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!

Too Good To Be True

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When I see something advertised that is neat, or just a good deal, I take a snapshot, label the file, and save it in a folder. Recently I have had the need for some new shirts, so, I went to my Folder of Deals. In the time since I saved these (pictured) deals a few years ago, they have disappeared from the internet because they turned out to be scams. They would have taken my money for nothing, or given me some low-quality shirts. (According to posts I found about these “companies”.)

Also:

– Years ago I purchased a pack of six Apple-compatible charging cords; the quality of which was really, really bad. Eventually threw them into the trash.

– Last year I almost bought a VCR-DVD player that was advertised as able to record DVDs from VCR tapes. I researched that a little bit and it turns out it was a scam, but I was close to getting that. Too close.

– I few years ago I bought a USB stick that was claimed to hold 2TB of data, when in reality it just continuously overwrites existing data to give off that impression. It works, but putting too much on it is a bad idea.

However:

I’ve found some fantastic things out there as well; My Baerskin Tactical Hoodie is fantastic, my ReadFive Designs Star Wars Toy Guide is one of my most valuable (and rare) books, my Pale Blue Rechargeable Batteries are fantastic and my ZSA Moonlander keyboards have been outstanding. There are so many great products out there, but it pays to listen to your Spider-Sense when it starts going off. Suspicion and paranoia aren’t always bad things!

032225 • Thrift Store Finds

Version 1.0.0

A History of Warfare • John Keegan, renowned historian. I have a lot of his books.

History Channel: The Civil War • This was only seventy-five cents, and I learned two things just from the introduction.

Two Centuries of Warfare • This is a huge book, full of pictures and illustrations in addition to text.

Aircraft of World War II • A reprint of an older book with many diagrams of warplanes.

Vietnam: The Helicopter War • Nice to have a book focused on the choppers.

World at War: 1945 to the Present Day • One of three books, now I have to find the other two.

A Year in the Live of Downton Abbey • The fourth book I have about the show (that I have all of the Blu-rays of!)

The Great Book of King Arthur & His Knights of the Round Table • My dad picked this up for free from somewhere. It’s only a few years old and is on quality paper.

The Annotated Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant • This replaces my older, non-annotated version. Better size, paper, and content.