Late Winter 2025 Update on Blog Posts

I have no desire to list books for sale at present.  I have built up my back inventory of matte picture cover Nancy Drew books, which had diminished considerably over the months I avoided purchasing bulk lots.  I have some Three Investigators books, the Dana Girls books with blue/red jackets, plus some other stuff that needs to be listed.  Unless something changes, I probably won't list much of anything until around spring break.

I have been working on blog posts, and I have quite a few set for publication.  I have others that are partially complete or that I'm holding back for certain reasons.

These posts are set for publication in this order:

Keeper of the Lost Cities Forgotten Secret #4 Kenric and Oralie with Fintan
The End of Everything Series by Nate Johnson
Keeper of the Lost Cities Forgotten Secret #4 Kenric and Oralie at Night
No Place Left to Hide by Megan Lally
Keeper of the Lost Cities Forgotten Secret #5 Kenric and Prentice
Don't Go to Sleep by Bryce Moore
Keeper of the Lost Cities Forgotten Secret #6 Kenric and Oralie in Elysian
The Perfect Place to Die by Bryce Moore
Keeper of the Lost Cities Forgotten Secret #7 Map of Elysian
Keeper of the Lost Cities: The Council and the Black Swan
Hidden Clues #10 The Hardest to Find Books in a Series

These next posts are complete to varying degrees:

Hidden Clues #11 Scarcity of Middle Volumes in a Set—I know what I want to convey in this post, and I'm getting closer.  This is a post that is very hard to write, and I have to do it a little at a time over the course of a few months.

Nancy Drew Diaries #26 Superstitions of "The Scottish Play"—This post has been partially written.

Keeper of the Lost Cities #9.5 Unraveled Part 1 The Review Bombing—I decided to get the unpleasantness out of the way first, then I will get to my thoughts.

Keeper of the Lost Cities #9.5 Unraveled Part 2 General Thoughts—Part 1 and Part 2 were one post until I decided to separate the unpleasantness.  

Keeper of the Lost Cities #9.5 Unraveled Part 3 Alvar

Keeper of the Lost Cities #9.5 Unraveled Part 4 Ethan Benedict Wright II

Keeper of the Lost Cities #9.5 Unraveled Part 5 Eleanor Olivia Wright

The dates seen in Blogger represent the last date I changed something about each draft post.

I also have two posts that I continue to hold back for a certain reason.  They should get published sometime between now and June.

I wrote a post about the Nancy Drew action figures that had slipped my mind.  I'm going to pull it to the top so that I can decide when to publish it.

That's pretty much everything.  When I focus on the blog, I don't list books.  That's why nothing is getting listed.

Upcoming Blog Posts

I am in the mood to read some modern young adult mystery or suspense books.  Around a week ago, I found a YA book on Amazon that sounded like I would enjoy it.  I held off trying it until after the new Keeper of the Lost Cities book was released. 

I have read now the new Keeper book twice and have a rough draft of what I want to say about the book.  I still want to read the YA book that I found a week ago, and perhaps I will begin tomorrow.

By the way, I looked a few reviews of that YA book.  One person complained about the dialogue being too juvenile.  Ah, another snobbish review by someone who doesn't like YA but inexplicably decided to read a YA book.  So typical.  I still don't understand why these people keeping reading YA when they don't like reading YA.  I don't have trouble avoiding books that aren't the kind I enjoy.  I simply don't read them.

If I succeed in getting back into reading books, then I should end up with some book reviews in the next few months.  In the meantime, I wrote up a bunch of new Keeper posts as I read through the set this fall.  I mention this because most of you likely have no interest whatsoever in seeing a bunch of Keeper posts.  As of now, I have 21(!) Keeper posts that will publish in the next couple of months or so, depending upon how I space them out.

I have partially written a few posts or have ideas for posts. I have an idea for a new Hidden Clues post that I think I will be motivated enough to finish.  I have a situation with some extremely musty books that I plan to write up once I know my degree of success (or failure) in reducing the musty odor.

I have written a post about the Nancy Drew action figures and my thoughts on trying to sell my extras. 

I also have a couple of posts that I've written about the current state of series books.  Both of those posts are completely finished, but I'm keeping them unpublished for now for a certain reason.  

Mainly, I want to forewarn you that a flood of Keeper posts are coming, but there will be some other stuff hopefully mixed in every so often.  Bear with me.

