I recently received a cd from composer Michael John Trotta, and the music it contains is just wonderful. I truly wish people would break from corporate music and instead turn to works that are beautiful, like this.

https://www.youtube.com/@mjtrottacomposer

My most recent finds, of which most were only a dollar. Someone who was moving, took his entire collection in to this small thrift that my friend pointed me to. All of his many discs were pristine, and often had the receipt in the booklet. He paid full-price for these back in the day! What a nightmare, having to give away all of a collection like that!

Some of these were gifts from a friend. It is good to have friends like that!

It is always a lot of work when I buy these, as I have to clean them, rip them into my iTunes/Music, make sure that they tracks are consistent with my naming standards, Photoshop the covers, and then file the discs into my library. Back in 2009, I went for a few months just buying digital releases, but when I really liked an album, I just didn’t feel good not having a physical copy. It’s kind of my way of an album “Going Gold” in my world. And, I actually own something tangible. Digital is very convenient, though, and definitely doesn’t take up any room, but at the same time, you can’t buy good albums for a dollar. And, digital disappears if one doesn’t pay his subscription, or internet bill, or whatever else that can happen. Just go with what works for you, I’m not against digital, it is just nice to actually own it in reality, and not just virtually.

It has been a long time since I’ve come across this many discs at a thrift. They are usually very much picked through, or I have what is there already.

It’s sad when I find a nice disc like this, that has been sitting in its wrapper for a quarter of a century, totally unappreciated. Was it a gift that someone didn’t like? Cost me one dollar, I’m ripping it into my iTunes/Music on my Mac Mini right now.

I now have a section for leather-bound gilded-page deluxe volumes, most of which are the Barnes & Noble Collectable Editions. That is such a great thing, where they take a wide range of well-known books and re-publish them in a very deluxe manner.

The “War and Peace” and “Day of the Triffids” are Easton Press volumes, they are of even better quality, at a much higher price. I paid about forty bucks for Triffids used, as it is my favorite fiction book, and ten bucks for “War and Peace” at the thrift store. Someone must have passed away as there was a lot of these Easton books there. I refrained from buying any more than this as I haven’t much room, so I need to stick to things I actually plan to read. Although I wouldn’t mind having a big bookshelf of these high-end books.

Easton Press publishes the Horatio Hornblower series in its entirety, but at $600. That’s just over a hundred dollars per book. While I’d like to own those, that is probably never going to happen, which is a shame be cause nobody else seems to have reprinted those, leaving old, dated copies the only kind one can find, before the paperbacks.

The Classic Star Trek are the James Blish versions of the original series episodes, and I remember reading them back in the 1980s. When he wrote them a decade before that, there were no VHS tapes, only broadcast re-runs, so his versions of the show were the only way to enjoy them on one’s own schedule. I remember them as a very good read. This volume here collects about twelve or so paperbacks into one volume, that has been out of print for a while so I had to really hunt down an affordable copy that was in good shape.

I kept looking for the Barnes & Noble Ray Bradbury collection over the years, sure I’d seen such a thing at some point, but it was never in the stores. Turns out it has been out-of-print for years, so I found this well-read library copy and got the stickers to come off, leaving it in pretty good condition considering.

I’m a third of the way through The Count of Monte Cristo, which is one of my favorite movies (the early 2000s version gets better every time I watch it.) English was spoken and written much differently back then, but one gets used to it.

The “Jurassic Park” has both of the novels, a great way to go.

“H.G. Wells: Seven Novels” is simply something that should be standard in everybody’s library.

The “Han Solo Trilogy” isn’t the Han Solo Trilogy by Brian Daley that I’ve read many times since elementary school, I really wish they’d put together a volume of that. But this trilogy is by a renowned author of the genre, and is considered to be a worthy continuation of those stories, even referencing them at some point. So, hey. I have no plans on buying the Collector’s Editions of Boba Fett or Obi-Wan as I’m not that committed to Star Wars books.

The book on the U.S. Constitution and other writings is just a good thing to have around and look at once in a while. It should be standard reading in schools, but that would probably be too much to ask.

