I am losing my mind trying to find a wonderful story about monks that I read ages ago: [more inside]
posted on Aug 14, 2008 - 1 answers

Why do novelists use "________" in place of a character's name? [more inside]
posted on Aug 11, 2008 - 10 answers

What are some good books of historical fiction that take a contrarian view of some well-known event/person? [more inside]
posted on Aug 9, 2008 - 20 answers

Recent poetry, fiction, histories re: Cork, Ireland? The question title says it all, except maybe to clarify: not looking for authors from Cork so much as stories about or set in Cork. Even better if it's something that is likely to be on the shelves at a book store in the US. Thanks.
posted on Aug 7, 2008 - 3 answers

Okay, so I found a recommendation for Iain Banks' The Wasp Factory via an old AskMe thread and picked it up. [more inside]
posted on Aug 6, 2008 - 15 answers

followup to this question: how does one create and develop a persona? [more inside]
posted on Aug 4, 2008 - 7 answers

Play more name-that-book! Young Jesus adjusting to role as Messiah. [more inside]
posted on Jul 29, 2008 - 11 answers

What is the title of this short story? Author? Any hints? About a boy and his younger brother (more detailed description of the story follows) [more inside]
posted on Jul 20, 2008 - 2 answers

Fiction Filter: Help me find stories involving apotheosis (glorification of an individual as divine). Books or movies - it doesn't matter. [more inside]
posted on Jul 18, 2008 - 42 answers

What are the best examples of human/computer interaction in tv and movies (please mention specific scenes and episodes if you can). ex: HAL in 2001, The touch screen in Minority Report, Scotty talking to the mouse in Star Trek IV -lol, etc...
posted on Jul 13, 2008 - 33 answers

I'd like to broaden my horizons by getting a better understanding of life in different cultures and time periods. Please recommend great books or films (fiction or non-fiction) which paint a broad, immersive, reasonably accurate picture of a place and time. [more inside]
posted on Jul 12, 2008 - 29 answers

Short-story filter: What are your favorite pirate names? (Real or imagined)
posted on Jul 8, 2008 - 21 answers

Please-help-me-identify-a-book-filter. Trying to track down a young adults hardish sci-fi book from the mid 80s in the UK about a space medic in trouble. [more inside]
posted on Jul 1, 2008 - 3 answers

I'm looking for an old science fiction novel about an evil, blue giant titled "The Blue Man" - the Google and Amazon search is poisoned by both The Blue Man Group, and a young-adult science fiction novel "The Blue Man" which isn't it at all. [more inside]
posted on Jun 27, 2008 - 3 answers

Aliens, monsters, and ghosts. The big three. But is there a fourth? [more inside]
posted on Jun 26, 2008 - 42 answers

Can you help me set the writing soundtrack to my novels? [more inside]
posted on Jun 26, 2008 - 23 answers

What is the legality of using a celebrity as a character in a satiric work of fiction? [more inside]
posted on Jun 17, 2008 - 14 answers

I just saw The Bank Job and had a question about the disclaimer at the end [more inside]
posted on Jun 16, 2008 - 6 answers

Looking for decently written, page-turning historical fiction. [more inside]
posted on Jun 15, 2008 - 66 answers

WhatWasThatBookFilter: a friend of mine needs help tracking down a fantasy/sci-fi paperback she read back in 1997. Full description below. [more inside]
posted on Jun 11, 2008 - 5 answers

Recommend a first Douglas Coupland novel, if you please. [more inside]
posted on Jun 11, 2008 - 45 answers

Looking for sites or reviewers who review books other than literary fiction [more inside]
posted on Jun 10, 2008 - 4 answers

Two of my favorite books for summer are "Winter's Tale" by Mark Helprin and "Smilla's Sense of Snow" by Peter Hoeg; I'd like suggestions for other (preferably hefty) novels with complex/absorbing story lines and wintry settings or themes to help me stay sane 'til September. Got an ice book to recommend?
posted on Jun 10, 2008 - 46 answers

please help identify this "young adults" sci-fi-ish novel - "I'm an Est, for Ests are best, down to their sodding woollen vests"... [more inside]
posted on Jun 8, 2008 - 8 answers

A few years ago there was a short story in the New Yorker set in the near future. The characters were children raised in a world where they seemed to be market research test subjects... I really can't recall any more details than that... Does this ring any bells?
posted on Jun 5, 2008 - 3 answers

Help me find this short story about Edgar Rice Burroughs in hell. [more inside]
posted on Jun 3, 2008 - 4 answers

What are your favorite short stories or short story collections, anthologies etc. [more inside]
posted on May 28, 2008 - 54 answers

Book recommendations: ecotopian fiction? (Something to read after The Fifth Sacred Thing)? [more inside]
posted on May 26, 2008 - 16 answers

What's the process by which published fiction gets adapted into comic book form? [more inside]
posted on May 25, 2008 - 4 answers

