Captain Paul

When I purchased the three Horatio Hornblower books last month, this book, Captain Paul, by Commander Edward Ellsberg, I put back. That bothered me, so the next week, I bought it. The week after that, the thrift store had a fire, and I assume all of the books were ruined as the sprinklers were going, and the fire was near the book section. So, this eighty-five-year-old book would have been ruined.

Speaking of ruined antique items, the ARC in Arvada put their price stickers on the face of old, paper/cardboard covers and packaging. What kind of person does this, knowing full well that the stickers are going to take the old, fragile paper artwork off when they are removed? They are clearly old, and… it’s just amazing how dense some people are, and how they just don’t care. I’ve seen this done to old books that have survived who-knows-what, but that thrift store pricing person? Nope.

Anyway. I just finished Captain Paul, and it was a good read. The language is different, as when I was reading the Count of Monte Cristo, but one adjusts. What really struck me is the politics, how people were chosen for really important roles, especially in a situation like the Revolution where you need everything you have working as best it can, and they kept bungling the simplest things. The logical things.

And the fact that John Paul Jones was incredibly good at what he did, but even he was derailed by chance, cowards, treachery, and incompetent subordinates. It actually was very difficult to find good help on sailing ships, I read a book about Magellan and I remember that they could only get criminals who needed to get away, loners and desperate people to man these ships as the work was hard, dangerous, and likely to be the end of you.

Still, John Paul Jones had enough success to land him in the history books, but he was right when multiple times, he exclaimed at how much they could accomplish if only the simple and logical choices were made by politicians, seamen, and others.

The book actually starts with a massive failure, the narrator of the story, who is telling it from his perspective as John Paul Jones’ friend and companion, Tom Folger, suffers a massive loss and almost dies in the books’ first adventure at sea. But that led him to Jones.

The writer of The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexander Dumas, also wrote a book on John Paul Jones as well, so I’m going to be looking out for it.

I pulled some other nautical books (I’m calling them this, for lack of a better term. Seafaring?) from my annex and I now have a section of them. The two big Hornblower compilations both had the same problem with the cover separating from the book, so I fixed that with the correct glue. This Captain Paul was in great shape, and had that old paper smell and feel. A joy to read, and I got through the six hundred pages in about a week, which is good for me as I am a slow reader.

I have The Mutiny of the Eisinore by Jack London, The Bounty Trilogy, eight more of the Hornblower books (I’m missing two of them), and a book of stories in the same realm. I’m thinking I’m going to try and read them all, if I can read both the entire Brad Thor and Vince Flynn series, this should be easy!

I do need to finish The Count of Monte Cristo, I only made it a third of the way through and I’m going to have to start over as it has been too long. I would have to count this one as part of my nautical books, but it is in my deluxe book section as it is a Barnes & Noble Collectors Edition with gilded pages and fake leather and all. It costs $20-$30 new, which is a great deal considering what Easton Press, Folio Society, or any other high-quality publisher would charge, those books start at around $100 and up. They are worth it, but until I find a copy used for less than that…

Three 1937 Horatio Hornblower Books

I just finished Captain Horatio Hornblower: Beat to Quarters… and it was really good! I bought three original 1937 editions for under five dollars, and they don’t go for much more online. These should have had a slip-case, but I’ll take them anyway. I’ve been wanting the Easton Press editions of all eleven books, but as you can see from the screen shot below, they aren’t cheap!

There is something nice about reading a good old book from 1937, and these were in great shape although I wouldn’t subject them to much abuse. This series is reprinted mostly in paperback, so I don’t think I’m going to read the entire run until I get the Easton Press set. Until then, I have these three, and a volume that has three other books in one volume, so I have six to read in the meantime. Along with all of the other books I have going.

These volumes remind me of the original Hardy Boys books I read in second and third grade, which were published in 1927, because of the similar word count on each page, the size of the books, and the depths of the stories. The original Hardy Boys, before they were heavily edited/rewritten entirely and republished in the classic blue hardback covers, were stories with more depth and real adventure that they share with these Hornblower books.

The Hornblower mini-series from about twenty years ago is fantastic, as well, and that is what got me into these books, besides my interest in sailing battleships that goes back to kindergarten and through high school. I drew a LOT of them at school for more than a decade. Nothing better than ships with three decks of guns blowing each other up! As long as I’m not there, of course.

