Category: Music

History of the World War

It seems these days, that most people don’t have the concept of a library; they just see someone who has “too many books”. I have been asked on more than one occasion: “You’re never going to be able to read that many books!” While it would be nice to have the ability to read all of my books, (I actually know a guy who can do this, but alas, I am a slow reader) one of the many benefits of having an actual library is the ability to wander and select something I hadn’t thought about in a long time. I’m a custodian of this custom library, full of volumes that people have put an immense amount of work into creating. It definitely isn’t just a “collection” of books.

A few weeks ago, I found two small, old volumes at the thrift store, and they were part of a set of five. Upon checking “The Registry”, also known as my spreadsheet, it turned out that I had the compilation of all five, a complete and singular volume in my library already. I had a tough time finding it though, because all of my World War I books are supposed to be in the same place, but I had to search and discover this was mistakenly among my older World War II books. But, it couldn’t hide, as The Registry doesn’t lie, it had to be here somewhere!

World War I was known as “The Great War”, or as in the case of this book, which was published in the same year as the war ended, 1918, “The World War”. There was no “World War II” yet, so nobody knew to call it “World War I”.

I found a piece of newspaper from what has to be a newspaper more than a hundred years old, and an invitation card from 1919, both used as bookmarks.

It is really neat to read books like this, written so soon after the war, and totally ignorant of the even worse war to come in just twenty years time from the publication of this one. There is a great amount of bias by the author, who was eventually a Brigadier General in the U.S. Army, but a lot of that comes from the perspective of the author and is very interesting to read. Francis A. March was active in that second war, so he saw a lot of violent history in his time.

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.