Guderian: Creator of the Blitzkrieg is one of those books that, if I’m correct, came from a military book club. This means that I’d never see this again at a thrift unless I was very lucky, based on the fact that I have never seen it before, or I’d have it by now.
Vietnam: The Secret War • I have plenty of books on Vietnam, and was going to pass on this one, but upon opening it… well, it’s a worthy buy. I have to stop opening these books.
Aces Against Japan: The American Aces Speak • I really like books that have the actual stories from the people who lived them.
The Day the Red Baron Died • The arial battles of World War I are fascinating, as is the Baron.
300 • Troy: Director’s Cut • Alexander Revisited: The Final Cut • I have been eying this for a few weeks, and finally got someone to help me get it out of the display case, which is tough to do on a Saturday. I already have 300 on Blu-ray, and Troy on DVD, but this is the uncut Troy, and I get the Alexander movie tossed in as part of the deal. I don’t think Alexander will be a great movie, but I’ll at least take a look since this kind of epic doesn’t happen too often, especially lately. At only two dollars, this was a great deal!
I was going to get The Grey and Mad Men: Season 5 on Blu-ray as well, but they were missing discs. Boo! At least I have them on DVD.
I’m a big fan of audio drama and used to listen to a ton of it back in the day. I found the below Ray Bradbury Science Fiction Theatre set on cassette, for a buck-fifty (Half-price Saturday). What a deal! I just have to record it into my computer (I’m no stranger to doing this).
We went to the new ARC on 44th and Wadsworth. Just what we need, another one to visit!
Putin’s World was published recently, right before the current war escalated last year. I bought another recent book on Putin just a week or two ago as well. I’m surprised people aren’t reading these.
Public Enemies: Mobsters. Interesting stuff.
Can’t have enough Ninth Symphony. Beethoven.
Berlioz in Paris is part of a series (Residence) that, back in 1990, I started buying brand-new with Albinoni in Venice. It looks like there are eighteen of these, and I have nine.
The Mozart Divertimenti is a double-disc for the price of one, in perfect shape.
Point of No Return Soundtrack: I am a fan of this movie and the movie it is based on, La Femme Nikita, and the first series from the early 2000’s (Not the second series that ran on network television; awful in comparison). I didn’t remember much about the music, but Hans Zimmer was involved and I had been listening to the Christopher Nolan Batman soundtracks all week, and I had actually come across this Point of No Return Soundtrack when I was looking up other things he’d composed. And, that same week, I find it at a thrift store. Wow! But, unfortunately, there are only a few good tracks on it, the rest are all vocals in a style I don’t care for. At least I only paid a buck-fifty for it.
Grieg: Symphony in C minor: Everything Grieg is good; however I haven’t really connected with his symphony. but I won’t stop trying.
When I was in elementary school in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, Star Wars was the biggest thing ever. Who had what Star Wars toys (that is a huge story on its own), what Star Wars was on the way, etc. Every boy had something Star Wars… show-and-tell was dominated by us bringing in our Star Wars toys to show off.
And in the school library, there was one single copy of Han Solo’s Revenge. Everybody would check it out, including myself, but I never read it. I find this hard to believe, since I was going through Hardy Boys books like crazy, but I just couldn’t get into it. I remember thinking about how many words there were in the thing. The Hobbit was the same way, except I did get through that, but stopped cold with the huge Fellowship of the Ring right after.
What is funny is that Han Solo’s Revenge is a really fast read now, it just isn’t that long. The Hobbit, that epic tome, is amazingly shorter than I remember. And the Hardy Boys? Those are nothing to go through now!
So, when I reached Junior High School, I was able to acquire the rest of the Han Solo Trilogy through flea markets, and I remember reading all three at least three times before I was out of Drake Junior High. They were so much fun!
I re-read them in High School, and a few years ago, I started again and am almost finished. Just great stuff.
Somewhere along the line, I was able to get (and I have no idea where I bought them) the hardback versions of these books, along with Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, (Which, if Star Wars didn’t do well, was going to be made into the sequel instead of Empire Strikes Back, and was specifically written with minimal characters and special effects for that reason) and the Alien and Aliens novelization. This makes for a really great set!
Now, these Star Wars books that I have are just four out of seven. There was a trilogy of Lando Calrissian books as well, in paperback. Of course, I now want the hardbacks to complete my set. But Lando’s books didn’t sell as well, and the hardbacks are incredibly hard to find. I’ve never actually seen any in real life before.