There is this terrible, awful Gina Davis / Renny Harlin movie called Cutthroat Island, of which the only redeeming thing it offers is a great ship battle at the end. Neat stuff.

The Proud Tower

I stole these two books from my Dad when I reorganized and cataloged his library a few months back, because they aren’t topics he’s interested in, while I am very much so into World War I. So, I “procured” them. And today, I finished reading “The Proud Tower”, after finishing “Mr. Wilson’s War” last month. These aren’t the smoothest books to read, and “The Proud Tower” did a deep dive into very detailed events that helped form the cataclysm which was The Great War.

The title of the book is derived from the 1845 Edgar Allan Poe poem “The City in the Sea”. Two lines of the poem are used as the epigraph for the book: “While from a proud tower in the town/ Death looks gigantically down.”

Coincidentally, I had purchased a paperback of “The Proud Tower” not long before I found the hardback in my Dad’s possession, and was already a hundred pages into it. I prefer hardbacks, and while I have three of Barbara Tuchman’s other books in that format already, I didn’t have this one. I was close to buying it off of Amazon, but didn’t. Just days later I just happened to run across it as mentioned.

Another neat thing about this adventure is that these two hardback books are from the same personal library of someone I don’t know. Maybe Dad picked these up at the annual Jefferson County Library Sale, but otherwise, who knows.

And for being sixty-five year old books, they are in PRISTINE condition. Like-new, maybe a few minor bends in the dust jackets, and a very slight fading in the paper. But they are great to hold while reading.

In any case, they will be together on my shelf from now on, due to this experience.

I’ll be reading the book Tuchman is most known for soon: “The Guns of August”, which covers the Great War specifically. “The Proud Tower” is the prequel to that one. My copy is the Easton Press, leather-bound edition, quite exquisite.

Rising Tiger • Brad Thor

I just happened into an ARC thrift store today while waiting for Dad to get an errand done, and I ran across a Brad Thor book I have been missing! (Two dollars! it was thirty bucks brand-new!) I keep up with the Vince Flynn and Brad Thor series by getting their books at the thrift store for two dollars, instead of buying them brand-new.

I did have to get one of the recent Flynn books new, though, because I was just finishing the series in my second re-read, and I couldn’t wait. It was interesting, getting one of these books that way. Depressing however, when I saw so many at the thrifts for a fraction of what I paid. Still worth it to buy them new, though. They are that good!

I originally read about twenty Vince Flynn books, the eight or so newest volumes were penned by Kyle Mills after Flynn’s passing. Mills had written ten of his own books before taking on the Flynn franchise, so that is about thirty between the two guys. More, actually counting the recent releases.

I also read about twenty Brad Thor books when I was through the Flynn books. And although I collected the Kyle Mills books when he took over for Flynn, I have only read one of those.

So. I have re-read all of the Flynn books, except the two that have come out since I finished that run. I am through half of the Thor books, and took a break. So I have to finish the Thor run, then read the ten (now eleven, since Mills released a new one this year) and I’ll be done. And then start over again!

I am a big proponent of re-reading books, a practice that is at odds with the large library that I have. But it is important to re-read, though. I look at the first reading of a book as an introduction to it; the start of a sort of relationship. The second go-round is when the book actually gets better. The third is usually where it is even more so, and also very comforting that the book can be counted on not to disappoint. Reads past that are really great; I have books I re-read every few years, and I never get tired of them.

If I wasn’t so focused on history books, I’d be able to get into more of this kind of fiction, by authors like Tom Clancy, C.W. Lamoine, Lee Child (Jack Reacher), and others (I keep a list, of course). But because I don’t have room to collect everything, the history books take precedence. For the time being.

So, since these guys put out about a book per year, I now have three authors putting out three books every year, instead of two. Which is a good thing. I have to get back to it in order to finish my epic first and re-read of about sixty books, only to start over again with Flynns’ first, Term Limits. That was a great book.

I’m slowly collecting the Dexter series, and I have books from Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk I’d like to get to as well. There is an omnibus of Robert Lewis Stevenson, another omnibus of John Wyndham, and a few other fiction books I’d like to get to at some point, including finishing The Count of Monte Cristo, of which the 2002 movie is one of my all-time favorites.

And then, the big book; War and Peace! I have the Easton Press leather-bound edition of this, and far too many history books point to this as being a great book. I remember when Sam on Cheers tried to read it in order to impress Diane… that was the only thing I knew about it up until recently. Very curious to get that one read and see what all of the praise is about!