Questions tagged [identification-request]
Questions asking for identification of a story, book, or author, based on descriptive details provided within the question. Please be thorough and provide ALL of the details that you can remember when using this tag. (For questions seeking the original source of a known quote, use the [quote-source] tag instead.)
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Did Gaiman and Pratchett troll an interviewer who thought they were religious fanatics?
TVTropes says:
In real life: Gaiman and Pratchett did a radio interview when the book came out, and slowly realized that the interviewer wasn't aware that the book was fictional, and thought they ...
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1
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English short story where a wife makes an investigation officer eat the murder weapon
I remember reading this English short story during my school days; it was part of our English curriculum 18-19 years ago.
Plot:
It starts with a wife killing her husband with turkey or chicken or ...
- 858
22
votes
1
answer
587
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Looking for a poem about the (fictionalized) writing of The Canterbury Tales Prologue
A friend of mine used to quote a poem that told the fictionalized story of Chaucer writing the first lines of the Prologue of The Canterbury Tales:
"Whan that Aprill with his ... ".
When he ...
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4
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In what Chinese fairy tale does a painter disappear into his own painting?
The online description of Rüdiger Safranski's book Wieviel Wahrheit braucht der Mensch? begins with the following sentence:
In einem berühmten chinesischen Märchen verschwindet der Maler in seinem ...
- 44k
19
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1
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166
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Short story about an atomic energy agency van, with a funny surprise ending
My question is about a short-story with a surprise ending.
The story is about an atomic energy agency van that accidentally gets off the road down a steep slope and hits a small tree.
People on ...
Luiz Jorge Cavalcanti
19
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1
answer
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Sci-Fi Short Story - Life Saving Weight Loss
I recall a short story I read in High School. We read it in English class so it was likely published in an anthology intended for use in schools. (This was in Scotland in the 1970's if that helps.)
...
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19
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1
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Story about child slavery and mutilated body parts?
Can someone help me identify this story about child slavery?
I read this last year in my English class and its a book about slavery.
Synopsis:
The Protagonist is a young male who collects unmarked ...
- 1,102
18
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1
answer
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Children’s poem about a boy stuck between the tracks on the underground
When I was young I used to love Michael Rosen. Don’t put mustard in the custard and lots of silly ones like that. I also remember that there was a darker poem in one of the poem compilation books set ...
- 377
18
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1
answer
376
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Medical school that brainwashes students, run by drug company that does unethical experiments
I read this English-language thriller novel in 2017 or 2018 (publish date unknown) at a local library in the Western United States. It's been bugging me for a while. I remember a lot of details but I'...
- 9,553
18
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0
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376
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What is this mid-20th century British adventure novel?
I’d like help finding a novel I loved as a child. The points I can remember:
It was set and written in mid-20th century England, perhaps the 1950s.
Perhaps aimed at schoolchildren of the time - a ...
- 345
18
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2
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472
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Overpopulated world, where volunteers are being taken to be converted to food
I've read a lot of stories over the years, and Google is not being kind to my search terms (it probably flagged something with NSA or Homeland Security, too).
The book I'm thinking of is set in an ...
- 297
17
votes
1
answer
3k
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Short Story About a Woman Saving up to Buy a Gift?
I think I read a short about a woman who is trying to save up for a gift, and realized that she doesn't have enough money to buy her husband anything significant. While she is looking at her saved ...
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17
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1
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2k
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Science fiction short story with the ability to jump from world to world
I read this not long ago, maybe a year. It was either a short story or a novella, certainly not longer. Read in English, in the US.
The story was definitely older though, no clue exactly when but ...
user72
17
votes
2
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979
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Short story about a man condemned to death because he cannot remember the details about a country
I once read a short story about a man (a journalist?) visiting a prison inmate. He was incarcerated for a crime he did not commit, and it was a case of mistaken identity or insufficient alibi. The ...
- 255
16
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1
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580
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An imaginary young British poet who was invented as a literary hoax in the 1920s?
I think I read a brief piece about this a long time ago -- as in, over twenty years ago. (Possibly in some sort of literary reference book.) As near as I can recall, the following sequence of events ...
- 409
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1
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Limerick involves a pregnant Scottish woman and anagrams
Somewhere in the 1993-2000 time period, I had a hardback book of various linguistic oddities, I think with a red slip cover with white lettering. One of the items included was a limerick along the ...
