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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

What the hell was That Book called? You know, the one where That Stuff happened in it...

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Our Lady Has Left the Building

09:15 / 18.09.06

OK, my go. This is a chldren's book that I remember being read to the class back in junior school, so it's approximately 25 years old. The only things I remember, the bad guy is a giant that's buried underground, asleep. To wake him I think the parts of his belt or a broch need to be brought together. Working for him are a group of shadowy creatures that look like skeletons covered in leather who bedevil our heroes, who are a young girl and a guy, possibly by the name of Arthur. They are helped by an old lady who gives them pouches containing the powers of the wind that, when they open them, summons up winds to fly them to wherever they want to go.

If anyone can identify the book or, better still, help me find a copy I'd be really grateful.

pointless & uncalled for

14:06 / 18.09.06

Would that be Giant Under The Snow?

pointless & uncalled for

14:08 / 18.09.06

Pale Chick - Rabbit Hill?

Phex: Dorset Doom

15:02 / 18.09.06

What's that book (or possibly short story) where scientists find God's corpse in the Antarctic/Amazon/Desert/Space, have to transport it somewhere, run out of food and end up eating God to stay alive? Please don't tell me I've imagined it because it sounds like the most awesome thing ever.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

15:54 / 18.09.06

Phex, Towing Jehova, by James Morrow. I have it on my shelf but haven't got round to reading it yet...

17:55 / 18.09.06

TOWING JEHOVAH was great fun. My favorite touch was that, before allowing the ship's cook access to the corpse, the priest performs a Black Mass over it—reciting the liturgy of the Eucharist backwards, a sort of reverse transubstantiation, whereby the Body and Blood of God may be transformed into earthly human food and drink.

16:35 / 20.09.06

I never read this book although I heard the author in an interview and was fascinated. The only thing I have to go on is one scene where the main character goes to a mans house knowing that he is going to kill her and goes willingly. I know it's not much to go on but I would really like to find out. The main theme is masochism, it was written maybe five years at the most by a woman.

It's a long shot, but you never know...

21:40 / 21.09.06

Ignominious-That's it! Thanks bunches!

00:45 / 23.09.06

Nixwilliams: I think I know the book you're talking about. My grade 8 teacher made us read it and re-read it. By the end of the year I could quote lines from it, and now I can't even remember the author.

It was about a Canadian pioneer family. The youngest boy got lost out in the wheat fields, and ended up living with the badger. The badger was not anthropomorphised in any way. The boy ended up becoming almost feral, kind of like the hero in the previously mentioned "I am David". He ate raw egg and helped the badger recover from a wounded paw. At the end the boy met up with his family again, and had to re-adjust to living with people. The boy could hardly speak any more because he hadn't spoken english in so long and he was so young.

My teacher was very patriotic, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was a Canadian author. Can anyone else help with this one?

11:32 / 23.09.06

Found it! "Incident at Hawk's Hill" by Allan W. Eckhart.

I'm glad it was considered worthy of class-time! I totally forgot that it was set in the 1880s (or thereabouts). In my child-brain, it all happened a looong time ago - back in the 1930s or 40s.

11:51 / 26.09.06

That's the one! Thank you!

16:56 / 26.09.06

It isn't a book as such, it's a little humorous poem/song about how the best way to write science fiction is to just rip off history and set it in space. It's probably by Asimov but if not it's definitely of that era, but I'm buggered if I pin it down.

19:19 / 26.09.06

A collection of short stories taking place far in the future. The majority is incredibly stupid.

THE MARCHING MORONS by C. M. Kornbluth. not all of the stories take place in that future, but two of them do.

about the one about the living planet and the raft, that sounds like an obscure novel called THE REEF by Robert Reed (which I haven't actually read).

a YA house of great size book (which I haven't read): HOUSE OF STAIRS by William Sleator. so I guess lots of people have come up with that idea. but that didn't have a paramilitary team in it, just trapped teenagers.

22:24 / 26.09.06

I've read House of Stairs. That ain't it.

22:26 / 27.09.06

Ok: fairly scanty information for this one. Quite pulpy military flavoured science fiction, main character is a hard-bitten interplanetary mercenary / soldier, the scene that’s imprinted on my brain is of him having been taken captive by an alien race on one of their worlds, in a …garden? of some sort, where he’s starved, beaten, forced to harvest / cultivate said garden. He escapes by befriending, I think, either his fellow slaves or one of the alien females also working there, the aliens were basically humanoid with two or three castes, each with a different coloured skin, pretty sure grey was one of them, maybe green and purple as well.

No idea of plot, title or author, apart from the memory of clearly quite inappropriate undertones of bondage, desire, cruelty and xenophobia; as I recall in the editions I was given there were garish covers with a sandy haired chap looking mean and maybe one where he’s (all but) naked and in restraints. This was a book (actually I think a series of three) that I was given when I was about seven, and which I was almost certainly too young for, so pre-nineties publication if the above rings any bells.

paranoidwriter waves hello

02:17 / 28.09.06

'The Chrysalids' (wiki link)?

Ex

11:33 / 28.09.06

I don't htink it's the Chrysallids - that's narrated by a boy who grows up in a strict religious community. There's a bit of cocoon-style bondage weaponry at the end, but not much along Blake Head's lines...

paranoidwriter waves hello

15:26 / 28.09.06

Yup, I think you're right, Ex. I had to read The Chrysalids at school, but I was still young enough to not pay attention (boring teacher). I'm older now, and I should know better.

Kiltartan Cross

19:04 / 28.09.06

It sounds vaguely reminiscent of the dubious Gods of Mars. Hard-bitten hero, check, different coloured races, check, lots of plants, check, old book, check, pulp trash, check, undertones, check. Probably not, though.

