Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with books and novel

Looking for books where a person or people are searching for a long lost person.

reenum — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 08:41:37 -0800

Looking for books where a person or people are searching for a long lost person. I loved Hunting Eichmann and would like to read more books about a person or a group of people banding together to find a long lost person.

I'd prefer nonfiction, but well written fiction will work too.

Thanks!

The perfect novel?

Anonymous — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:28:34 -0800

Help me find that perfect novel for a Christmas present. Sorry to post this anonymously, but someone close to the recipient is one my contacts!

Now, I spent a good part of yesterday perusing book stores, eventually walking away empty handed.

The person receiving this book is a mid-fifties male who is an avid reader of good popular fiction. E.g. really likes Frank McCourt; really dislikes Dan Brown.

I considered Netherland by O'Neill but decided against it because I haven't read it and thought it might be too political. (Is it?) So if you need a gage to go by then it'd be McCourt.

The suggestion needn't be a heavy story, for well-written, humorous, insightful prose works just as well. What I want is a story that will stick with this person for time to come.

Thank you in advance for your suggestions.

Please recommend books similar to Bill Simmons' Book of Basketball

reenum — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 11:44:05 -0800

I love Bill Simmons' "The Book of Basketball". What should I read next? I'm in the middle of Simmons NBA opus, and it fascinates as to how he's able to pack in so much info, yet have the book remain accessible. I especially love how he makes fun of and injects humor into the various characters and events in the NBA's history.

Are there other books that are basically all encompassing, sprawling accounts of a particular entity, field, event, etc., yet remain fun to read?

I know some folks might suggest Mary Roach, but I just couldn't get into her stuff.

I prefer nonfiction, but well written fiction would work too.

Thanks!

Please suggest books, movies or shows like Bel Canto

reenum — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:44:26 -0800

I loved the plot of Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. Any recommendations for similar books, shows, or movies? I loved how Patchett's book showed hostages and hostage takers forming a sort of community within their besieged compound.

I also remember an essay with a similar theme by P.J. O'Rourke. It involved him being stuck in a hotel with a bunch of foreign correspondents during a bombing and talked about how they coped.

Any suggestions?

Perhaps a chair coated with glue?

BitterOldPunk — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:09:03 -0800

With NaNoWriMo looming ever nearer, I would like to hear your best tips, tricks, habits, and techniques for staying chained to the keyboard. Realizing that the point is to get 50,000 words written, I've jettisoned all illusions of producing quality, publishable prose. My only goal is to finish without having to copypaste "All work and no play makes BOP a dull boy" five thousand times. I have a (rather vague) outline, I have some preliminary character sketches, and I have every expectation that the first ten thousand words will flow fairly quickly. But. I suck at follow-through. I have the attention span of the common housefly. So, writers: how do I stick with it, fight through discouragment and ennui, and produce 50,000 reasonably coherent words?

Note: I'm not looking for tips like "prepare moar" or "work your plan". I'm looking for how to stay motivated when the fun stuff stops and the hard work begins.

What's the book?

mippy — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:16:36 -0800

I saw a graphic novel in a store today - the sequel to an earlier work, about a female high school student's adolescence, and written by a woman. Any ideas on what it could have been? The book had been published recently. The artwork had a red-haired girl in a hoody on the front, and the back cover referred to the heroine getting into drugs and (possibly) dropping out of high school. Oh, and it was American/Canadian, not Japanese. Because I'm an idiot, I didn't write down what it was, and I didn't have the £9 necessary to take it home from the second-hand bookstore.

What well-known novels lack any character description aside from names?

odinsdream — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:05:32 -0800

What well-known novels lack any character descriptions aside from names?

What happened to the H.M.S. Terror, a la Dan Simmons? Please?

taz — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 02:16:10 -0800

Please help me understand aspects of the ending of the novel "The Terror" by Dan Simmons! Super spoiler-icious details inside (definitely don't read unless you've read the book, or are sure you never want to)... It's driving me crazy! Who sailed the Terror 200 miles south of it's original ice-locked position near the Erebus? Who was the rat-toothed corpse in Crozier's bunk?

Am I wrong in understanding that the top-deck hatches had been nailed shut from the outside? And this would indicate that the (apparently) single remaining seaman aboard had been locked inside either for the protection of others, or for his own protection?

Failing the possibility that the mystery corpse was one of a party of rescuers (and I reject this theory because the ships were never found in real life), logic dictates that he would have had to be one of the three - Reuben Male, Robert Sinclair, and Samuel Honey - who set out cross country to return to the Terror. Simmons is specific that the corpse in the bunk is about the height of Crozier, but elsewhere, Reuben Male (the more significant character of the trio) is described as shorter than Crozier, and there is almost no mention or development in the novel at all regarding Robert Sinclair or Samuel Honey (who is not Honey, the carpenter, but a blacksmith with the same last name who is basically never mentioned except for being included in that group that chose to try to return to the Terror).