- 10.3k
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1
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1960s kids book with "invisible" dust which people think improves everything but doesn't actually exist
In the 1960s, my grammar school (grades 1-8) encouraged us to buy cheap kids books; they had lists and we checked off what we wanted and paid for them. They were cheap; these were not new releases, ...
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1
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Story about a man who bets his head but not his neck with the devil
I remember a story about a man who bets "his head" with the devil and loses. I do not remember what the wager actually was. The devil is ready to chop the man's head off with an axe, but the ...
- 253
15
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1
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2k
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Children's book with "a ring, a stone, a finger bone"
I'm trying to find a fantasy book from my childhood library, about 45 years ago. I distinctly remember a quote from it,
a ring, a stone, a finger bone
describing three talismanic objects. There was ...
- 151
15
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1
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221
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African dystopia with children on the run
This is a book I read in 4th grade, so about 2012-2013. This was in English and in the US.
This wasn't really a sci-fi novel that I remember, but definitely dystopian. It was set in the future of an ...
user72
15
votes
1
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1k
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Short story about a detective and criminal who disguise themselves and interact while in pursuit
I read a short story around 1996 in the US. I think it was part of a 5th grade reader book (kind of a compilation of short stories at the appropriate reading level). I remember thinking the story was ...
- 263
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1
answer
842
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Short story about Gentlemen being told a tale by a young woman
Trying to find the title of an old short story I read roughly 5 years ago. If memory serves, The protagonist was a man in his late 20s to early 30s and the story takes place in Europe shortly before ...
- 301
15
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1
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935
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Identify a story about murders of homeless people
I remember 2 years ago reading a book in class about a retired soldier who lures homeless people into his house and murders them.
I believe the plot went like this:
Lets say the heroes name is X.
...
- 1,102
15
votes
1
answer
548
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Short story in Russian about time travel and changing the history of WW2
I remember when I was a child (probably about 40 years ago), I read some story in a Russian book (I think its original language was Russian).
The story is as follows: a man read some documentary book ...
- 491
15
votes
1
answer
322
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The name of a poem about a poet being happy that someone has forgotten the title of their poem
I read this poem in a collection and now I can't find it. It starts with the poet talking about how they were approached by someone who had loved one of their poems. But the reader could not remember ...
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1
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253
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"The Dearest Charms in France" - French story about soldiers, a lottery, and a famous prostitute
Several years ago, I read a memorable short story included as an example (of what, I don't recall) in a book about writing. The story was set in a historical era of France. I believe it was ...
- 2,296
15
votes
1
answer
668
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Identify a Children's Book about a character who eats all his groceries on the way home
I'm trying to identify a book I used to read as a child (90s-00s) that I just barely remember. It was for young children, and I believe each page had a sentence or two along with an illustration. It ...
- 259
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2
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Identify a book, love triangle, death of a woman, no Personal Computers
I have read a book in the 90's, while I was a teen, but it is very likely it was published much earlier. I have been trying to find it on and off since. I do not remember character names. Sorry. ...
- 544
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1
answer
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Juvenile literature about a group of children living in a castle, looking for a treasure
There were at least two books, although I only recall the plot of the first one. They were paperbacks, probably about octavo dimensions, fairly short as I remember them, under a hundred pages. I read ...
- 10.3k
14
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1
answer
1k
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A detective story about money printing
I probably read this 3-5 years ago. It is a story about a man that wants to reveal a money printing factory, which he does because his brother died (I guess) while trying to reveal that money printing....
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14
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1
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813
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Identify a book about a boy who has hypnotic powers
I remember this book fairly well. I'll try to provide what I remember about all points.
Cover
The cover was predominantly blue, with spirals across the whole thing. I think it had a person on it.
...
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14
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2
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Which German book was Poe referring to?
The opening line of Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Man of the Crowd" is as follows.
It was well said of a certain German book that "er lasst sich nicht lesen"- it does not permit itself to be ...
- 71.1k
14
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1
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Creepy children's illustrated book, like Jumanji, about boy waiting for parents to come home with new baby, sees faces in walls
I have a very distinct yet vague memory of a book I remember reading at school. It had very little text, and was illustrated, in a format similar to Jumanji or Where The Wild Things Are. The ...
