Author: Randy Rydberg

A fairly mellow fellow who likes to read history books.

February • Thrift Store Finds

Cataclysm • Any World War I book, I’ll pick up.

Death or Glory • My only book on the Crimean War (to my knowledge), which is the first war journaled in any real number of photographs, and a precursor to how the Civil War would be fought.

Nothing but Victory • I took a chance that this wasn’t in my dad’s library already, and it wasn’t. For a buck-fifty, it is fairly new, in perfect shape, and has a good number of pages. I can’t pick up every Civil War book I want because of space, but this one was worth it.

Hindenburg • I paid full price for this one, because lately I have gone from being totally uninterested in airships, to very interested. Airplanes always appeared to be far more exciting than a big, fat, slow airship, but upon further inspection, they are really interesting. They were for a time, airliners in the sky, and some even had a lounge with a piano for guests!

Time/Life The Epic of Flight: The Giant Airships – The First Aviators • On the same topic, I passed on these books a long time ago, in an effort to save space as there were some books in this set I wasn’t interested in, so I decided to keep an incomplete set. However, I’m now interest in Airships, and those who took real risks in creating and testing the first airplanes. Now, as I look at this set, there are only two or three that I am uninterested in acquiring.

Scharnhorst • I’ve read about this ship in other books, but this is the first book focused on just the Scharnhorst. It was fairly new, and half-off, so, a great deal.

Shoot for the Moon • I’m more interested in the moon landing, wheres previously, I wasn’t. It is actually fascinating and it’s a shame people aren’t into this topic more.

The Mighty Eighth • I have another book by this title, but it is a less graphical one by a different author. The bomber missions are incredibly interesting when the reader tries to imagine himself in the same situation as the men who were there.

100,000 Miles!

My 1993 Lincoln Mark VIII just rolled over to 100,000 last night, but I couldn’t get a picture of it as I was on the turn from C-470 onto I-70 at the time. Not going to get into a crash for that! I feel like a party is in order for something like this? These are basically upgraded, luxury Thunderbird/Cougars from the 1990s, and this one still runs like a champ.

The Firm

Back in 1991, when I was pushing a broom at Safeway on the night crew, (extremely boring) I was walking by the book section (incredibly interesting when pushing a broom over the entire store) and I saw the caption on this paperback: “Irresistible… seizes the reader on the opening page and propels him through 400 more…”. Yeah, right. I didn’t buy that, but then again, I did. I gave the book a shot. Well, Peter Prescott from Newsweek was absolutely correct! I read that book within a day or two, one of the most fun reads I’ve ever experienced. None of the subsequent Grisham novels did as well with me, I read five or six more and then never read him again. The movie turned out really well, too.

I read exactly six Stephen King books around the same time, they were the cool kind of book to carry around at school. And around the same time as The Firm, I read six Dean Koontz books as well, and that was it. All three authors were pretty good, however, examples of where I was just done with all of them even though they most likely have a lot of great books I haven’t read. I’d get back into them again if I didn’t have as many reading projects as I currently to, I’m not really looking for more to read! I’m still just past halfway through my 52-book Vince Flynn/Brad Thor/Kyle Mills re-read.

I saw this paperback at the thrift store yesterday and it reminded me of that wonderful read.

However, I do have a copy of The Firm in hardback, and it will always have a place on my shelf due to the great read that it was. My original paperback, I lent out to a friend and never saw it again.