What was that book?

[rachelmanija]

I am loving the newish LJ community, whatwasthatbook, in which people can post queries about books they're trying to track down. These are typically childhood favorites, read before they realized the importance of titles and authors, and are frequently fantasy or sf.

I love the snapshots of memory, which often sound like half-remembered dreams:

"The story focused on some little girls (a pair of sisters, perhaps?), who woke up during a "Bimulous Night". I don't know if "Bimulous" is anywhere near the right word, but that's how I remember it. They went outside in their nightgowns, and (I think) danced and played with animals and ate PINEAPPLE SPAGGETTI. The theme of the work focussed on how everything was strange and different and magical on a "Bimulous Night", and how none of the normal rules applied."

"A grad student/intern/something goes to the library to assemble a skeleton for a class project, but the skeleton turns out not to be human, but some similar and strange creature. As it turns out, everyone who assembles this creature's skeleton becomes one of them. I believe there is an extra thumb involved."

I am also amazed by how easily respondents are able to identify books even when the clues are tiny ("It involves some animal, and the boy eats the tangerines and the animal eats the peels" My Father's Dragon) or largely misremembered ("A dragon burns off her hair, and then it's black and frizzy for the rest of the book" The Hero and the Crown).

My own queries, regarding a jackal-headed man and a villain named Horrible, are waiting in the queue.

Comments

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

The Anubis Gates, by Tim Powers.

Horrabin is one of the villains.

Or perhaps there's another book with eerily similar elements.

o.O

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Good try, but no, those are two separate books, both for children.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Actually, that's even creepier.

Because I would not think if you crossed two children's books with those elements, The Anubis Gates is what would come out. otoh, there's an even creepier way in which it all makes sense.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

My book was IDed within, I think, a few minutes of being posted. I've got another one I'll post sometime which I have much hazier memories of - set in a large city like New York or something, because they lived in an apartment building. The narraotr was a girl who had a younger sister who acted like a horse all the time, and I think the narrator had a boy friend (not a boyfriend), and there was something about writing "Abracadabra" on a triangle of paper like so:

ABRACADABRA
ABRACADABR
ABRACADAB
ABRACADA
ABRACAD
ABRACA
ABRAC
ABRA
ABR
AB
A


and cutting a row off every day as a spell to make someone well, and then either the narrator or her sister fell or got hit on the head by a piece of stone during construction on the building.

I read that over and over as a kid, and forgot all about it until today. Huh.

The coomunity went from 40 members to, like, 4000 after being featured on LJ Spotlight. :D And from reading these, it seems if you ask "Is it House of Leaves or The Fairy Rebel?" you'll answer a lot of them.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

And I've posted a photo of the IchiRen marker piece.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Wow, I remember the skeleton one too. I'll have to go see what it is.

My net.fogey roots are showing, though; a part of my mind is whining that these people should ask on rec.arts.sf.written or rec.books.childrens, which are still there and both great at story IDs.

[(Anonymous)]

there's a character named Horrible in the Melusine myth.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

That's not it. This is a children's book, with a human villain whom the kids nickname Horrible. He has twisty pale brown teeth.

[larryhammer]

Wait, that's ringing bells. In the hindbrain, where titles do not exist.

---L.