I'm interested in reading more fun books, written in 1945 or earlier, which clearly set themselves in the time and place that they were written. Examples include Anne of Green Gables, Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers, Pride & Prejudice, and China to Me. [more inside]
posted on May 24, 2008 - 39 answers

In the early 80's, I read a library book that featured a heroine stumbling into a parallel world and encountering chicken-legged vampires (not Baba Yaga) and their master. I can't recall the title nor author of this novel and you will earn my eternal gratitude if you can identify this work for me so that I can locate and read it again. [more inside]
posted on May 19, 2008 - 6 answers

Help me remember the name of this short story about a draft dodger in Vietnam. [more inside]
posted on May 15, 2008 - 8 answers

Help me find this quotation. The gist of it is something like this: in current times, fantastical metaphors are the only way of describing the convoluted reality of experience. [more inside]
posted on May 12, 2008 - 6 answers

Trying to make a list of fictional drinks. For instance: Clementine mixxes up a couple of "blue ruins" in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the Silver Jews' song Buckingham Rabbit makes reference to "shattered dogs on the rocks." What other fictional drinks can you think of? [more inside]
posted on May 4, 2008 - 51 answers

Question about obscure science fiction short story, "Allegory," by William T. Powers, which was reprinted in Groff Conklin's 13 GREAT STORIES OF SCIENCE FICTION. The question is: what is this story an allegory of? To put it another way, is there some real-world or historical event that this story is a comment on? [more inside]
posted on Apr 29, 2008 - 8 answers

trying to remember a book about an urban teenager with acting/dramatic talent who moves to rural Oregon. He invents a gangster past history for himself to impress the local kids, who then take it upon themselves to become 'gangsta'. The title is something like 'And The Shadows Overtook Him', but Google does nothing. [more inside]
posted on Apr 28, 2008 - 2 answers

Yet another what-is-this-book/story question (sci-fi, possibly young adult, writen pre-1983) [more inside]
posted on Apr 22, 2008 - 15 answers

A novel about a computer that attempts to create art? Help me identify this sci-fi book. [more inside]
posted on Apr 22, 2008 - 5 answers

Looking for examples of fiction where: a.) someone uncovers an unsettling/surprising/shocking truth about a major "historical" (for that setting) figure or event, b.) the story itself is in the form of a journal or diary that gives the unsettling/surprising/shocking perspective. [more inside]
posted on Apr 22, 2008 - 28 answers

looking for a book, its about a geneticly altered boy (his whole colony was altered thus) he is really big and strong, they raise dangerous animals as pets. Anyway he is the first of his colony to go off to a sort of galactic school, where he ends up fighting all sorts of creatures, near the end he fights a huge mutant bear and wins by smashingits head with a camera. I aplogize if this is not the proper place to post but i could not find what i need
posted on Apr 8, 2008 - 5 answers

I'm writing a story in which a character dies, and I need to know what happens after that with respect to police involvement, morgues, funeral homes, the actual funeral, etc. [more inside]
posted on Apr 8, 2008 - 6 answers

Book-Filter: I'm fascinated by very bad priests in fiction. Help me find some more. [more inside]
posted on Apr 5, 2008 - 30 answers

I remember reading this young adult scifi novel as a kid. The basic plot is a girl goes to some special "institute" or something after school. I don't recall all the details of what happened there, something special. But, in addition to that, she got Baked Alaska, which was her favorite dessert. I think the Baked Alaska is the key to this mystery. Please help me find this novel!
posted on Apr 1, 2008 - 18 answers

A long time ago I read a fantasy book which featured several American college students entering a fantasy realm whilst playing Dungeons and Dragons (or some role playing game of similar ilk). I remember one of the main characters was a wheelchair bound guy whose fantasy character is a dwarf warrior... Can anyone help me track down the title or series of this book?
posted on Apr 1, 2008 - 5 answers

I'm looking for fictional intragenerational incest narratives -- books, film, television, etc. -- in which the relationship is presented as a tragic love, doomed to failure. I'm not interested in the probably more common (and more realistic) pure trauma narratives. The relationship need not necessarily be physically consummated. [more inside]
posted on Mar 25, 2008 - 49 answers

Please recommend some books set in Singapore. [more inside]
posted on Mar 22, 2008 - 15 answers

I am working on a book plot that relies on some members of a family developing depression and erratic behavior. I need ideas for an environmental cause of such behavior inside their home. [more inside]
posted on Mar 16, 2008 - 27 answers

I'm writing a story about medieval , and I need historically-accurate backdrops/minor plot elements that relate to conspiracies, intrigues, and crackpot theories from Europe in the 900s-1400s A.D. [more inside]
posted on Mar 14, 2008 - 38 answers

How do you make up stories ? My kids love me making up stories (and then repeating them ad-infinitum !) but doing so has set me thinking about the process of creating fiction. [more inside]
posted on Mar 8, 2008 - 9 answers

I'm looking for some funny and smart fiction books, along the lines of "A Confederacy of Dunces" and "Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal." [more inside]
posted on Mar 6, 2008 - 60 answers