Popularity of My Blog Pages

I created some blog pages awhile back to make it easier for readers to view my reviews.  The drawback of the blog format is that posts are always listed in reverse chronological order.  On these pages, I have listed the posts in order of publication.

It's interesting to see which pages have been viewed the most.  The number of views does not truly represent popularity of one series over the others, for several reasons.  The pages are generally only viewed by people who land on my blog, and those people tend to be fans of girls' series.  This is why the Three Investigators page has such a low number of views, much lower than it should.

I have linked to some of the pages on Facebook, especially to the Nancy Drew Collecting Information page when people ask for information about Nancy Drew books.  I have one link placed in an eBay group, so a good many people are using it for information. 

Any pages linked on Facebook will have more views.

My Keeper page is linked from many of my Keeper posts, so that has inflated its number of views.

One obvious conclusion can be drawn. The most recent Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series are nowhere near as popular as the original sets.  It's not surprising that the Hardy Boys Undercovers Brothers and Adventures page is in last place in views.  The Undercover Brothers series is pretty awful.  It was a difficult set to slog through.

Nancy Drew Collecting Information - 511 views

Hidden Clues Informational Posts - 341 views

Middle-Grade Fantasy Reviews - 327 views

Nancy Drew #1-56 Book Reviews - 327 views

Keeper of the Lost Cities Summaries, Reviews, and Theories - 240 views

Dana Girls Reviews - 233 views

Nancy Drew #57-175 Reviews - 230 views

Hardy Boys #1-58 Book Reviews - 219 views

Vintage Teen Book Reviews - 207 views

Judy Bolton Reviews - 185 views

Glossy Internal Illustrations - 148 views

Hardy Boys #59-190 Book Reviews - 147 views

Nancy Drew Girl Detective and Diaries Reviews - 139 views

Kay Tracey Reviews - 132 views

Three Investigators Reviews - 121 views

Young Adult Book Reviews - 105 views

Hardy Boys Undercover Brothers and Adventures Reviews - 97 views

25th Anniversary of the May 3 Tornado + Deciding Which Books to Save

Today is the 25th anniversary of the F5 tornado that devastated the Oklahoma City metropolitan area.  I wrote this post because of last weekend's tornado outbreak.  When I take cover from an approaching tornado, I take whatever is most important with me into the shelter.  I usually take a few books with me as well.  My collection is so large that I can only save a few books.

Back when I was growing up, I never worried about tornadoes.  I knew what to do, but I also firmly believed (very naively) that I would never have any chance of being impacted by a tornado.  My opinion changed on May 3, 1999.

1999 Bridge Creek-Moore Tornado

This is the opening paragraph from the above link:

The 1999 Bridge Creek–Moore tornado (locally referred to as the May 3 tornado) was a large and exceptionally powerful F5 tornado in which the highest wind speeds ever measured globally were recorded at 301 ± 20 miles per hour (484 ± 32 km/h) by a Doppler on Wheels (DOW) radar. Considered the strongest tornado ever recorded to have affected the metropolitan area, the tornado while near peak intensity devastated southern portions of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, along with surrounding suburbs and towns to the south and southwest of the city during the early evening of Monday, May 3, 1999. Parts of Bridge Creek were rendered unrecognizable. The tornado covered 38 miles (61 km) during its 85-minute existence, destroying thousands of homes, killing 36 people (plus an additional five indirectly), and leaving US$1 billion (1999 USD) in damage, ranking it as the fifth-costliest on record not accounting for inflation.  Its severity prompted the first-ever use of the tornado emergency statement by the National Weather Service.

Also visit today's National Weather Service Facebook post for a few pictures and a good summary of the impact of the deadly tornado.

I sat frozen, watching the tornado coverage during the late afternoon of May 3, 1999, for around two hours, knowing that the storm track of this monster tornado showed it heading directly towards where I live.  I didn't have a storm shelter at that time.  All I could do was put a pillow over my head and huddle down in the center of my house.  I remember thinking calmly to myself, The cats will die.  I took cover as best I could when the tornado was around 8 miles away, heading directly towards me.  I had a radio on, listening to the coverage. 

As cross streets were named, I said to myself, 7 more miles... 6 more miles... 5 more miles... and so on.  I knew that as long as the power was still on that the tornado hadn't arrived.  The baseball size hail began.  That was ominous.  Sometime after that, the house began making creaking and popping sounds.  It was eerie, and it had to have been from the storm's pressure.  And then the lights went out approximately when the named cross streets were just 1 mile away.  And I waited and waited some more.

