Ultimate Visual History of the World • This was published only two years ago, and doesn’t sell for less than twenty-five dollars on Amazon! It is a big, thick book, and a great deal.
History: The Definitive Visual Guide • I would guess this belonged to the same person who gave the Ultimate Visual History of the World to the ARC, as it is the same size. Both of them together were really heavy to hold with one arm while in the long check-out line!
Beethoven: Triple Concerto • I started listening to this concerto a year or two ago, so this was a good find. And the only disc of the day that was worth buying!
The Walking Dead: Season Four • I found season three on Blu-ray a week or two ago, so now I have the first four on Blu-ray. I stopped watching the show a few years ago as it lost its groove, but it was really good for a long time. Negan was the only plot-line that was worth anything by the time I stopped watching.
Dancing in the Dark • I haven’t read much on the Great Depression, but I mean to.
The Second World Wars • I’ve heard Victor Davis Hanson a lot here and there, and I really like his take on things. This is a very recent book, 2017, I think, so that also makes it a good find.
Big Week: The Biggest Air Battle of World War Two • This is a great topic to read about, also a recently published book.
Poland, 1946: The Photographs and Letters of John Vachon • First-hand accounts are something I really like to read, and the photos are extremely professional and come from one of the more tragic locations of the war. There’s no shortage of tragic locations in World War II, of course, but Poland is definitely one of them.
Ray Donovan: Season One • I watched all of these online a few years ago, it’s something along the lines of The Sopranos. I doubt I’ll find the rest of them at a thrift, but this is a start.
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!
One of the many, many reasons I’m not a fan of modern Star Wars, (with a few exceptions) is that the only Star Wars characters that died, yet came back, were Yoda, Ben Kenobi, and Anakin, as Force ghosts. There was a set rule, or reason that they could, and that was limited as they didn’t just come back as a character that could go on more adventures, they were there only to advise, and disappear. Because they had died. Because dying was something that was taken seriously by the writers.
But now, in the post-Lucas Star Wars era, killing a character is a cheap trick to get some drama into the script, because the writers have no idea how to write a good story. Here are all the characters I could think of that have died, yet came back:
Palpatine – They couldn’t make a better bad guy, and Snoke didn’t work out, so…
Leia – Blown into the vacuum of space… nope! Just floats on back, she’s amazing!
Rey – How romantic. And odd that nobody ever used the Force in this way before.
Chewbacca – They’d never actually kill the Walking Carpet.
IG-11 – Blown up while in a river of molten lava. But he’s coming back somehow.
Poe – He… didn’t make it. Wait, there he is!
Ahsoka – Time travel. They use time travel in Star Wars now.
C-3PO – They’d never really kill Goldenrod.
Fennec Shand – Predictable, but it happened.
Han Solo – Force Ghost. This means that now, any non-Jedi can return as a Force Ghost.
Darth Maul – How? HOW? He was cut in half and fell into a bottomless pit!
Boba Fett – Why not, everybody else comes back.
Two characters in Kenobi take a lightsaber to the body… and they are fine.
I turned out the lights, put the phone away, turned the Surround-Sound on, and re-watched each movie from beginning to end (not in one day, though) over the past week. A very good time!
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