[Sca-librarians] Re: Place For Lost Plots?

[Lisa Tyson]

Carowyn Silveroak <silveroak at juno.com> writes:
>
> 
>Hello! Popping up again....
>
> 
>*blush*  Well, since so many people asked.....
>
>I read these 2 books between 1984-1988.
>
> 
>The first book was a mystery novel set on Mars, and I think was 
> 
>written
> 
>in the 1950's.  I don't remember much about the plot except that there
> 
>was a baseball game, and you had to use metal pellets to change the
> 
>course of your direction as you jump around in lesser gravity.  The
> 
>mystery was tied to some weird murders, which were caused by 
> 
>dropping
> 
>storage cubes off of buildings and crushing people by using Mars' 
> 
>weird
 
>gravity.  

Well.. this sounds like it could be it.. 
Freddy and the Baseball Team from Mars by Walter R. Brooks

Check out the amazon link for the book
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0879519428/104-0879666-5995100?v=glance&n=283155

and the audio tape (which has a better summary of the plot)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0788740776/104-0879666-5995100?v=glance&n=283155
>

Lots of libraries have the print edition of this book (according to WorldCat
over 315 libraries). 

>
> 
>The second was called "The Black Opal", and was set in one of the 
> 
>first
 
>women's colleges.  There's a mystery about a gentleman who 
> 
>stayed at the
 
>college as a guest, and he was supposed to have the 
> 
>first black opal ever
> 
>mined.  He dies of pneumonia that night, and the black opal was 
> 
>never
 
>found.  So this young lady adapts to college life (which is 
> 
>nothing like
> 
>I ever experienced, LOL!!), and puts on a play about the black opal, 
> 
>but
 > 
>she gets laryngitis, and so they decide to make it a campy "everyone
> 
>speaks their lines by using cue cards", but they reverse the cue cards 
> 
>by
> 
>accident, and the audience sees the stage directions instead.  The
> 
>audience finds this hilarious, the protagonist isn't so thrilled....and
> 
>that's about all I remember.

The Black Opal by Dorothy M. Bird might be a match 
The cover reads "A pretty co-ed takes on a freshman year
assignment solving a historic campus murder mystery"

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/002041630X/qid=1146101795/sr=1-7/ref=sr_1_7/104-0879666-5995100?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

Lots of libraries seem to have this book (according to WorldCat, 138 libraries)

>
> 
>The third I only saw about 7 years ago, and should have bought it, 
> 
>but I
> 
>didn't know how hard it would be to find again!  We visited the J
> 
>Pierpont Morgan Museum in NYC, to see the Book of Hours exhibit.  
> 
>I'd
> 
>like to purchase a copy of that exhibit, but I have two problems: 1) 
> 
>The
> 
>museum is closed for renovations, so they're not taking any queries, 
> 
>and
> 
>2) there's an exhibit touring the country with a similar theme right now,
> 
>so any search I do picks up all that information, not the earlier
> 
>exhibit's information.  Frustrating!

Two other choices.. keep checking relentlessly on ebay and other auction
forums. Also, you could contact another major museum to see if they picked up a copy of that program. Museum directors sometimes swap copies of
their programs with other museums. My local university library picked up
many, many earlier program guides from a private collection of the 
former curator of an art museum -- It was fascinating to see them 
come down from cataloging, often still containing some hand written
note from the donator stuffed into the booklet. 
>
>
>Also, I saw a book in the bookstore there, on Russian Knotwork (as
>opposed to Celtic knotwork).  And, of course, I got no other info on that
>book, thinking it was available.  Boy, was I wrong!  And now I can't find
>that one either!
>
>Help? 

Here's a website on russian knot-work in architecture... 
http://www.geocities.com/medievalnovgorod/nov04.html

I have no idea what subject you were referring to.. general art? 
scribal art? architecture?  Hard to get much to float up on
searches for russian knotwork or russian knot-work
(specifying not celtic in search terms). 

Bryn Millar

>And thank you for all the info for finding these books - if asking y'all
>doesn't help, that's where I'm going!
>
>-Carowyn