Finally, I said to myself, It's been too long.  I knew that somehow the tornado had missed me.  I went outside, where I found scattered pieces of small debris everywhere, like canceled checks with addresses from miles away and other small items that must have come out of attics.

I later learned that the tornado dissipated just one-half mile away from me.  Yes, half of a mile away.

I had deep trauma from that event.  I thought about it and dwelled on it everyday for at least six months.  I couldn't avoid seeing the debris.  I drove by completely demolished neighborhood subdivisions at least five days per week.  I remember a mound of badly smashed cars that was at least 20 feet high, piled by the side of the road.  It was traumatic seeing all of that damage over and over for months.

I don't think of it very often any more, except during April and May and especially on May 3 every year.  When I do think of it, I get a little upset and have tears come to my eyes.  I became just slightly teary while I typed my recollection of the event for this post.  It happens every time I think about it.

I have never been more scared in my life than I was on that day.

Ever since then, I have paid close attention to severe weather forecasts.  The National Weather Service had us under a moderate threat for severe weather on Saturday, April 27.  Their forecast indicated that we had a significant risk for tornadoes including some strong tornadoes.

Their forecast did pan out, and at least 22 tornadoes touched down in the state on Saturday.  The closest one was approximately five miles away from me.  In the early afternoon on Saturday, I gathered together what I needed to take into the storm shelter, like my medications, devices, and other important items.

At first, I wasn't going to gather any books to save in the event of a tornado strike.  I just wasn't in the mood.  I then reconsidered.  Obviously my 1930A-1 Nancy Drew Old Clock with dust jacket needed to come with me, even if I didn't take anything else.

To help me decide what I should gather, I went to my Facebook page and found a post from June 1, 2013.  These books went into the storm shelter with me that day when I took cover.

This is an excerpt from my June 1, 2013 post:

I took my most valuable Nancy Drew first printings (the ones with stars on the spines), my Wanderer hardcover Nancy Drew books that are not library discards, my Girls of Central High duotone jackets (these are most of the books upside down in the bottom row), three Linda Carlton (Perilous Summer is upside down in the bottom row), the last Girl Scouts by Fairfax, and the last Outdoor Girls book.

I thought of Beverly Gray World's Fair, but I drew a blank on where it was at.  With stress and a short amount of time, one forgets many things. Of course I know exactly where the book is right now.  I thought of my duotone Moving Picture Girls books, but I didn't want to get a chair to retrieve them.  I thought of many books.

I wasn't in the mood to take even one book into the shelter on Saturday.  Looking at the books in the above photo, I didn't see a strong reason to choose most of them.  I decided against taking my Beverly Gray World's Fair (and I knew exactly where it was and stared at it on the shelf on Saturday afternoon as I decided).  World's Fair isn't that hard to find.  Seriously, it isn't.  The problem is that sellers overprice the book.  With some patience, the book can be had easily in dust jacket for $250 to $400.  It may be out of reach for most collectors, but it's not that hard to acquire.

I knew I had to take my breeder set Nancy Drew books with dust jackets.  The breeder set consists of the first printings of the first three Nancy Drew books, Old Clock, Hidden Staircase, and Bungalow Mystery.  David Farah denotes these first printings as "1930A-1."  They are very valuable and about impossible to acquire.

I also decided to take my 1930A-1 first printing Nancy Drew Lilac Inn with dust jacket.  That's a very tough title to get in a first printing book and jacket.  In my opinion, it's the second-hardest to find of all Nancy Drew first printings, right behind the 1930A-1 Old Clock.

I thought about taking only those four books.  There are so, so many books that I would want to save.  There are probably 1,000 books that are absolute must-save books, but I can't save them if the worst ever happens.  There are too many of them.

I quickly decided which other books I should take in addition to the four Nancy Drew first printings:  my Nancy Drew 1940s style library editions.  They are so darned scarce and in such high demand that it is my duty to save them if at all possible.  They certainly aren't the next most-valuable books after my breeder set Nancy Drews, but they probably are more scarce than the breeder set books.  

I wrapped the books in plastic and took this picture.  I put them in a tote bag.

The books did go into the storm shelter with me around the time that a small tornado was five miles from me.  Right now, the books are still wrapped in plastic.  I may leave them in plastic for all of this month, just in case.