The John Wyndham omnibus isn’t a deluxe volume, but I paid as if it was. It was printed in 1980 and there aren’t many available. Triffids is my favorite that I’ve read many times, but some of his other works I have tried, but haven’t been able to get far in. The same thing happened to me with Jose Farmer’s “Riverworld” series, except all of his other books that I tried were awful. “Riverworld”, outstanding. Everything else? (I tried maybe three books, so that isn’t extensive) Not so much. But I wanted to have this Wyndham collection so I could give his other works another go without taking up too much extra space on my shelves.

I don’t have a big list of Barnes & Noble Collectors Editions that I’m looking to buy, I’m trying to be really selective. It would be a different thing if they reprinted a lot more different titles than they currently do. I’d really like to buy Easton Press’ “Band of Brothers”, which is $100, and maybe the Collectors Edition of “Dune”, which I’ve never read, but is supposed to be outstanding. I’m not in a big hurry to read it. I’m still getting over a deluxe copy of “Foundation” by Isaac Asimov, which is heralded as one of the best science fiction books ever… I got a hundred pages in, and it was SO BORING.

I used to have a very large selection of science fiction books, but most of them that I read, or tried to read, really weren’t that great, or even, they were awful. Despite great reviews and nice cover art. One really can’t judge a book by its cover! So, along with all of my political books (all depressing), I had a Stalinistic Great Purge about ten or fifteen years ago, to make room for more history books. I was still going to the annual library sales back then, hauling back boxes of books, so this bought me a lot of shelf space.

Now my science fiction section has twenty books, tops, if that. And two or three political books. I need more space again, but there is nothing to purge, as my shelves are full of great stuff!

My favorite fiction book of all time is Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham. I was introduced to the book through borrowed cassette tapes from the library of the 1960’s radio adaptation, which was very good. I listened to it all the time for years. Eventually I found a paperback copy, and then another, and eventually a nice hardback version (SF Masterworks) that is really hard to find now, if at all. Although the cover and the build of this book was really good, the text was obviously copied cheaply, but it was still just fine to read.

About fifteen years ago, I was able to get the really expensive leather-bound Easton Press version of eBay used, for $44. I like these kind of books, especially the lower-priced but still very nice Barnes & Noble Collectable Edition books.

This week, I found an omnibus of Windham’s work, a total of six books-in-one, but there were only a few of them available, as it was printed in 1980. My copy was shipped from Great Britain, but I’m glad to now have it! I tried reading one or two of his other books, but they never really had the same impact. I’m going to give it another try though (I paid enough for this one, I’d better!)

I have a remastered version of the radio play, but none of the movies or the miniseries, all of which aren’t in wide circulation. The 1950’s movie has the Triffids as big as trees, which is ridiculous, but as an old-school sci-fi movie it is okay. The 1980’s miniseries is far better, but I only have a weak VHS home recording from thirty years ago that I had bought online. There is a newer movie from the 2000s that I haven’t seen yet, but I think they “updated” a lot in it, so I’m not sure if it is as true to the book as it should be.

In any case, the book brings up a lot of interesting questions about society, and is a lot like the Walking Dead, but with better antagonists in the Triffids. And, almost everybody in the world has gone blind. Triffids are man-eating plants that can actually walk around. Before the night of strange, bright lights in the sky (that made everyone who saw them blind as of the next morning), they were domesticated and harvested for their oil. Considered very harmless, until they, due to the now blind human population, became better at sensing their place in the world and could do as they wished. Through sound and vibrations, they could find someone, slash them with their poisonous whip-like stinger, and wait by the body…

And they had this unique sound, a soft sort of sound that in the radio play, became quite terrifying.

There was a book that came out maybe twenty years ago called Night of the Triffids, by a different author, but it turned out to be very good, he even wrote in the same style of John Wyndham.

I’d recommend the radio play, if one was to listen without disturbance. Preferably in the dark. But if you want to try out a great read, this would be it!

This came on Thursday as I was working from home… and I listened to all of it from beginning to end! I had to rip it into my iTunes/Music in sequence because they put Concertos 1 & 4 + Paganini on the first disk, and Concertos 2 & 3 on the second disc. Yuja Wang is one of the few artists I buy cds new off of Amazon, as I can’t keep up with every artist I like. This is a great buy, and I discovered that Concerto 4 has a lot of cues from the Third Concerto in it. I rarely listen to the fourth, as the first three are so good.