Category: History

Dogfight!

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My favorite period of history to read about is World War I, so when I spotted this “Dogfight” game for three bucks at the thrift store today, I had to buy it, even though they tape their games shut. It is missing some minor pieces, but is totally playable. I now have a real reason to look at the games section on a regular basis, now… especially since this is one of four in a series of games, as I found out on a specialized “Dogfight” web site, and eBay.

Along with “Risk”, “Battleship”, “Stratego”, “Axis & Allies” and “All The King’s Men”, I’ve got a decent selection of games to play.

And before today, I thought I had all the cool board games, but there are a few more out there!

There’s always “Monopoly”, “Jenga”, and “Uno”, too. So much fun for next to no money!

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. I don’t actually like doing this, but I really appreciate the results.

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.

Before contact paper…
I read this book, it was really good.

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.