Series-Books.com Website Update (Image Problems)

I have had an intermittent problem for several years with some images not showing on my Series-Books.com website.  Google Chrome tends to be the browser that won't display many of the images.  

Back in February, I migrated all three of my websites from Yahoo! to GoDaddy.  I noticed during that time that certain images on Series-Books.com were at times not showing.  I decided not to worry too much about it, since the work I did to migrate all three sites was a massive and exhausting task.  I was at the limit of what I could stand doing.

It was reported to me during the last week that images weren't showing on one of the Series-Books.com pages.  I checked and verified the problem.  I have checked several times since then, and the images are continuing not to show up on Google Chrome.  Several pages on the site are impacted.  The images tend to be visible on other browsers.  

Click on the images in order to see them at a higher resolution.

This is what I wrote back in February in my post, Website Migration Progress.

Series-Books.com is on GoDaddy and looks good in all browsers except for Google Chrome.  The problem is that some images are on ZorroLegend.com.  Some are also on NewWorldZorro.com, but NewWorldZorro.com has been moved to GoDaddy, so those images are fine.  For whatever reason, the Chrome browser won't load the images from the Turbify server onto the sites as hosted by GoDaddy. 

On the surface, this makes no sense.  The HTML files for Series-Books.com have the full URLs to the images on ZorroLegend.com.  The images load fine in the other browsers, just not Chrome.  I have a suspicion what the problem might be, but it's not worth investigating since I'm going to close the Turbify accounts sometime soon.

You might be wondering why many of the Series-Books.com images are hosted by the other two sites.  This goes back to the free GeoCities sites that I originally created.  The storage space was limited, and I had so many images for the series book cover art galleries that I had to place a bunch of them on the other two sites.  I have left them where they were placed even though I have had paid accounts for more than 15 years.

It's now extremely obvious to me what the problem is.  The sites are no longer on Turbify and are completely under my control, so the issue had nothing to do with Turbify.  It's that Google Chrome is preventing the images from showing due to them being hosted by another site.  The problem has something to do with a site security error. 

I might be able to pay for a site security certificate to fix it; I'm not very knowledgeable about what that entails.  That aside, just getting the images copied into the file manager for Series-Books.com and changing the links on the pages to the files hosted by Series-Books.com appears to fix the problem.  That's what I need to do.

581 images have been hosted by ZorroLegend.com and NewWorldZorro.com for all of these years.  I know how many since I just downloaded all of them to my computer.  In the coming days, I will get them copied to Series-Books.com and will edit the necessary pages to the new image locations.  After I have done that, then hopefully the image problem will be fixed.

The Dr. Seuss Controversy and Contemporary Books

This post was written in March 2021.

Certain children's books are considered contemporary.  "Contemporary" means "belonging to or occurring in the present."  If the book is not set in the past, then it is contemporary.  It does not matter when the book was written.  If the text does not place the book in the past, then it is read as a book set in the present.  Understanding this definition is essential to understanding this post.

To a young child, the world just is.  The child doesn't know anything different than the present world.  I think of my earliest awareness of the world outside of my home, my school, and trips to the store with my parents.  My first dim awareness of anything else occurred in 1980.  I do have memories from before 1980, but they were just of my own life.

In 1980, I remember hearing about the 1980 presidential election.  I didn't understand anything about it, really.  I just knew the names, actually just one name.  I liked President Carter a lot.  You know why?  There's only one reason.  In first grade, which would have been the 1978-1979 school year, my teacher had us write letters to the White House.  A couple months later, the White House sent our class a stack of brochures about President Carter.  Oh, how I loved that beautiful, glossy brochure!  I was so impressed by the pictures.  I read all about President Carter.  That formed such a strong impression on me.

I knew nothing about his politics or whether he was a good president.  I just knew that I liked him because of that brochure.  I didn't understand why everyone was voting for Reagan.  I knew that President Carter was a man to be admired, just because of the brochure.

Children are quite impressionable.  Images and presentation do matter.

Let's go back to the discussion of contemporary books.  Nancy Drew is contemporary.  No, she is.  The books currently in print are set in the present.  The Grosset and Dunlap books were written in the past, but there is nothing in them that screams of a certain era.  That's because the books were revised.

If the Nancy Drew books had not been revised, they might have gone out of print a long time ago.  The revisions were important to the continuing viability of the franchise.  While true that the revised stories tend not to be as good, the revisions removed most everything that heavily dated the stories.  In particular, the revisions removed some negative racial and ethnic stereotypes.

