Category: Music

Maison

Where do we go
When we no longer have a home
The flowers under the concrete
Mom, tell me
Where do we go
Do we ever really know one day
Or do we pretend, all the time
Where does the heart go when it gets lost
In doubts and winters
Why do the days look alike
Do we end up seeing what we assemble
Mom, tell me
Beyond
The storm there is
Love, love, love
When the sky opens
Everything becomes calm again
And everything is fine
Where does it go
Happiness, this fragile thread
When it wobbles and breaks
Mom, tell me
Where does it go
Why does the world seem so big
When we become a little bigger than before
What happens to the dreams that flee
And the memories we forget
Will I always have questions
Maybe I’ll make songs out of them
Mom, tell me
Beyond
The storm there is
Love, love, love
When the sky opens
Everything becomes calm again
And everything is fine

Leather-Bound World War II Album

Upon revisiting a thrift we had been to already today (looking for something Dad missed), they had put out this leather-bound version of a book I already have… there are only two of these on eBay, the cheapest listed at twice what I paid, and the other one was at five times what I paid, and this was in perfect shape! Considering I’ve been very much into these kind of deluxe volumes lately, this was an A+ find!

My Leather-Bound Books

The leather-bound Easton Press and Barnes & Noble Collectors Editions section of my library.

I like beat-up books, old books, new books, books with deckle edges, and books with straight edges.

But leather-bound books, with sewn-in pages containing high-quality paper and ink and gilded edges… they feel great to hold while reading. I’m twenty pages away from finishing the first of four books by historian Ian Kershaw on Adolf Hitler, which is considered to be one of the best biographies ever written, while also being a very informative and entertaining read.

I found a set on Vladimir Lenin today, but it was in a different language… so, no. Makes sense as I think I would have been aware of a Lenin set like this?

Hardy Boys

I keep a catalog of all my books, but because my Hardy Boys collection has been in storage, an opportunity to finally catalog them finally came about and I discovered that I have a lot of doubles! Never noticed that back in the day.

Also, I’m not sure where they all came from, many were just in the house, and I read and kept them for myself. Some were my brothers’, and there are different names inside the cover of many of them, names I don’t recognize.

The first one I read was “The Secret of the Old Mill”, and I remember sitting on the step of Allendale Elementary’s second-grade classroom, and later reading it on our front porch. It was a big deal as it was a “real” book and not some children’s book with a lot of illustrations like we were used to.

The older, non-blue cover books were actually all re-written for their later blue cover releases, or heavily modified as it was believed that they were too deep and complex for young readers, or had some “offensive” material in them. I remember being captivated by these stories and characters, with nothing negative taken away from the experience. The two white books on the upper-right are modern reprints of the originals.

The oldest of these is from 1928. I didn’t fully realize that these non-blue covers originally had paper jackets with illustrated covers until much later.

And now, unfortunately, they are back in storage. Not enough shelf space available!

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.

A Rare Find. But Nobody Cares.

I find it frustrating that two complex, dynamic, and difficult to perform pieces of real art like these concertos are completely ignored by almost everybody. This disc from 1999 was created on someone’s home computer, it comes on a store-bought writable cd, and the cover was printed on a cheap ink-jet printer. It is obvious they were just working within their budget, but I’m glad they did, I’m not being critical as much as I am admiring that they did what it took to get a recording of the live performance out there. I’ll never find this at a thrift store again, or anywhere else for that matter. I know that if this was farmed out to a company to create retail-quality copies, a run of two-thousand would be considered low. So I can’t imagine someone printed that number of these from home.

I picked it up for a dollar. And it was passed over by a lot of people looking at the other kinds of discs that were left on this half-off sale day. People will take their routine, generic, and mindless music all day long over actual works of art. Every time.

My Most Serious Dilemma

As a collector of books,(or, as I like to think of it, Assembler of the Grand Library of the House Rydberg) I present to you a common problem; on the left, is the first American edition of Manfred von Richthofen’s (aka The Red Baron) autobiography. On the right, is the 1995 Barnes & Noble reprint. I already had the reprint in my library, and while at the thrift store, I came across the older version, and was impressed by the wonderful cover.

Visually, I knew I didn’t have a book with that cover art, so to be sure, I checked my extensive and detailed list, and verified that I had the copy on the right, but I’d listed the author as “Stanley M. Ulanoff”, who was actually only the editor of the book. I didn’t remember this book as Richthoven’s autobiography, but only as a book about him. So, thinking this was a completely different book on the Red Baron, and an autobiography to boot, I bought this older version ($2.00).

Upon filing this away in its proper place on the shelf, I discovered that I now I have two copies of the same book. This kind of thing can easily happen, when a book is republished in a different decade, with a different cover, and I usually catch these 99.9% of the time when I check my list. Woe to me if I don’t check it the sacred list!

My further dilemma, however, is that the book on the left is such a delight with this really neat cover art, the old-book smell (1969), and yellowed paper with deckle edges. The reprint (1995) has a very generic cover, (someone just took Richtoven’s photo and slapped it on there with a solid white background and burgundy border) and normal-cut, non-faded solid-white pages.

So, the dilemma: which one do I keep? Shelf space is precious, and I can’t afford the space to start collecting different versions of the same book. The newer version’s only real selling point to me is that the paper is clean and white, and there is something about that which has a benefit all its own. I can’t explain it. I’m definitely not going to let the older version go, but I don’t want to let the newer version go. I’m the kind of guy who likes books in both old and beat-up, as well as brand-new condition. Each version has its own appeal.

I’m leaning toward keeping both of them, anyway. Neither is a large book, they are both the same size. I’m not sure of the method, but this newer version is a seemingly scanned-to-print copy and not a re-worked new version, so, a true copy down to the inside illustrations. And that art on the older edition is so good, with the large title and Iron Cross (And no, that has nothing to do with the Swastika, it is a native Prussian/German symbol/award that was commissioned by Frederick William III in 1813, and is still used today in the German Armed Forces.)

I’d inquire of anybody who acquires books as to whether this is a common problem, but I know if a person has a library of any great volume, than they occasionally have this most distressing dilemma. It is a far better problem to have than say, having books disappear from the shelves!

I recently finished a book by Eddie Rickenbacher, the United States’ ace, and it was the same size but in a deluxe format, gilded pages and all. A very interesting topic and recalled first-hand from the men to experienced the first air combat in human history.