February • Thrift Store Finds

Cataclysm • Any World War I book, I’ll pick up.

Death or Glory • My only book on the Crimean War (to my knowledge), which is the first war journaled in any real number of photographs, and a precursor to how the Civil War would be fought.

Nothing but Victory • I took a chance that this wasn’t in my dad’s library already, and it wasn’t. For a buck-fifty, it is fairly new, in perfect shape, and has a good number of pages. I can’t pick up every Civil War book I want because of space, but this one was worth it.

Hindenburg • I paid full price for this one, because lately I have gone from being totally uninterested in airships, to very interested. Airplanes always appeared to be far more exciting than a big, fat, slow airship, but upon further inspection, they are really interesting. They were for a time, airliners in the sky, and some even had a lounge with a piano for guests!

Time/Life The Epic of Flight: The Giant Airships – The First Aviators • On the same topic, I passed on these books a long time ago, in an effort to save space as there were some books in this set I wasn’t interested in, so I decided to keep an incomplete set. However, I’m now interest in Airships, and those who took real risks in creating and testing the first airplanes. Now, as I look at this set, there are only two or three that I am uninterested in acquiring.

Scharnhorst • I’ve read about this ship in other books, but this is the first book focused on just the Scharnhorst. It was fairly new, and half-off, so, a great deal.

Shoot for the Moon • I’m more interested in the moon landing, wheres previously, I wasn’t. It is actually fascinating and it’s a shame people aren’t into this topic more.

The Mighty Eighth • I have another book by this title, but it is a less graphical one by a different author. The bomber missions are incredibly interesting when the reader tries to imagine himself in the same situation as the men who were there.

100,000 Miles!

My 1993 Lincoln Mark VIII just rolled over to 100,000 last night, but I couldn’t get a picture of it as I was on the turn from C-470 onto I-70 at the time. Not going to get into a crash for that! I feel like a party is in order for something like this? These are basically upgraded, luxury Thunderbird/Cougars from the 1990s, and this one still runs like a champ.

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.