When children are presented with picture books by their parents, the picture books are considered contemporary.  It little matters when the book was first published.  It's contemporary.  This is why some Dr. Seuss books are problematic.

One line in an article in The Atlantic resonates with me:

"The issue matters because the images children see and the words they hear are small but important parts of the person they eventually become."

I have a story I could tell about my early life as an infant and how something I don't even remember had a significant impact on me and formed one of my major interests.

That's why it does matter.

Now, I am completely against censorship and banning of books.  However, I don't have a problem with the rights holder of Dr. Seuss pulling some books from publication.  That's their prerogative.  I vehemently disagree with the reaction of sites like eBay and Amazon, which have banned sales of those old Dr. Seuss books.  There's nothing wrong with selling an old book, even if it has problematic content. 

The idea is not to be selling potentially racist content in a new book that is seen as contemporary.  The books should remain available in the secondhand market.

.................................................
That was all that I wrote.  I wanted to write more, but I wasn't sure where I was going with it.  Now, I can't remember what I was going to write. 

While I'm strongly against book bans, I do feel that we need to be careful with what we put in front of impressionable young children.  Books with problematic content could reinforce racial stereotypes if parents do not teach their children what is wrong with the content of the books.

I also feel that revisions of children's books are necessary under certain circumstances.  Those who want the original stories can purchase used copies.  I learned not too long ago that the book Are You There God? It's Me Margaret. was finally revised in the late 1990s to remove mention of the sanitary belt. 

I was so confused when I read that book in around 1980.  The archaic belt thing was bizarre, and to think that it was kept in a contemporary book until the late 1990s is amazing.  I'm glad it was finally revised so that girls reading it are no longer confused like at least two generations of readers were.

Revisions can be necessary, and I'm glad that approach was taken with Nancy Drew instead of removing the books from publication.  With Dr. Seuss, discontinuing certain books is probably a better approach, since revising the Dr. Seuss books after so many years seems somehow wrong.  

The Dilemma of Book Length and How to Teach Reading in Schools

I have read two articles recently that shed some light on a nuanced issue.  At hand is the apparent reluctance that children have in reading books and what to do about it.

I first found this interesting article with which I wholeheartedly agree.

Why Kids Aren't Falling in Love with Reading

The article is paywalled, so you might have trouble reading it.  I will summarize and then provide some short quotes.  The author points out that schools tend to have students read short excerpts of books, such as a few paragraphs, and then analyze them.  This takes away all the fun in reading.  I remember having to do that myself, and I never enjoyed that reading.

Even when I read full-length books for school, I never enjoyed them much.  There's something about being forced to read a preselected book that takes away the fun.  I remember reading To Kill a Mockingbird in school.  I remember it as the best book I read for school, but I won't ever read it again. 

I read A Tale of Two Cities in school and did not like it very much.  I remember that particular senior English class was unruly, so that may have helped ruin the experience.  Additionally, that teacher quizzed us on each chapter and asked us really obscure questions, like what color of dress a character wore.  I felt that her quizzes were unfair and designed to fail us.  

I did later read some Dickens novels on my own for myself (David Copperfield, Our Mutual Friend) and enjoyed them greatly. 

I also recall reading Huckleberry Finn in school as well.  I did not enjoy it.  My one memory about the book, aside from not liking it, was that we read it aloud including the n-word.  This occurred in 1988 or 1989.  Those were different times, but still, that I remember this clearly tells you what I was a bit uncomfortable.  Perhaps that was the point.

Here are some short excerpts from the above linked article.

"But what parents today are picking up on is that a shrinking number of kids are reading widely and voraciously for fun." 

"I recently spoke with educators and librarians about this trend, and they gave many explanations, but one of the most compelling—and depressing—is rooted in how our education system teaches kids to relate to books."

"What I remember most about reading in childhood was falling in love with characters and stories... In New York, where I was in public elementary school in the early ’80s, we did have state assessments that tested reading level and comprehension, but the focus was on reading as many books as possible and engaging emotionally with them as a way to develop the requisite skills.  Now the focus on reading analytically seems to be squashing that organic enjoyment.  Critical reading is an important skill, especially for a generation bombarded with information, much of it unreliable or deceptive.  But this hyperfocus on analysis comes at a steep price:  The love of books and storytelling is being lost."