However, one detail seems to suggest that it wasn't one of those three: the corpse is swathed in heavy clothes and blankets, which puzzles Crozier, since if the three had managed to make their way back to the Terror, it would have still been summer. (I mention this because it's specifically pointed out in the narrative. In fact, since this discovery happens 2+ years later, they could have returned, sailed the ship out during summer, and then this individual could have died at a later time.) Earlier, much was made of checking every nook and cranny of the ship before abandoning it, which seems to have been explicated especially to put aside any notion that whoever the corpse was (and whoever sailed the ship and nailed the hatches shut) weren't sailors who had surreptitiously stayed aboard. The constant head-counting by Crozier also indicates that nobody is unaccounted for after the crew leaves the ship.

Simmons is also quite specific that the Terror was anchored in a place that didn't make any sense; instead of harboring in the shelter of the various nearby inlets, it is anchored in open water (later, ice), leaving it exposed to the terrible storms. Was this, again, an effort to isolate the one left on board? Or was it just an indication of extreme incompetence? (Wouldn't pretty much any sailor know to seek some kind of safe harbor?)

And wtf, the rat teeth?

It also makes me crazy that Simmons writes this:

How Terror could have ended up here, almost two hundred miles south of where she had been frozen fast near Erebus for almost three years, was beyond Crozier’s powers of speculation.

He would not have to speculate much longer.

eh? Why not? He doesn't seem to have reached any conclusion (or none that were shared with us poor readers) about this after inspecting the ship.

It just doesn't make sense to me that Simmons would have put all these extremely specific details/clues - not to mention the relocation of the Terror at all - just to leave it all as a hanging mystery. Why? Why? What am I missing?

Great American Novels

Busoni — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 13:06:00 -0800

People talk about "writing the Great American Novel." What do you think are valid examples of the G.A.N.? What novels, American or otherwise, did you enjoy reading and wish you had written?

What mystery needs a mirror to solve?

charlesv — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 19:44:44 -0800

Need help remembering the title of a line of young adult books from the 80s involving mysteries and requiring a mirror to solve. I hate this kind of "help me remember this book/song/tv show/whatever from the 70s/80s/90s" question. I really do. But I don't have anywhere else to look.

I'm looking for the name of a line of kids' books from the 80s that were sort of like Encyclopedia Brown, but the solutions were at the end were reversed so that you had to hold the book up to a mirror to see what happened.

This was spurred by, of all things, a Facebook posting about hearsay.

Stand-Alone Fantasy Novels?

Jaybo — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 11:46:02 -0800

Stand-alone fantasy book recommendations? So many fantasy books are parts of series so I'm looking for suggestions of fantasy books that are engaging, stand-alone works.

Bonus points if they have medieval settings and characters who use magic.

Finally, although it *is* part of a series, the person I'm asking on behalf of cites "Ink Death" as an example of the type of book they're looking for.

She might have been a Mary-Sue

mippy — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 08:41:36 -0800

Help me identify a novel about a female student in Edinburgh, her boyfriend with acne scars (referred to as 'my soft-scarred angel') who used to buy her nice underwear, and some kind of traumatic event in her past (either parental or some kind of mental trauma) that kept coming back to affect her. It was printed in the '90s and googling the details I know brings up nothing! Memory says the heroine might have had a traditional name like Elizabeth or Helen, and that the title had the word 'beast' in it, but I'm not 100% sure on that one.

Another "remember this romance novel" question

matildaben — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 12:04:42 -0800

This question reminded me that I have a trashy paperback romance novel memory of my own that I would like to track down. It was about a female highwayman and its cover art was mostly in shades of dark green. This would have been a paperback romance novel published sometime in the early 1980s (prior to 1983) or maybe even the 1970s (I bought it used). The writer was still publishing because I remember I had another paperback by the same author that I bought new in about 1980-1982 (with a similar style of cover art but this one in shades of rose and coral). The main female character either dressed up as a man and became a highwayman, or else just fell in love with a highwayman (although I think the former because she was one of those spirited dark-haired types). The setting was somewhere in the British Isles, I believe, and I don't remember any of the characters' names. It was a relatively thick book, maybe over 250 pages.

Long Sighted: What's the novel where a character has their eye stretched to the back of their head, thus enabling a kind of second sight?

pipstar — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:28:45 -0800

Help me find this book! It's about a family, possibly from the North of the UK / Scotland, but the thing I remember most is one of the brothers travelling through South America. He washes up on a riverbank, plants almost grow up around him. Local indigenous people save him and he becomes a medicine man. The image that really sticks in my mind is that his eye is slowly pulled out and the optic nerve extended so that he has an "eye in the back of his head".

Does this book actually exist?

