Also King’s The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordan. "Thee’s a 10 year old girl lost in the woods who really loves Boston Red Sox pitcher Tom Gordan.
Time After Time. Jack ther Riper goes to the 1980’s in H G Wells’s time machine, and Wells follows him.
My husband keeps telling me to read this one, but the plot sounds so boring. Hmm, maybe I should look into it after all.
I highly recommend it. King is excellent at writing stories with only one character.
Janji Joni - A film delivery boy promises to get the last reel of a film to the theater on time, then gets his scooter stolen, and… a bunch of other stuff happens. With Indonesian indie music.
I used to talk regularly online with Harry Turtledove. When he published his novel Between the Rivers I asked what his publishers had said when he told them his new novel was about ancient Mesopotamian theology and trade relations. He said they took it pretty well.
Quoth multimediac17:
You forgot the part about how they’re all losers who hate anyone who isn’t a loser, but other than that, the description captures it exactly.
Autolycus, the way I’d describe Last Airbender is something like this:
“There are these four martial arts which can be used to control the four classical elements, with a nation corresponding to each. The only one who can use all four is the Avatar, who’s continually reincarnated and is tasked with keeping the peace between the nations. But the Avatar has been missing for a hundred years, and the Fire Nation is conquering the world, so now the new Avatar (a twelve-year-old boy) must stop them. It’s a kids’ show, but adults can enjoy it too.”
“So there’s this book called Island of the Sequined Love-Nun… No, it’s not a porn novel! Yes, it has a bra on clothesline on the cover, but she’s an evil sex-priestess. Sure, there’s lots of lewdity and nudity and groinal injuries, but there’s also cannibals and talking fruit bats. So it doesn’t entirely run on dirty humor. And the transvstite prostitute is actually a very sympathetic character who… oh, never mind. Excuse me, I’m going to get a Sharpie and black out the bra on the clothesline.”
I take it you got your username from there?
I have The Stress of Her Regard on my bedroom floor (along with a zillion and a half other books). Tim Powers just has this genius where he can take little details of historical figures’ lives and weave them into a connecting mythology.
ETA: It just occured to me- Tim Powers’s lamias are technically sparkly vampires…
Funny, but after that I’d like to give those books a go. I’ve seen them in the store and, despite being a fan of some of Cook’s other series’, those books never really grabbed my attention.
Thanks.
Dune. It’s about spice, and worms, and Fremen. And shit.
And the spice is worm shit.
You love Heinlein, right? Here’s the best you’re ever gonna get on tv.
Wait, do any of them have some sort of injury to their hand? 'Cause as far as I can tell, someones gotta have a ruined hand to make it in a Powers novel…
I think that’s why I have to drag people into watching Chuck. When RL friends have talked about good TV shows, I’ve often mentioned Chuck, and they’ve responded ‘oh yeah. That’s that show about a geek who becomes a spy?’ Coupled with a curled lip and eyeroll. I think that summary’s fine, but apparently they think it’s cliched and cheesy. But it’s really well-acted and the characters are believable and the dialogue’s brilliant and you just have to watch those fight scenes!
Then there’s Dexter. ‘Yeah, Dexter’s the main character, and he’s a serial killer, but you really root for him, and, no, honestly, I’m not a sociopath…’ This actually put me off Dexter to begin with. I’m not sure there’s any way to summarise it that would tell the uninitiated what Dexter’s really like.
Eponymous series seem to be a common theme here. 
I was asked that during a re-issue of the film. The caller didn’t seem to be pranking me.
I’d have to go back and check, but I don’t think so. Eye, yes, and leg. But I don’t remember any hands.
A reasonable guess, but I’ve been using some variant on the username “Lamia” since before I’d ever read The Stress of Her Regard. In fact, I might never have read the book at all if I hadn’t heard it had lamiae in it!
ETA: This was another book that was going for ridiculous prices secondhand, but luckily a new edition came out within the past couple of years so I now own my own copy at last!
My wife told me “he’s a serial killer who only kills other serial killers”. I wouldn’t say that fully summarizes it, but it sidesteps part of the “sociopath” tag right off the bat.
On the subject of Powers, I recently reread On Stranger Tides. It’s a brilliant idea - take the two things the colonial era Caribbean is best known for, pirates and voodoo, and combine them.
I realize this doesn’t really fit in with the theme of the thread because this is a really easy story to describe.
“Dude, you gotta read it, it’s about voodoo pirates!”
“Voodoo pirates? Hell yes, I’m gonna read it!”
Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love. First of all, the title refers to circus geeks, not computer-obsessed geeks, so there’s that hurdle to clear. And then you tell people that it’s about a family of circus freaks, including midgets, mind-readers, conjoined twins, and boys with flippers, but it’s also about family, and there’s a sort of evil doctor-person, and…
But really, it’s awesome, I promise!
“Okay, so there’s this webcomic, and it’s about these 4 kids who are best friends even though they’ve never met except online, and they’re playing a video game…no, it’s not a Penny Arcade clone, not even close, honest! It’s an epic story, because they go in the game, sort of–they go to an alternate universe when they start playing with meteors and salamanders and then the earth explodes, kind of like SimCity except for a lot higher stakes…I think. it’s really hard to follow because the author skips through time and space often, and without warning, and everything you see has significance somehow. Anyway, they have to beat the game and kill the king to…well, to something, we don’t know yet, it’s not finished. Also there’s a bunch of subplots involving the kid’s guardians, 4 exiles on future earth, and a bunch of kids playing the same game in an alternate universe.”