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1
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Fairy tale story in two parts: "as I first heard it" and "when I wanted to know more"
I read this book some years ago, probably around 2010, though it was definitely older than that. It had a fairly short and simple title, of the kind one might expect to find on a fairy tale: "The Lost ...
- 71.1k
14
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0
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Help me identify an old children's picture book featuring anthropomimetic arthropods
The book in question was written prior to 1990. The pages probably had no words — I was able to read at the time, so either it was not narrated or the words were not memorable. Each page, or pair of ...
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2
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What literary work is being referred to in this limerick in which "The earth, like an orange, is blue"?
In the blog post Famous Poems Rewritten as Limericks on LanguageHat.com (2 April 2018), a certain Trond Engen posted the following limerick:
The earth, like an orange, is blue.
Your love and your ...
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1
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What is the name of a short story where a computer insists 2+2 is 5?
Many years ago in a US middle school, in an honors literature class we read a short story in English that has stuck with me since and I haven't been able to find it.
Roughly:
someone creates a ...
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2
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835
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YA Adventure/Survival Novel, Written Late 1940's Through Late 1970's
I'm trying to find a YA novel that I read sometime between 1977 and 1980 from our public library (after I started reading "big books" in second grade, but before we moved from that town). Two notes:
...
- 397
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2
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Can anyone remind me who wrote this essay about qualifying remarks? (Mark Twain, maybe?)
It might be Mark Twain or O.Henry.
It discusses the shortcomings of that era's novels and short stories. Specifically, it parodies authors' remarks qualifying dialogue. The author of the essay claims ...
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1
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Ogden Nash poem on hiccups
I have a vivid memory of reading a poem by Ogden Nash about hiccups that included the word "epiglottis" to help explain why they happen. I think it also had, as a poem, his quote about how &...
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1
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Looking for an old O. Henry story about a wealthy young man trying to woo a "genteel poor" young lady in New York City
I'm trying to pin down a certain short story by O. Henry. I remember the plot quite well, but not the title, nor which book collection of O. Henry's stories I first encountered it within. And let's ...
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1
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A girl, told that it's wonderful to live in Wales, goes off to live in a whale
This story came to me earlier today and now it's nagging at the edge of my brain. It was a short, somewhat silly, story, part of a collection that I read somewhere in the early 90s. I read it in the ...
- 10.3k
13
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2
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590
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Mystery book series whose titles are alliterations and involve gemstones
I remember, when I was in middle school, reading a series of mystery books. The titles were of the format 'X and Y', where X was a type of gemstone, and X and Y began with the same letter.
As far as ...
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1
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1k
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Trying to remember a book about a relationship between a teenage girl and an older man
I read this story in the 1990s sometime. I remember it being novel-length, but short novel length, maybe 200 pages or so. The cover art I remember was the most 80s thing you've ever seen - a girl with ...
- 440
13
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1
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Postmodernist fantasy with nested stories structure
Searching for a work of metafiction I read about five years ago, probably published originally in the early 2000s. It's a bizarre fable about a young man who develops an obsession with a girl, a ...
- 2,296
13
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0
answers
707
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A story in which a young girl saves a poor boy from a factory owner and meets that boy decades later
Yesterday, I was reading a 5th grader's comprehension book. It had multiple excerpts from good (if not well-known) novels.
One of them particularly stood out to me. It was about a woman who lived in ...
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12
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1
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3k
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Detective novel: “1.5 gallons of blood doesn’t sound like a lot to most people. Pour 1.5 gallons of milk on your kitchen floor and get back to me.”
I'm looking for the detective novel matching this description:
I have nothing to add, except that one of my favorite lines from a detective novel (long since forgotten which one) was to the effect of ...
- 990
12
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1
answer
3k
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Story about two siblings who run away from home and stay in a museum at night
I remember when I was a kid my dad read us a book about two children, brother and sister, who ran away from home, and stayed the night in a museum. They slept under a bed (that was an example of a ...
- 993
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1
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2k
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Short story about paranoid parents whose baby dies in the barbed wire set up to protect it
My daughter told me that she had to read a short story (about two pages long) about an overprotective couple that were so paranoid that something might harm their baby that they put up all kinds of ...
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12
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1
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958
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Identification of a short story about a short irrefutable self-evident proof that God exists that is kept secret
I am trying to find a short story (about 20 - 30 pages long) I read a couple of years ago. Here is what I recall:
The central idea is that a [catholic] priest creates (and writes) a very short (about ...
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