(edit)
I should add, I rather like the series, but it certainly has to be read as the product of its time. Undertones.

(edit, edit)

Or possibly it's one of the "Gor" books. I haven't read them, and don't intend to (unless, possibly, as part of my masochistic "know your enemy" programme), but I gather they've a similar theme to the "Mars" series, only with added misogyny and bondage.

14:07 / 29.09.06

Not The Chrysalids. Not any of the infamous Gor books either, as I’m sure I would have remembered, though I suspect, yes, it was fairly dubious pulp trash. It could be the Barsoom books, it’s doesn’t immediately click into place, and I think it could be a more modern book, but it’s definitely worth investigating. Off to the library I go.

Hydra vs Leviathan

12:56 / 21.12.06

Another one from Year Nine English class: A Russian poet is sent to the gulags in Siberia and, after finding it not to be to his liking, escapes. The majority of the novel shows how he survives the long walk home, catching food and making clothes, basic survival stuff. Then he gets home. That's pretty much it but I remember enjoying it a lot.

I think i may have found this one: The Long Walk...

Withiel: DALI'S ROTTWEILER

02:33 / 22.12.06

Feverfew - You're thinking of "Before and After", and the animal was a sheep. 'Sgot Nostradamus in it, and has some fun bits in the final battle between the forces of Heaven and Hell. Also: comedy demons and apocalypse survivalism. Probably much better in my remembered version, from what reviews I've seen.

09:46 / 22.12.06

Feminist book with pictures of a girls vagina that she drew and the infamous phrase: My cunt is green, my cunt is red, etc...etc

And I'm not just posting this for effect. This book is studied on english degrees.

17:59 / 22.12.06

Thank you Withiel! I'm going to find a copy and re-read it, because I seem to remember it was enjoyable, even if it was never going to set the world alight.

15:07 / 30.12.06

Bump. AARRRRGH which book was it?

Phex: Dorset Doom

14:46 / 31.12.06

Natty- ta for helping out, but that wasn't the book. In the end the poet walks into a town at the edge of the wilderness and meets his teacher, and they discuss giving in versus compromise (the teacher had been a good communist, so the KGB had left him alone).

Kiltartan Cross

14:47 / 31.12.06

Eird, you'll no doubt be pleased to know that a Google search for "my cunt is green" "my cunt is red" now brings you up, first and only...

ORA ORA ORA ORAAAA!!

00:14 / 01.01.07

perhaps it is the cunt coloring book?

I am unsure, since there's no 'look inside' feature for this one, but it seems promising.

11:08 / 02.01.07

Um...well thats diconcerting. Thanks Kay.

No its not a colouring book. Which really doesn't look promising. At all.
It's about a girl who got locked in a cupboard. Supposed to a major work of feminist literature, so I'm told.

21:09 / 04.01.07

Mighty multiple mind of Barbelith, help....!

Fantasy series(? book?), fairly undistinguished except by the fact that the magic users have unusual familiars. One (female?) has a troupe of meerkats (not sure if they're ever actually *called* meerkats) and another has a swarm of bees, I think? Another has the usual cat...

I have it in my head that the author's name started with J - Jon? Julian?

Extensive searching on the web brings up many irritating references to _Veniss_ which isn't the right thing.

Ring any bells for anyone?

14:51 / 08.01.07

See this here passage:

"And then I thought of the postman. We had smiled and exchanged idiocies several times a week. Surely he must know something to carry them day after day without infection. Perhaps it was something as simple as washing out the box with lye. I was certain he would tell me. He was always smiling, always affable, even about the snow.
I waited by the door for him to come up on the porch, and then I sprang out and grabbed his lapels. I was afraid he would run away. I leaned close and asked him whether postal beggars could take over the inert body of any piece of prose, or whether they could only infest letters. He emitted a shriek. Then he tried to jerk away from me."

Does anyone recognise it? Can anyone tell me where it comes from?

13:32 / 12.01.07

Ok, a toughy:-

I think it's a story within a story, and I have an inkling it's from a contemporary novel as opposed to something as gothic vintage as the thing might suggest.

It's a story about someone being presented with a box in which is a model of his immediate surroundings along with all the people inside. The models move exactly as the people do. The protagonist is utterly perplexed by the whole thing and unable to see how it works. Convinced it is a hoax, he reaches in and crushes his own model in his hand. The cap to the tale is that his body is later found suitably squished...

Any suggestions?

14:35 / 12.01.07

It *sounds* like... shit, now I can't remember the dude's name. He did a bunch of historical novels with nary a whiff of strangeness, and a bunch of magically real short stories, including one about a giant hand snuffing out the sun (one of the strangest post-apocalypse stories I've read, ends with people huddling for warmth waiting for the O2 to run out as the trees die off).

I want to say it's either John Frost or Farmer. But it's not. I remember it was a name shared with another famous/published person.

Oh, fuck -- now *I* need some help.

AH HA! Robert H. Fowler. Did a bunch of historical novels, but my local library had this eerie collection of short stories that were mostly like Borges knock-offs. I think that's him, at least. Maybe not.

Oh, hell. I can picture the anthology cover, too. Giant hand, pinching the sun like a candle. Cut-outs, like Terry Gilliam animation.

21:47 / 12.01.07

Mick, that sounds a bit like a story from The Anything Box, by Zenna Henderson. It isn't form the book; I know this because I have read it over and over again but it reminds me of a combination of a few of her short stories, so maybe it's a story by her from another place?

Kiltartan Cross

22:39 / 12.01.07

Mick, was the house a stately home sort of house? It's ringing bells with me if it was. Not that that does more than add to the general level of confusion.

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