The Fabulous Dr. Gray

I've decided that I'd like to get into the mystery genre but I'm not sure where to start. I'd like to start with books were written somewhere in the last few decades (I'm not in the mood for the older classics at the moment but I have ready many Sherlock Holmes stories in the past), and I absolutely love settings that have a bit of a gothic/dark and stormy night feeling to them, if you know what I mean? Either way, I'd love to hear recommendations!

Yes, I could just use what I know in real life but to be honest I suck at making friends. If I didn't I probably wouldn't be on Yahoo answers asking people and hoping for the best. Anyway... two characters have met. How do they get to know each other better? What kinds of questions should they ask? Things they can do? I do have some ideas, but the hardest part is making the trip from meeting to being friends and having to go through that icy place in the middle.

I'm still wondering how to use the new system. I was searching for one of my questions I asked on here ages ago, which I used to be able to do easily with the old one, but now I don't know where to go.

So, it's time for me to choose which books I'm going to read for summer reading. I have a list of the books down here, and I need to choose two of them.

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zorah Neale Hurston

Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolf Anaya

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien

The Bond Woman’s Narrative by Hannah Crafts

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

A Separate Peace by John Knowels

Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

The Importance of Being Ernest by Oscar Wilde

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Native Son by Richard Wright

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hossein

I've already read Slaughter House Five and I liked it very much, even though it isn't my favorite book by him. I've also read "A Thousand Splendid Suns," which is the companion to "The Kite Runner", but i'm not sure if I want to read The Kite Runner because although I love "Suns," it was very difficult emotionally and I'm not sure if I want to do something that sad for summer reading. I have to read one of the Hemingway books for my Decathlon club (I think "The Sun Also Rises" is the one we're reading) so I'm going to choose that one automatically. Before I choose my second one, I wanted to see if anyone had any suggestions for me. :) Anything in particular I should avoid? I'm an AP student so I don't care if it's hard. I just want to know if I'm going to at least like it a little.

Today I got a bit of dust in my eye. Or at least I think that's what it was. That's what it looked like when I saw it in the mirror. I didn't realize it was there until I noticed my vision was a little funny when I took off my glasses. I don't have good vision without my glasses so I'm used to things being blurry when I take them off, but I noticed that something was causing me to see little dark circles in the middle of bright spots. With my glasses on my vision is mostly fine, but the blurriness is bothering me. When I flushed out the bit of dust, there was a tiny dent on my eye right where it had been. I'm wondering if it will go away on its own, or if I should do something else.

My flash drive is an Optima Pro Attaché, 2G, that I got about three or four years ago. I've used it for the past few years with barely any trouble. Today, I was trying to back up some files that were on our old Windows XP. I checked the properties of my flash drive there to see how much space I had, and it told me my flash drive was almost full. I moved a few things off of my flash drive that I didn't need on there, just to clear some space. I emptied my flash drive, but when I checked properties again, it still said it was almost full. I figured that the old computer might just be confused, so I tried to transfer some files onto it. However, I could barely add anything before the computer told me it was too full. I took the flash drive out of the Windows and plugged it into my Snow Leopard laptop, but my Mac said that it was too full as well.

I'm thinking that maybe my flash drive is old, or the past few months that I didn't use it left it confused somehow.

Well, I know a little about writing the first sentences, and I've been coming up with some. The problem with me is not the first sentence, but the first scenes.

I'm writing/planning a novel right now. My characters will be in an ordinary town in the beginning. Later on they will discover the underworld that most of the rest of the story takes places in... but that's the problem. I'm not sure how to begin my story so that it can easily connect into the fantasy plot-line later. I've found numerous beginnings on my computer from the past three years that I've been trying to write this book, and the problem I've had with all the beginnings that is that they're so ordinary and bland. Usually they were simple scenes at school, but I couldn't imagine them capturing anyone's attention. I found other beginnings that started in a prologue-ish way, with a battle or something, but then I don't know how to introduce the rest of my characters in their normal world.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's had problems coming up with the best opening scenes. Can anyone offer me any advice?

I need something new to read, but I can't find a teen/YA series to get into. In fact, it's been a while since I've read an amazing fantasy and/or fiction series written for teens.

Some books I've read and/or am currently reading:

Harry Potter

Percy Jackson

The Heroes of Olympus

Redwall

The Inheritance Cycle

The Hunger Games (I mainly liked the first book. The other two weren't as good).

Alex Rider

And probably many other series that I forget now...

Books I've either read/am currently reading and didn't like, went downhill, or I'm just getting tired of

The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel

Matched

The Kane Chronicles

The Moon Crash Trilogy, aka The Last Survivors Trilogy (consisting of the books "Life As We Knew It," "The Dead and the Gone," and "This World We Live In")

Warriors, aka Warrior Cats

Twilight (big surprise?)