And so, this is one of my life-long quests… to get the final three. Tonight, on eBay, I found two options for one of the Lando books, and one option for another, and zero for the third book. All were over a hundred bucks.
And I haven’t even read the paperbacks (I have an omnibus reprint of the Lando trilogy, too) of Lando yet.
I did buy the Barnes & Noble leather-bound deluxe volume of the second Han Solo trilogy last year, this one written by A.C. Crispin, the author who did the V novelization that I read many times back in the 1980s (that one was enormous compared to books like The Hobbit! I haven’t read that, but apparently it is well regarded.
This, however, is as far as I go into Star Wars books. The Expanded Universe of Star Wars isn’t a place I have enough interest in going, for several reasons, but I really do enjoy this old-school stuff. The very first books in a very, very large fictional universe. It is also very nice to remember how tough Han Solo’s Revenge was to read in elementary school, and now easy it is to read now! As if I’m so much smarter than I was then!
Also, the above Alien and Aliens books, I actually read those before seeing the movies! The books were frightening on their own! In the early 1980s, there was a summer or two where every Saturday, we would go to the huge Mile High Flea Market, my dad would give me some money and we would just go buy stuff. If you scroll way down, you’ll see the antique World War I painting I bought for a dollar, that some guy tried to buy from me for two dollars. No way, bud!
I was always on the prowl for comic books… five cents per was ideal, ten cents was a lot, but a quarter for a comic book? You can keep it! I would sometimes come back with a stack of great Uncle Scrooge, Archie, or Richie Rich and would read them over and over, keeping a stack to read, and when I got to the bottom of the stack, I just started over. Good times. During the winter, I’d go into the bathroom with a blanket, sit on the floor over the heating vent, and read in the heat. I’d read the stack every day over cereal during breakfast.
Anyway, I would always see a lot of this Alien novelization, it was everywhere, and the cover and title were really intriguing. Eventually, I bought it, read it, and read it again. Then I got the Aliens novelization. Eventually, my sister and I rented both movies and watched them with the lights out, sitting in our recliners and as the movie went on, we were both rocking our respective recliners faster and faster out of nervousness as the movies played on, and if you’ve seen them, you know why!
It was so neat to just find some book that I didn’t know anything about, get it for next-to-nothing, and have it be one of the best books I’d ever enjoyed, leading to two of the best movies ever made, movies that I never, ever get tired of watching.
So, getting the hardback versions was a no-brainer, and there is no way I’d ever part with these books. Especially if I can land the Calrissian set at some point!
Finally landed a hockey jersey at a thrift! There is some yellowing on the “19” that is also ripping off, but I know where to get that fixed.
The Author of Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory mentioned in her intro that she had been contacted by many high-profile shows so that she could debate holocaust denyers, but she said “no” to all of these offers because just giving them a platform was giving their argument a level of merit that it didn’t deserve. In so many cases, this can be used to exclude views that need to be heard so that people can make good decisions on a topic, say, this candidate for president is the right choice, or not, but here, she’s right. Some things are proven fact, and this is one of them. Some things are not about “my truth” or a person’s “point of view”. It’s like debating someone who is of the view that Hitler was a nice guy. That is ridiculous, so don’t give them a forum for people who might be susceptible to such things.
She also details how this mentality began in World War I, when some scholars were in denial of Germany’s role in starting that war. There are all kinds of ways to look at how the war started, but Germany was no angel in it by any means. The Schleiffen plan, for example. That isn’t drawn up by military planners because they didn’t want to conquer their neighbors.
This is a link to Google Books so that you can give it a look for yourself.
I had to wait a week, but these two Blu-rays were still there, so I picked them up at half-off!
I recently re-read the twenty-one Mitch Rapp books by Vince Flynn, who passed away a decade ago. The Mitch Rapp books were continued under Flynn’s name by Kyle Mills, who just announced that after the new book, he’s passing the torch onto someone else. Good news and bad news, really, but the new guy sounds like he’ll do fine, and Mills is going to expand on one of his own books from before his Rapp days. Anyway, he responded to a post I made on Facebook about this! Pretty cool.
Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War • This was published in 1947, so not that long after the actual event, and before so much more had been known. Books like this are interesting in part because they are fresh from the incident.
Herbert von Karajan: New Year’s Concert Vienna 1987 (DVD) • I don’t find these very often, but this is the third dvd like this and quite a good buy!
Civilisation • Looks like a National Geographic book, but it isn’t… always an interesting subject.
Above and Beyond • Accounts of heroism that most of us can’t comprehend.