Armchair travel as Plan B

carbide — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 03:40:50 -0800

I'd like to read a book set in/about every US state, and would love recommendations from those living in or from each state. Actual travel I'd been hoping to do won't happen, so please help me make a journey via the library. I've spotted Librarything's Tag Mash* and am digging through Wikipedia, but recommendations from people who love and know each state would be a huge help.

Anything goes (short stories included), but if you need some extra criteria to narrow it down:

- I really like good storytelling in simple language, rather than poetic prose. Raymond Carver, Richard Bausch, Stephen King and Douglas Coupland all do this for me in varied ways.
- I also really like stories about ordinary life. Conversely, I hate stories with new-agey themes.
- Stories where place is important would be good, or where there's a sense of the place's identity throughout. I realise one book won't get every bit of any state.
- Your personal canon is more interesting to me than Official Best Books. Weird and personal books are the best, when they're good. An engaging story set in a town I've never heard of would be a total joy.

I was really hoping to make a few long train journeys in the US this year but am going to be laid off soon and trying to avoid defaulting on my loans (oh boy oh boy!), so the library and Bookmooch will be helping me to have an imaginary tour as compensation.

(Previously about cities, from which I will be borrowing, but it's short.)

* Sorry, Delaware, but you're on the More Challenging list from the outset!

Help me choose a book to travel with.

mosessis — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:38:48 -0800

I need a longish, interesting, well-written book (fiction) to read on an upcoming trip. Any suggestions? I'm going on a trip where I'll have plenty of time to read and not much space to pack books. I need to find a good novel-type book that could last me at least a couple of weeks. My trip is for a couple of months in non-English speaking countries, and I want something captivating to fall into as a respite from journeying.

I have read both Portrait of a Lady by Henry James and Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder in this same situation, and those worked perfectly for my purposes. I wish I could just bring one of these again, because they were so perfect - dense, interesting, thought-provoking, lend themselves to rereading passages - but I'd really like to find something new.

My general tastes run towards late 18th Century (Burney Lennox, Austen, etc) and turn of the twentieth century (James, Wharton, Wilde, etc). I generally steer away from serializations that have been turned into novels (Dickens, Forster, etc) and overly romanticized, gothic, heroic, dramatic love type stories (Les Miserables, Goethe, etc). But of course I am completely open to trying new genres and authors that I might not yet know I love.

What book was in your backpack that kept you going through the lonely times? What's the best longish novel you've read that you wish you had had the time to just sit and read? To slightly complicate this, I'm leaving in 36 hours and will have to find this on the shelf at one of my (luckily many) local book stores.

___________

serazin — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 23:06:15 -0800

Why do novelists use "________" in place of a character's name? Most recently, I noticed this convention in The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, but I've for sure seen this used elsewhere as well.

Is this supposed to make the novel feel more "real" - as if the author is protecting the identity of some particularly heinous or vulnerable character? That makes no sense to me since I've never read a non-fiction book or essay where there was a blank (or first letter only) instead of a name.

Am I missing something obvious?

Please halp me grok

drgonzo — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:52:20 -0800

[spoilers within] Please help me understand the ending of Haruki Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Specifically I'm wondering about the choice he had to escape the town with his shadow (which means returning to reality right?) or stay in the Town with the librarian and read dreams. Why did he choose corporeal death and eternity in the lifeless town over reality? won't his mind fade once the shadow is dead? he alludes that he thinks he can hold on, but then what is the point of the shadow anyway? maybe he was choosing to turn on tune in and drop out, opting out of the materialistic society, especially since his job with the System was probably not his to go back to? he was disaffected, but his life wasn't THAT bad...

Help me with a horror novel title.

zardoz — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:04:40 -0800

What's-the-title-of-this-book-Filter: I read a review of this novel but can't remember the title or the author. Here's what I - vaguely - remember: a female author released a novel within the last 2 (3?) years, perhaps even more recently. It's a kind of horror novel, I believe, but the author is known for more non-genre fiction. It has something to do with a haunted house or castle, perhaps in England or elsewhere in Europe; I think the book cover had a photo of a gothic-looking castle. It had a really positive review in a major newspaper (NYT?) She's British or American. Again, I think. Ring a bell with anyone?

On preview, now that I think of it, the author could be a man. Just to make things more difficult.

Blue Man, not the group.

Slap*Happy — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 22:25:47 -0800

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. There is a science fiction novel I read long, long ago called, I think, "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".

It was about a mysterious giant, the titular Blue Man, who laid waste to various human colonies on alien planets, a scene sticking out the most was of the giant being filmed rampaging though a domed-over city, then noticing the camera man and reaching for him, the broadcast going blank thereafter...

It was (I think) a cheesy 60's environmental/war political message dressed up as science fiction, but the scenes where the giant was doing his thing were really thrilling to this closeted giant-monster fan.

