[Publib] book identification help

[Martha Patten]

Hi,

The second one sounds like The Blue Castle, by L.M. Montgomery.

-Martha Patten

On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 12:44 PM, <Tracey.Reed at myclearwater.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> This is one of these that came from a friend of mine who knows I'm a
> liberrian. ;)
> RA is not my forte, so I'm throwing it out to all y'all for help.  Because
> you're the best...
> The books might be Australian publish only, which adds to the challenge.
>
> 1. This is the oldest.  The story involved a brother and sister, who had
> various adventures with the people they knew in their neighbourhood. The
> incidents I can remember were that they went to visit a Chinese man, who
> would take his caged linnet out for walks. He showed them a porcelain
> statuette of a lady and explained that it was used in the olden days for
> ladies who were too shy to talk to a doctor but they could circle the area
> in question where they were troubled so that the doctor could make his
> diagnosis. Another time, the sister was being given a lift by a major (?) -
> I have the impression that all the action was set in the 30s - when he told
> her to take the wheel because he was going to sneeze. He then gives her a
> bit of a lecture about how we close our eyes when we sneeze. There was also
> another bit about a Christmas goose, which possibly turned up frozen, but
> I'm getting a bit hazy now. I'm sure there must have been a story to the
> book, but I can just remember these odd episodes.
> 2. When I was a little older, my dad used to get me books out the library
> every weekend. I remember this one was by an author I particularly liked but
> I can't remember who, or what their other books were but if we can identify
> this one, I should be able to revisit the others from there. The story was
> about a fairly plain woman, who shocked everyone by marrying a man thought
> to be a bit of a thug, who lived in a run-down house in the forest. The
> husband turned out to be quite educated and they actually got along quite
> well. One day, on a trip to the city he caught her looking at a $5 string of
> fake pearls in a shop window and later bought them to surprise her. She was
> dismayed by this because she didn't think they could afford it and wasn't
> until much later that she found out they were real pearls and he was rich
> all along. Hurrah! I think this was set in the 20s (the cover possibly had a
> woman with a flapper style bob on, in muted blues and greens).
> 3. This is more recent and my ex and I had both read it and were
> subsequently unable to identify where it came from. I keep thinking it's
> Douglas Coupland but I can't find it in any of his books. Anyway, the author
> spent some time working for a large company and came to the realisation that
> people's fates were determined by the decor in their office, eg a blue
> carpet and white walls meant you were heading for redundancy or a green
> carpet and beige walls indicated promotion
>
> Thanks much all!
>
> -t
> -----
> Tracey Reed
> Computer Services Librarian
> Clearwater Public Library System
> tracey.reed at myclearwater.com
> 727.562.4970 x5036
> www.myclearwater.com/cpl
> > "Be the change you want to see in the world." - Gandhi
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Publib mailing list
> Publib at webjunction.org
> http://lists.webjunction.org/mailman/listinfo/publib
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.webjunction.org/wjlists/publib/attachments/20081007/934ece60/attachment.htm