The American Heritage History of the Making of the Nation • I keep passing on this, and the Book of Indians, but finally I bought them, in part to my growing interest in the old west and the American Revolution. I also purchased a great set of around twenty books on the American Indians about five years ago (It wasn’t easy to do, and I never saw this set complete, ever) for only twenty dollars, and these in addition to my Time/Life Old West set make for a great addition to my library.
Brassey’s Modern Fighters • I didn’t need this one, I have the older, out-of-date books on “Modern Fighters” everywhere! But it looks pretty good inside, so hey.
The Death of Hitler • A fairly recent book, so it was nice to find this one as I’ve read a lot on the topic, and actually started reading the well-regarded epic biography by John Toland last night.
Modern Air-Launched Weapons • Turns out, I already had this one. Grr.
History Channel: Civil War Combat • I’m going to watch this after I watch the Grant mini-series again.
Brandenburg Concertos • I easily have twenty or thirty different renditions of these concertos… but there is a reason it is such a staple of classical music. This two-disc set was in perfect condition, down to the booklet, and only a buck-fifty. It’s sad to me that nobody even knows what this is, and what is considered good music anymore.
Great American Showpieces • This is a timely find as I’ve been listening to a lot of American composers lately.
Not I • This author has written other books on the war, I’d thought he was just another historian, but rather, he’s a survivor of it. I’ve read another first-hand account from a young person’s perspective, it is a part of the war most people don’t even consider.
Mozart / Salieri Concertos • I used to not like the flute in orchestral or small group performances, but after John Williams’ “Rey’s Theme” from The Force Awakens (Never watching that movie again), that one piece changed everything for me. It’s amazing, the power one piece of music can have on one’s view of things.
A Touch of Gold • I like these compilations from piano competitions. I spent thirty minutes, using three different cd drives, but couldn’t get anything past the first six tracks to rip to my iTunes, so I had to re-buy this online. I found a shrink-wrapped, new copy for six bucks, which I would have paid anyway (this faulty one was $1.50). Once I listened to a few tracks, I had to do it.
Haydn: String Quartets • I have the other disc to this, so it was a good find.
Thompson: Symphonies 2 & 3 • After discovering the Sibelius symphonies, I’m now very open to new symphonies, especially from not-known-to-me composers. The initial listen was positive. Some of the best music I’ve ever heard, I didn’t like or wasn’t interested in on the initial listen, so who knows what I’ve got here!
The British Are Coming • I have Rick Atkinson’s three-book set on World War II, and this is the first (2019) in a set on the Revolutionary War.
Went to the ARC on 88th and Sheridan, and then to the Arvada ARC at 58th and Independence. Both were really disappointing, especially 88th. They didn’t have a lot of books or cds for some reason. Both stores had a lot of DVD, but there isn’t much I’m going to find in that format that I don’t have. What I am looking for in DVD, or what is left for me to find, isn’t something that would ever hit those shelves. Mostly looking for Blu-ray now. I did see a Blu-ray of Saving Silverman for $5, but with how busy it was, and since I have it on DVD already, it wasn’t quite worth it to go through the trouble to pay an online price for it, and find an employee to open the display case it was in. The Thompson Symphonies was all I bought at 88th, and I almost put it back.
I paid full price for most of these. Usually on Saturdays, the “half-off on selected tags” day, I try not to do this, but all of these books were too good to pass on. Still far cheaper than buying them new, or used online.
Modern Submarine Warfare • This book is part of an unofficial set, of which I have several. It’s always nice to find another one!
Atrocities • Not a happy topic, yet a very interesting one.
The Devil’s Hand • Jack Carr has six books out (This is what the Terminal List series with Chris Pratt is based on) and has the distinction of being the first new fiction series I’m adding to my Brad Thor / Vince Flynn / Kyle Mills library of thrillers. I’d like to find the other five at thrifts, to avoid the higher prices, but they are all relatively new, and with the series doing well, that could take a while. I have thirty more books to go in my Brad Thor / Vince Flynn / Kyle Mills re-read, so I have some time before I have to worry about it.
Italy’s Sorrow • Italy’s involvement in World War II is very interesting. When Hitler and Mussolini created the Pact of Steel, it stipulated that when one country got involved in a conflict, the other would join in. Mussolini didn’t realize Hitler would do what he did so soon, as both Germany and Italy still needed years to rebuild their militaries. Italy was farther away from being able to be effective with its armed forces, a key reason why they did so poorly.
randyrydberg.org 