The identify that story/book thread: Home of the gas pump boy

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The identify that story/book thread: Home of the gas pump boy

Elderling: Feb 17, 2007

Nrapture posted:

Alright, I have one more try. Still not a serial, but The Faerie Queen? It's definitely old enough, and a high school library would probably have a copy. Otherwise, I'm out of ideas, sorry.

Fake edit: The more I think about it the more it sounds like the C.S. Lewis books, but I haven't read those in 20 years so what do I know.

You must be fakeposting. Spenser and Narnia?

I don't know what the guy's looking for, but I'll guess The Wheel of Time, because there are plenty of magic fights in large buildings and poo poo... and Thom Merrilin faces off against a myrdraal by a fountain in a town square if I recall correctly.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2007 20:52

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 03:15

Elderling: Feb 17, 2007

Technogeek posted:

Also, there was a book recommendation I came across on SA some time ago -- a fantasy novel (possibly series) revolving around some turn-of-the-century scientists who wind up in a world where magic is real, and manage to figure out the underlying laws that govern it. If anyone knows what I'm talking about, I'd kind of like to find the book(s) and see if it's any good.

Here's a late one: sounds like you want The Compleat Enchanter. If so, yeah it's pretty good. I must have read that twenty times when I was a kid.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2008 01:38

Elderling: Feb 17, 2007

WE DOIN IT NOW posted:

OK this has been bothering me for the last few days and no amount of googling or looking through my bookshelf seems to help.

I have this weird memory of a book,well it may have been a dream but I don't think I'm that creative, in which there is a story of a guy ending up in a kind of purgatory. In this purgatory are people of various eras sitting in a HUGE dark room. All the people have different clothes on from different eras and looks like they could have been there for hundreds of years while some could only have been there for a short amount of time. Anyways, there's a well in the middle of the room with a bunch of people huddled around it. The main guy goes to look into the well and sees people floating, drowning, and sinking underneath the dark water. Just as he gets done looking into it one of the guys huddled around the well decides to jump in. Just as the guy hits the water there is this bright light that appears and the man disappears through it. The main character finally realizes where he is and what is happening.

I'm pretty sure it's from a book but I can't seem to figure out which one it was from. I think I read it about a year or two ago. Needless to say googling "purgatory well book" or anything of the like doesn't turn up poo poo.

Pretty sure this is House of Leaves or The Raw Shark Texts

# ¿ Nov 8, 2008 01:46

Elderling: Feb 17, 2007

timeandtide posted:

I'm pretty sure that's not in either book; House of Leaves definitely doesn't have anything with more than a few character "on screen" at once and typically there's a lot of isolation.

It was a dream

# ¿ Nov 9, 2008 03:39

Elderling: Feb 17, 2007

RandomEffects posted:

I have not actually read this book but i want to find it, i heard about it at the end of an NPR show this past week. The description that i heard of it was loosely:

"The author of the book takes various myths and stories and follows the different interpretations from South America to the North pole"

I thought that it was called "Mythologies" but amazon and Google have not located it for me.

Sounds like Levi-Strauss's Structural Anthropology

# ¿ Dec 11, 2008 07:54

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 03:15

Elderling: Feb 17, 2007

RandomEffects posted:

This seems to be more on anthropology as a science, whereas the book i was looking for was more about the stories we all know and how the different cultures shared and interpreted them.

Then again i could have misheard the it and be looking for a book that does not exist.

Okay, probably not Levi-Strauss then. Joseph Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces is a good guess, might be that, but it could also be Campbell's Myths to Live By, which is a bit more general, I think (the former book is specifically concerned with the idea of the Hero, and also one of Campbell's earlier famous works, as I recall). Now if you want to get serious you could read the considerably longer The Masks of God, also by Campbell. The guy knew pretty much everything, though he's often disparaged by "serious" academics for being too pop. The Masks of God is not at all the end of theory, but it is a particularly brilliant manifestation of comparative religion, and it's absolutely worth reading, if you want to learn some interesting stuff about human beliefs.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2008 23:36

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