I think I would like to read it again, but it's been hell trying to track down a copy. I may have the title wrong.

Which books are most representative of each city?

reenum — Tue, 06 May 2008 22:21:37 -0800

What one book will allow others to gain the truest insight into the soul of each city or region Inspired by this recent Metafilter post and blatantly stealing the idea (and some text) from this AskMe post, I have decided to try and read a book about all of the major cities in the United States and the world. I've seen AskMe's in the past about various cities, such as London and New York.

So: which single book from each city is most revealing of the lifestyle, customs, struggles, and spirit of that nation? I lived in San Francisco a while back, and I would recommend any of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City' books to get a true idea of life in the City.

Need title of explicit and racy romance novel where rough sex with relative left orphan girl barren

citystalk — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 21:36:28 -0800

Help me remember title of really explicit and racy romance novel from the 70s or 80s please! The main character was a young orphaned woman who was in love with her rich caretaker who was a male family member who took her virginity so roughly that she required surgery and was left barren. I just had a flashback to a REALLY racy romance novel I remembered finding as a tween in my deceased mother's nightstand. I remember being totally fascinated/freaked out by it and I just HAVE to know the title of this. It was printed in either the late 70s or the 80s, as she died in early 90s. I would have read this in the 1990s as a tween/teen. It was ABSURDLY explicit and very un-pc. Details I remember:

*I think the main character was a dark-haired teenage girl who was left orphaned or something
*Her guardian who became her lover was a much older male relative with a very large member, who ferociously (and I believe consensually) took her virginity
*They had so much intercourse that first night, and it was so rough, that she had to be surgically repaired and she was rendered barren from his large member
*The relationship between the two, I remember, was extremely unhealthy, and the sex scenes EXPLICIT
*They were very rich I think

Argh, that's it. I know these details are kinda scary and weird, but I'm pretty sure this was a mainstream book. My mom was a voracious reader but would have only gotten her books from a local, small-town bookstore, so it's almost 100% not an alternative book or novel, but a regular, perhaps best-seller. Please help...maybe your hints will jog my memory!

Do you know these books? Well, help a gal out, then.

droplet — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 08:12:17 -0800

I'm looking for the title of a Scholastic (I think) kids' book published possibly in the early to mid-1960s, and also the name of the author of a teen novel published in the 1950s. When I was a wee one in 1978 or so, I read a paperback book from my grade school library about a tween girl going through the Great Depression with her family. They were "Okies" who'd lost their own farm and trekked to California where they ended up at a peach farm as pickers. I remember the cover was almost starkly black and white, except where there was a splash of pink on the tween narrator's dress. I also remember a drawing of her and her little sister sitting on the steps of a shack. The book wasn't new when I read it, and I'd guess it was from the 60s, probably from 1964 or thereabouts? I'd love to know the title so I can reread it.

The other book I 'd read at about the same time as the first was about three high school outcast nerd girls whose friendship dynamic changes when one of them loses weight, acquires a fashionable wardrobe and becomes popular. I can't remember the name of the author, but I'd like to find out so I can find the book again. It was a hardback with a color drawing on the front cover of the three girls in their nerdy glory. I remember the title was "The Unchosen," but without an author name, Googling is a needle/haystack situation.

I read Harold Robbins and Judith Krantz back then too, but don't tell my mom. Those books were almost too nasty for a grown-up to read, much less an 8-year-old.

Books describing men of no nation

reenum — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 20:16:13 -0800

I'm looking for books, fiction or nonfiction, where the main character claims no country as his/her own I've never lived in a country long enough to feel like "this is my country, this is where I belong". When I was a kid, we moved around a lot. I lived in various Asian countries before moving to the US when I was 11. Even though I'm a citizen now, I don't feel like the US is my country or homeland. I don't feel that way about my birth country either. I've always felt like an outsider, and as a result, I have a hard time identifying with patriotic people or understanding what it's all all about.

Are there books, fiction or nonfiction, about this phenomenon? Is there a term for it, besides stateless?

I've got a mini-door stop, now how do I revise it?

Anonymous — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 12:55:07 -0800

I've just finished my first novel, now how do I revise this thing? I've spent the past three months furiously writing my first novel. I was quite inspired, and managed to put down a little more than 90,000 words. The book is a true rough-draft.

I believe in the plot and am attached to the characters--I really think I have a good book here--but every time I sit down to start revising, I end up quitting after an hour feeling defeated. The process I've been using so far is to simply go through, one chapter at a time, and take a red pen to the printed copy before sitting down at the computer and making changes. This just doesn't seem to be cutting it. I'm bogged down and frustrated. The sheer size of what I've written overwhelms me, and though I'd like to polish it, I'm unsure how to continue.

What are some other methods that successful authors have used to revise their novels? I'd love to hear any tips or suggestions, personal or from the greats.