Restoring 100-Year-Old Books

Three 1937 Horatio Hornblower Books

I just finished Captain Horatio Hornblower: Beat to Quarters… and it was really good! I bought three original 1937 editions for under five dollars, and they don’t go for much more online. These should have had a slip-case, but I’ll take them anyway. I’ve been wanting the Easton Press editions of all eleven books, but as you can see from the screen shot below, they aren’t cheap!

There is something nice about reading a good old book from 1937, and these were in great shape although I wouldn’t subject them to much abuse. This series is reprinted mostly in paperback, so I don’t think I’m going to read the entire run until I get the Easton Press set. Until then, I have these three, and a volume that has three other books in one volume, so I have six to read in the meantime. Along with all of the other books I have going.

These volumes remind me of the original Hardy Boys books I read in second and third grade, which were published in 1927, because of the similar word count on each page, the size of the books, and the depths of the stories. The original Hardy Boys, before they were heavily edited/rewritten entirely and republished in the classic blue hardback covers, were stories with more depth and real adventure that they share with these Hornblower books.

The Hornblower mini-series from about twenty years ago is fantastic, as well, and that is what got me into these books, besides my interest in sailing battleships that goes back to kindergarten and through high school. I drew a LOT of them at school for more than a decade. Nothing better than ships with three decks of guns blowing each other up! As long as I’m not there, of course.

There is this terrible, awful Gina Davis / Renny Harlin movie called Cutthroat Island, of which the only redeeming thing it offers is a great ship battle at the end. Neat stuff.

My Paperbacks

I like all kinds of books, from a beat-up, small and faded paperback, to high-end leather-bound volumes. The best are the books that use premium materials, and paperbacks are the other side of that. About half of these, I rescued from a thrift store as they’d been sitting there for weeks. The busy chain-thrifts, I suspect they’ll toss what doesn’t sell. I do know they treat donated books really, really badly, so I never donate to the ARC.

Anyway. I just had these stacked up while I was moving some other books around and took a quick photo. I do have more small paperbacks, but this is the majority of them. Larger paperbacks are spread throughout my library and I replace them with hardbacks when the opportunity arises.

Getting it done, paperbacks are so nice to hold after covering them.

I haven’t done his to all of these books, but any one that I read, I have to give it that smooth, contact-paper feel. I learned how to do this from the librarians at Drake Junior High when I was in the seventh grade.

In Russian

Looks like a great book, but I really don’t have time to learn a new language just to read it!

050226 • Thrift Store Finds

Found a few things for next-to-nothing that were very new, such as three expensive, recent books, and two newer classical cds… usually classical cds are rare after the year 2000, but today I found two of them, one was 2011 and the other, 2019! I don’t think I’ve ever found a classical cd that new, and it was also a double-cd, and of a very appealing nature, Bach transcriptions for piano! Amazing that I was able to find it.

I have three general kinds of cd categories when I go to thrifts:
1 – The older, cheap, generic collections or releases.
2 – The big, or boutique labels up to the year 2000.
3 – Any non-generic post 2000. (The most rare to find at a thrift)

If one goes to Amazon, most of the cds there are exactly what doesn’t make the thrifts, and never will. Anything new isn’t out in enough volume anymore to be found. I’m thinking it is a better use of time to get box sets, that package cds into more compact forms of storage, are far cheaper as a box set per cd, and are all new and clean. Plus, you know what you are going to find, wheras thrift stores, the case could be broken, most are scuffed up or have cracks in them, and the cds could be immaculate, but easily, not immaculate. And you never know what you are going to get. Trying to piece together an entire set, or artist’s complete work… that is an ongoing task that is often never completed.

The John Williams collection is from 2011, and has three discs for the price of one! For one dollar!

But, if I’m at a thrift, it doesn’t hurt to pick out the few gems that might be there. At a dollar apiece, the price is right!

As for the books, one of them was from last year and sold for thirty dollars new! There are no bad selections here, as usual. The Diary of Vikenty Angarov is the oldest book I bought, and one I’m never going to see in the wild again; these memoirs of former Gulag or other death camps are always of intense interest. The Endurance is a true story recommended to me about a year ago, and this book has a lot of really good photos, of which I am surprised they survived considering what all of those explorers went through.

Hero of Two Worlds is about Lafayette, a guy who is always overlooked when I read about the American Revolution. It looks to be a smooth and very interesting read.

The Proud Tower

I stole these two books from my Dad when I reorganized and cataloged his library a few months back, because they aren’t topics he’s interested in, while I am very much so into World War I. So, I “procured” them. And today, I finished reading “The Proud Tower”, after finishing “Mr. Wilson’s War” last month. These aren’t the smoothest books to read, and “The Proud Tower” did a deep dive into very detailed events that helped form the cataclysm which was The Great War.

The title of the book is derived from the 1845 Edgar Allan Poe poem “The City in the Sea”. Two lines of the poem are used as the epigraph for the book: “While from a proud tower in the town/ Death looks gigantically down.”

