complicated query

select books.title, books.isbn, topicLU.topicid, topic.topic
from `books`
inner join topicLU on books.isbn = topicLU.isbn
inner join topic on topicLU.topicid = topicLU.topicid
where not exists (select remove.id from `remove` where remove.isbn = books.isbn)
and exists (select tlu2.topicid, count(b2.isbn) as counter from topicLU as tlu2 inner join books as b2 on tlu2.isbn = b2.isbn group by tlu2.topicid where topicLU.topicid = tlu2.topicid order by tlu2.topicid having counter > 2)

Code (markup):

untested, obviously, and I'm racing out the door. If you want to give us a sql fiddle we'll be able to help you write the query properly and test it. http://sqlfiddle.com/ It takes a bit to set it up but well worth going through the process.

 

I was rushing a bit...

I created a fiddle and then the site crashed but this is what I had for the schema

CREATE TABLE `books`( `isbn` INT(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, `title` VARCHAR(150), PRIMARY KEY (`isbn`) ); 
CREATE TABLE `remove`( `id` INT(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, `isbn` int(11), day2go DATETIME, PRIMARY KEY (`id`) ); 
CREATE TABLE `topicLU`( `id` INT(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, `isbn` int(11), topicid int(11), PRIMARY KEY (`id`) ); 
CREATE TABLE `topic`( `id` INT(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, `topic` VARCHAR(150), PRIMARY KEY (`id`) ); 

insert into `books` values (1000, 'Clean & Lean')
, (1001, 'Where the crawdads sing')
, (1002, 'Life will be the death of me')
, (1003,'Becoming Michelle Obama')
, (1004, 'Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid')
, (1005, 'Wolfpack')
, (1006, 'Girl Stop Apologising');
insert into `remove` values (1, 1004, now());
insert into `topic` values (1, 'Youth'), (2,'Biography'), (3,'Fiction'), (4, 'Self Help'), (5,'Health');
insert into `topicLU` values 
(1, 1000, 5)
, (2, 1000, 4)
, (3, 1006, 4)
, (4, 1001, 3)
, (5, 1003, 2)
, (6, 1004, 1)
, (7, 1005, 4);

Code (markup):

and I created a query that went something like this - but this query doesn't check that the 2 titles that have a specific topic aren't also in the remove list.

select books.title, books.isbn, topicLU.topicid, topic.topic, count(tlu2.id) as `check`
from `books`
inner join topicLU on books.isbn = topicLU.isbn
inner join topic on topicLU.topicid = topic.id
inner join topicLU as tlu2 on topic.id = tlu2.topicid
where not exists (select remove.id from `remove` where remove.isbn = books.isbn)
group by books.isbn, topic.topic
order by books.isbn
having `check` >= 2

Code (markup):