Category Archives: 1990s-

328E: Piano player from 1910’s meets girl from present

I read this book sometime in 80’s or early 90s. A young girl recently graduated from high school or boarding school is invited to spend the summer before college with a distant cousin who lives in an old house somewhere in the Midwest. I believe the girl is recently orphaned and has been left financially set. She starts to hear a piano playing at night and when she dons an Edwardian dress one night, She meets and falls in love with a young man from the 1910’s who loves ragtime music. I can’t remember if they meet through time slip or if he is a ghost. When she finds out he left for Europe on the eve of World War I, she decides to delay college and travel to Europe to find out what happened to him or perhaps find him. I remember her wearing bell bottoms. Been looking for this book for a long time and would appreciate any leads.

328C: Where Did My Disappearing Woman Go?

I have been searching several years for a book whose title and author I cannot remember. My recollection of the plot is sketchy, but I do remember the basic concept.

  • Probably read it in the 80s. Maybe early 90s
  • Female author.
  • Likely bought the book because I recognized author’s name, so probably not a rookie.
  • She was a story teller who used humor sometimes.
  • The basic theme was about a woman (age uncertain) who felt as though she was disappearing, bit by bit. Disappearing as in not being noticed/relevant/whatever.
  • My fuzzy recollection is that others couldn’t see that this was happening to her.
  • Vague recollection of book cover art: a woman was portrayed mostly as a real person. But some of her picture was composed of dotted lines indicating graphically that part of her had disappeared/was disappearing.
  • I’ve Googled my brains out. Lists of female authors writing in the 1970-1990 era. Also lists of best sellers. Maybe my book was a flop.
  • I’ve consulted librarians.
  • I’ve posted this weird quest on Facebook, since I have many friends there who are voracious readers.

How vague is that?!
Can you help me find this?

328B: Learning How Different Animals Sleep

I’m hoping for some help finding a book I remember from my childhood that I can’t seem to find anywhere online.
It’s a book about a little boy who teaches the reader how different animals sleep.
I believe that the cover has a blue frame and a picture of the boy sleeping, possibly with one of the animals, like a giraffe or a bear.
In one part of the story, he sleeps with the giraffes or the horses standing up.
I was born in the late 80s, so I imagine it was a book from around the late 80s or early 90s.
That’s really all I remember.
Thank you for your help!

327U: Unplugged to Kidnapped

A while back I read a book about a group of kids that were sent to a tech addiction camp for rich kids. The book takes a turn though, the counselors are actually con-men who set up the camp to abduct rich kids and demand a ransom. The kids are taken to an island and eventually outsmart their captors and kill them. The rest of the book is about the kids surviving on the island and using the skills they got online to survive.

327R: Multiple Endings To Fairy Tale

I’m looking for a multiple ending children’s book that I read in the late 80’s/early 90’s. The book looked new back then. You could make choices to impact the ending of the story, but it was definitely not a “Choose Your Own Adventure” branded book. The book was thin and about the size of a magazine. The illustrations were fairly simplistic. It may have been part of a series. The story was fairy tale-like I and recall a story line about saving a sick prince. I think there was a witch/sorceress who prepared a potion using a jar of blue flowers/petals as a story line choice. This may be a totally mistaken memory, but the book was owned by a cousin and I vaguely remember thinking he got it from another aunt/uncle who bought it/them from an educational toy catalog company like “Discovery Toys.” I have a vague (also possibly incorrect) memory of the catalog company being Canadian. We grew up in Ohio. Would love to locate this book!

327Q: Glass/Crystal Palace

I read this book in the late 1990s. It’s a picture book, with detailed illustrations. I remember rich colors, and I think they looked like watercolor paintings. What I remember of the plot: there are two princesses (maybe they’re cousins), and one lives in a castle or palace of crystal or glass. The other princess comes to visit her in her glass/crystal palace, and she arrives by boat—I think the illustrations are of a city similar to Venice, where the streets are canals, and I remember fun bridges with lots of stairs. I was intrigued by the details of the buildings in the drawings. Part of the story may have been that the princess who comes to visit lives in a palace made of some other specific material—brick, stone, wood—something like that, but I’m not certain. And she decides that she would rather go back to her palace of glass.

326Z: Magical Land Emits Personalized Alluring Scents

I read this book in middle school between 1998-2000 and checked the book out from my school library. It was probably published in the late 80’s or 90’s. It was from the fantasy genre and included a magical land that the young female main character found by following a trail that brought her to a waterfall with a hidden entrance. Once she was in the magical land, there was some kind of dangerous landmark that lured people by emitting a pleasant scent that specifically appealed to each individual. For the main character I think it was a warm scent like cinnamon/honey/nuts/vanilla. I think this book may have also featured a relationship between the main character and her grandmother. Please help!

326F: Artistic Computers as Counterpoint to Throw-Away Technology

My stumper is just a fragment of a memory. I don’t remember the plot of the book at all, but it was near-future science fiction or maybe cyberpunk. The main character comes across someone with a beautiful laptop where the interior components can be refurbished and replaced, but the outside of the computer is a work of art that they would never part with. They talk about how there is a group of artists or maybe an artist commune that manufactures these computers with wood cases, and with beautiful keys made out of mother of pearl or semi-precious stones, basically to serve as a counterpoint to the throw-away culture of new technology. It was such a cool idea; I wish some artists were actually making computers like this.
If anyone recognizes this description and remembers what book it was in, that would be great!