Coincidentally, I had purchased a paperback of “The Proud Tower” not long before I found the hardback in my Dad’s possession, and was already a hundred pages into it. I prefer hardbacks, and while I have three of Barbara Tuchman’s other books in that format already, I didn’t have this one. I was close to buying it off of Amazon, but didn’t. Just days later I just happened to run across it as mentioned.

Another neat thing about this adventure is that these two hardback books are from the same personal library of someone I don’t know. Maybe Dad picked these up at the annual Jefferson County Library Sale, but otherwise, who knows.

And for being sixty-five year old books, they are in PRISTINE condition. Like-new, maybe a few minor bends in the dust jackets, and a very slight fading in the paper. But they are great to hold while reading.

In any case, they will be together on my shelf from now on, due to this experience.

I’ll be reading the book Tuchman is most known for soon: “The Guns of August”, which covers the Great War specifically. “The Proud Tower” is the prequel to that one. My copy is the Easton Press, leather-bound edition, quite exquisite.

Books: A Very Dangerous Game

I play a very dangerous game: I find a book at the thrift store that is right up my alley. It isn’t on sale. It isn’t on the list of books that I own (a very well cultivated and extensive list, I might add.)

But, I KNOW that I have this book. Haven’t seen it in a long time because I know it is in the back row of the shelf. But… it isn’t on my list. I have the World War II set of these, maybe I have this mixed up with those?

So, what do I do. Buy this at full price, find out I already have it, and have to bring it back for one of those annoying refunds where they have to call the manager up to the front to issue a refund card? Or, let it sit at the store and take a risk that I already have it. Hope that if I don’t have it, it will still be at the store. Wait a week, hope it is still there so that I can get it for half-off?

The trauma. I know in my bones that I have this book. I take the risk of leaving at the store, and the first thing I do when I get home… there it is! Turns out I bought it off an eBay auction in 2008, and it was with the World War II set of them in the back row, as predicted. That back row is tricky because unlike the front row, where I see the books every day, the back row is hidden and it is easy to forget what books are there.

Anyway. It is like playing the lottery in a way. Today, I win! The disturbing part is that there was a book on my shelf that wasn’t on my list. I’m quite a stickler with this list. Looks like I’m actually quite a… failure with this list.

Actually, that list has kept me from buying the same book many, many times, (books are often reprinted with different covers, things like that make obscure books in my library easy to purchase again on accident.) so this can be written off as a glitch, never to occur again.

031426 • Thrift Store Finds

Great Battles of the Civil War • A big book by Civil War Times Illustrated magazine. I was lucky this wasn’t priced very high. I’m not sure who decided such a dark color for the text was a great idea for this cover. That happens far more than it should.

Korean War Heroes • I had to wait a week for this to be half-off, as the prices at the 88th & Sheridan ARC are higher on books as they couldn’t keep enough on their shelves. I read a few stories in there already while I was waiting for Dad to finish his shopping/hunting.

The Battle of Midway • a 2011 book in great shape, a no-brainer!

Against the Odds: Battles at Sea 1591-1949 • Looking forward to this one. Also, glad I have never been in a battle at sea.

Sovereigns of the Sea: The Quest to Build the Perfect Renaissance Battleship • I’m a big fan of the old battleships from the age of sails.

One Hundred Days: The Memoirs of the Falkands Battle Group Commander • I remember the Falklands War, and followed it when I was a kid in the Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post back in the day, and I’ve read books about it. This will be interesting, the Admiral’s take on how things went down.

031126 • Recent Thrift Store Finds

Typical big book on the topic that for some reason I’ve never come across before.
I read an old LIFE magazine interview with Stalin’s daughter, so this is going to be more of a dive into her experiences.
I read a touching story of Germans capturing some Americans who were taking care of a dying pal, and they all sang together after he passed. A great reprint of a 1959 book.
Version 1.0.0
There are so many sad stories from this event.
The final stories from journalists who were killed doing their job, including Daniel Pearl. There is almost never any justice.
Preparing for the movie “Young Washington” by reading this.

I only need a few more Jack Carr books to complete the set!

I got a great deal on a lot of these books from Global Thrift on 88th in Arvada.

Death Traps: Unfortunately Inaccurate?

I started this book years ago; this video debunks the authors’ take that the Sherman tank was a death trap, and a terrible tank. The video explains that Belton Cooper, the author, worked at a maintenance depo, and wasn’t actually out in the field fighting in any way with the Sherman, but he did get to see tank after tank as they came into the depo, smashed and burned, bodies inside… horrible stuff. So he does know a lot of what he’s talking about, but it is from a perspective that doesn’t relay all of the facts, but rather is an emotional perspective, recalled many years later and not referencing objective information.

As the video elaborates, Cooper isn’t intentionally deceiving anybody, he’s just giving his view and opinions based on what he experienced. It does go to show that just because something is in book form, that doesn’t mean that the information inside is completely reliable. This is a great reason to become well-read on a topic and not rely on one volume for knowledge and conclusions on topics.

I’m still going to read this book at some point, I doubt every single thing in it is inaccurate, but I will take it as the opinion of a veteran who had to deal with some very heavy experiences during the war.