Maximum Ride (only read the first book)

Witch and Wizard (another series by James Patterson, who also wrote Maximum Ride)

And probably also many others that I can't remember at the moment

I've read some good single novels, but I'm looking for a fantasy series at the moment, and I can't find anything good to read. As you might be able to tell, I dislike books that let romance take over the entire plot (which is why I don't read romance novels). I also dislike books that are just dull or poorly written, such as the two James Patterson series I put down.

If anyone can suggest a book that's actually going to grab my attention and is better quality than most of the books being written right now, I'd love to read it.

I have to do a project for history. I have to read a non-fiction book that can talk about any American history topic from 1920 - 1974. I was thinking of doing either the Cold War or the red scare as a topic. Can anyone recommend me some good books to read?

Because I do... I think there's someone behind me... looking at this question...

I'm currently working on a book right now, and as I work on it, I find that many times I find myself making changes. Some characters who were supposed to be in a romance become the antagonist instead, the setting changes a little, the conflict changes, and characters develop a different purpose. When you're writing, how many times do you make changes like me?

I just remembered a book that I started reading a few years ago when I was in sixth grade called "The Fire Within" (I'll be a sophomore this year.) I know that the series is popular, but when I was reading the first book, it didn't really seem that good of a book to me. There was almost nothing about dragons, and a whole lot of useless story lines about squirrels. I mean, it's fine if a book is about squirrels, but not if it's supposed to be a dragon book. And the dragons themselves were little clay ones. Either way, I got about halfway through the book and never finished. I keep hearing that the rest of the series is much better, though. Should I read the first book again and then get started on the rest of the series?

I use the site Zamzar to convert some of my files. I don't have an account on there; when the file is done being converted, they send me a notification in my email and I download it. It always says that I can only have access to my files for 24 hours. Does this mean that the files are deleted from their servers? It doesn't really matter either way; I'm just curious.

I just got my list of books to read for the summer. I only have to read one, or I can read two and receive extra credit. The problem is, I'm not sure which one to pick!

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Turn of the Screw, Henry James

The Bondwoman's Narrative, Hannah Crafts

Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe

The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd

The House of the Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Blithedale Romance, Nathaniel Hawthorne

This is based on something that's happening to me right now. I joined a government simulation game, nationstates.net, which is mostly forums and chat. I met a guy on there when he started chatting to me. He started talking, and I found that I had some things in common with him. However, now he keeps insisting that he likes me lot... and asked me if our relationship was real or just part of the game. I guess that I like him, but I don't like internet dating, and I also don't know if I can trust him or not. He says that he's eighteen, a little older than me, but how do I know? What's your opinion on Internet relationships?

Normally when I start writing a book, I start on chapter one. However, I almost never finished any books that I start, and I think that might be my problem. How do you start a book? Do you start on chapter one, or plan it out first? Do you write individual scenes that won't take place until the middle or end?

I just found out today that in four weeks I have to perform a sample from one of our songs. Almost all of it is sixteenth notes, which I can't get the grasp of. Can I have some practicing tips?

Right now, I'm writing a fantasy story. My two main characters are a boy and a girl who have been best friends since they were about nine years old. Later on in my story, I plan on them starting to fall in love. I'm thinking about making this book into a series, and at the end I might have an epilogue showing what happens when the characters are grown up, but I'm not sure whether or not to make them get married. I really want them to end up married, but it might sound naïve. What are your views?

I'm a 15 year old girl, and I have a twelve year old sister. On the surface, it seems like we get along alright. We both share some interests in music, books, and the media. When she was around eleven or something, she started to change.... a lot. I myself never went through a "bratty preteen phase", or at least not as much as other preteens do. She began to act a whole lot different. She became more aggressive and moodier, and much more interested in swearing and making sex jokes. The swearing has caused her to get kicked off of almost every internet forums she's ever joined, but I'm just saying that as a background to her character. She can also be a very loving person.

The thing that I'm worried about is that she seems to be withdrawing from us, her family. She's much more likely to talk back to our mom, and on an internet post from a few months ago, I saw that she'd written 'My family is always pissing me off and never lets me do anything. I can't remember the last time I liked my family.' This was a surprise to me, because I'd always thought that our relationship was improving overall. She sometimes also says that she'd rather kill herself than deal with everything, but I'm not sure if she was serious or not. All I know is that she may be hanging out with the wrong crowd at school, but then again, I've never really met any of her friends.

I didn't write this to put her down. I'm writing this question because I'm worried, and I don't know if I can say anything that can help her. Whenever I try to act like I care about her, she'll act like I'm... insane or something, like I'm not supposed to try to talk heart-to-heart with my little sister. What do you think I should do to help her get out of this before she becomes depressed or suicidal?

I'm just starting to get introduced into the horror genre, which I avoided up until now. Even though I'm a 15 year old girl, most of the horror novels I read are adult. Most of the other books I read are generally teen (but it seems like all of the teen vampire books are romances, which I really dislike). I've read some of Stephen King's books and I liked them, and then I just finished "Bestial" by Ray Garton, and I really liked that book, too. Any suggestions for me to continue?