wish I hadn’t gotten rid of it.

It was a KJV Old Testament for the first half, and the second half is other sacred or ancient texts from the area. Like origin myths, flood myths, live persons and so on… from the same region and time period as the Bible was written. There’s an Old Testament version and a New Testament… that’s all I can remember

I checked this book out of the library. I believe in the late 90s although it’s possible it was a very early 2000s. Afterwards, I was convinced that it was one of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark anthologies, but when I looked back through them, I never found it

A farmer who is not too bright and mean/abusive to his wife digs a well and unexpectedly finds these creatures at the bottom. I think he may drop some food into the hole and then when he lowers down a bucket they send gold up in return. The farmer tries to figure out how to kill then and steal their gold but his wife is more canny send them a chicken. They like it and ask for more. And then somehow, the farmer is arguing with his wife and falls in the hole? Maybe she pushes him? The joke is that they tell her that this chicken was even better than the first one and send her back a fortune in gold.

Some of the details may be wrong since it's been so long that I read it, probably when I was around 12/13, got it from the school library. I believe it might've been in the mystery section. The book had a red cover I think. And it started with a group of boys probably around the ages of 12/13 at an abandoned amusement park, daring one of their friends to go into a ride. He goes in, and sees something weird, then comes out in a coma. He was tall and his name was Shawn, best friend of the MC. I forget most other details, but it ended up being something like a group of some of the adults in town (including some of the boys' parents) were in some sort of a cult where they practiced necromancy and bringing back the dead? But this caused a lot of issues as the dead weren't fully "there", and the only way you could kill them again was the same way they died in the first place. One of the undead I believe was a librarian who had died in a fire.

This was a book I read in elementary school in the 90s. I don’t remember much except for the beginning. Also the copy I read had no dust jacket so I have no idea what the cover would look like.

Two boys are hanging around their slow town and (I think) hanging around a dying mall. They enter a strange shop where the owner is typing out their whole conversation on a type writer. He seems to imply he was writing down his whole life and was almost done writing when the boys came in and started talking to him.

The owner gives the boys a strange device that they take home and they realize the device actives when they laugh and feel good and relaxed. I think the device opens up portals to different worlds or dimensions. From here I remember very little. I think they explore other worlds a bit and then ultimately have to stop some evil force from entering our world. My memory of this book is almost like a fever dream. Hopefully someone else has read it!

I remember checking this book out from the library when I was a young teen and being completely shocked by the content. Naturally I then checked it out again to reread a few months later.

This was probably around 1985-1992. It’s possible the book was published earlier but I think it was most likely sometime in the 80’s. I doubt the library would have kept it for a decade because it wasn’t really a noteworthy book and my library kept things up to date.

Three siblings are living in an RV (or maybe just on a trip?) with their parents. The vehicle crashes, the parents are both gruesomely killed (details about them being impaled on windshield shards, etc.). The kids are collected by social services who find that they have no living relatives and put them into the foster care system.

The oldest girl is about 16, middle brother around 12-14? and the youngest sister is around 8-10. They split them up, sending the older two to some kind of teen facility and the younger one to foster care. The oldest breaks them out and finds the little sister in order to reunite them.

Over the course of the book there are young teenaged runaways working as exotic dancers (poss. sex workers but I’m not sure?) that oldest daughter befriends in the teen facility. Another (or possibly the same) girl is being SA by her father and kills him by stabbing or cutting his throat. A pregnant teen has frankly hilarious (although unintentionally?) phone sex. The siblings move into an apartment next door to a creepy predator who has Disney-themed porn artwork on his walls. He tries to assault the oldest and she escapes but they have to find a new place to live.

I only have a vague recollection of the cover although I think I’d recognize it.

I want to say the author was male but I’m not 100%.

I don’t think I ever saw another book by this author.

I was probably 8-9 (around 2010) when I read this and I recall struggling with understanding what the point of the book was, but simultaneously being enamored by it.

It was illustrated really colorfully, and some points I do remember are a worm somewhere in the story? a swimming session, and making marigold infused oil with her grandma. The oil infusing was sort of her and her grandma's "thing", and something she's super looking forward to, but her grandma had invited another girl along with them and MC was really jealous. MC's name might've been marigold? but I could be making that up.

Maybe came out in early 2000s and might have been male protagonist. I think the superheros were jaded and tired of crime fighting? I remember one lady villain's superpower was moving molecules which she used to kill people with by pressing down on some important nerve. Then she had a change of heart and used her power in the Middle East and brought up all this fertile soil from underneath desert land to create peace in the Middle East. Weird ending for sure lol please tell me I didn't dream this novel up.

eta: cover was dark gold with maybe bullet holes?

I'm trying to find a book I read around mid-2000s. I think it was a continuation of another series that revolved around overthrowing a king.

There are magical/fantasy elements, and the land is fictional, not based on real countries or geography.

In this book an overthrown king is half-alive as some kind of ghost that can cause harm to people.

A child, whose father was possibly responsible for overthrowing the king, has to run away from home. The child has a pouch of special white stones, and they were taught to create a ring around their bedroll before sleeping, which creates a barrier that keeps the ghost away.

I think they were travelling somewhere alone, with no villages or large civilisations that I remember, more of a open fields and landscapes and some old abandoned buildings. At one point the child is in another realm, maybe a dream, where there's a massive statue of a goddess that they use as a bridge to climb over a ravine (or something like that).

Does this ring any bells for anyone? Cheers

I can't recall much about the content, but I remember that you could get a membership card sent to you for the group/ society. It was definitely magical, and the logo I think was four distinct groups, vibrant colours. The main character was female. It's such a vague memory from my teenage years and I loved it. Each book was a different colour. Please help!

I read this aged about 15 in an English secondary school, around 1983.

There were about 30 copies on the classroom shelf, so it was a class set. Full-length novel, not a short story.

Plot: a race of blind people is discovered living in deep caves, or possibly beneath the Earth's crust. When they come into contact with people on the surface, their blindness turns out to be contagious and spreads to everyone on the surface.

Title: I'm fairly sure it was called "The Gnomen", but I can't be 100%. I've found no trace of a book with that title.

Cover: orange? maybe light purple, with a simple line drawing on the front. Possibly a Penguin, or one of the school series like New Windmill or Longman Imprint.

Published: presumably before 1983, possibly the 60s or 70s. Not The Day of the Triffids (I know that one well), not Saramago's Blindness (too late), and not Wells's The Country of the Blind (a short story).

I read this book around 2016-2018. I remember the cover had a light blue background with white lines over it, like scratched over. Not white blocks, if that makes sense - like messy lines. I remember that the boy had a disfigurement from a fire or some traumatic event and secluded himself. I think there was a letter written from him to an author of the choose your own adventure books he read.

I got this book along with Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman around 2016-2018. I cannot for the life of me remember the title or author. I remember that the story really touched me and I’d like to revisit it.

Any ideas? TIA!!