"This disregard for story starts as early as elementary school. Take this requirement from the third-grade English-language-arts Common Core standard, used widely across the U.S.:  'Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, distinguishing literal from nonliteral language.' "

"But here's how one educator experienced in writing Common Core–aligned curricula proposes this be taught:  First, teachers introduce the concepts of nonliteral and figurative language.  Then, kids read a single paragraph from Amelia Bedelia and answer written questions."

"The process of meeting a character and following them through a series of conflicts is the fun part of reading.  Jumping into a paragraph in the middle of a book is about as appealing for most kids as cleaning their room."

The author points out that a better approach is simply to have students read Amelia Bedelia and engage with the characters.  By laughing at the antics of Amelia Bedelia, the students will learn to love reading.  The teacher can then discuss aspects of the story with students.

I recall that I never enjoyed reading excerpts in school.  My love of reading came from reading Nancy Drew books at home during my own free time.  Give me The Secret of the Old Clock anytime over some dumb out-of-context passage.

That said, reading short passages is important since students need to be exposed to a variety of topics and writing styles.  However, those students who learn to love books will quite naturally end up reading a wide variety of content.

Here's more from the article.

"A friend recently told me that her child's middle-school teacher had introduced To Kill a Mockingbird to the class, explaining that they would read it over a number of months—and might not have time to finish it.  "How can they not get to the end of To Kill a Mockingbird?" she wondered.  I'm right there with her.  You can't teach kids to love reading if you don't even prioritize making it to a book's end."

"Longer books, for example, are considered less 'fun'; in addition, some librarians, teachers, and parents are noticing a decline in kids' reading stamina after the disruption of the pandemic.  You can see these factors at play in a recent call for shorter books.  But one has to wonder whether this is also the not-entirely-unsurprising outcome of having kids interact with literature in paragraph-size bites."

"We need to meet kids where they are; for the time being, I am writing stories that are shorter and less complex." 

The above passages segue nicely into the second article.

It's Not Me, It's You:  An Argument for Shorter Middle Grade Books

This person reviews books, yet she is having trouble getting through them.

"Usually, I love all the books.  And I'm a fast reader. But when I look at the books on my shelves and my apps, I notice that in the past few months, I've finished 17, abandoned 19, and have yet to read five.

This gives me pause. Even more interesting is the fact that most of the recent books I've abandoned are around 350–400 pages."

She explains further.

"I'm saying that if I, an avid reader who literally reads books for my job, am struggling to get through these really long, newly published middle grade books, is it possible that some kids aren't loving these long books, either?

The answer is yes: many kids won't even pick up a long book, as confirmed by all the responses on Twitter.  When looking at a book with a lot of pages, children might be intimidated, they might prefer quicker stories, they might be struggling readers, and/or they might have attention issues, among other factors."

The author also points out that the quality of writing is also a factor.  That's the biggest factor for me.  These days, a book must grab me within the first few pages, or I won't read it.  I don't have the attention span or stamina to slog through a book that doesn't highly captivate me.

I occasionally get requests to read and review books.  In just the last week, someone offered to send me a book to review.  I just can't.  I have books that I personally want to read, yet I can hardly force myself to read them.  Reading the Keeper of the Lost Cities series was a such a wonderful experience for me, because I was fully engaged and am still thinking about the books even though I'm done reading them.  Now, I once again can't seem to force myself to read much of anything.  It's really sad.

Most people don't have a good attention span these days.  The Internet and social media have caused this.  We need information presented to us in smaller chunks.  When I write posts for this blog, I cut most long paragraphs in half to make it easier for readers.  I don't worry about whether the paragraph break makes sense; it needs to be shorter to make it easier to read.  Logic is less important than ease of reading.

What's great about series books is that we get to read multiple stories in smaller chunks.  Each volume serves as a good stopping point.  It's great reading one story and later being able to read another one.

Website Migration Progress

This is an update to my post about my progress (more like an exhausting struggle) in getting my three websites moved to a new server.  View my previous post for background information.

How I Wasted a Saturday...

In short, I created three websites on the Yahoo! GeoCities site around 20 years ago.  GeoCities was later shut down, and the Yahoo! web hosting has been rebranded multiple times.  It appears that the web hosting service was sold last year to Turbify.

I didn't mention in my last post that I had found a message in late January in my email informing me that I needed to change the DNS settings for Series-Books.com by February 13, or else the site would go down.  I had never received such a notice before, and this was an indication that the web hosting service is no longer connected to Yahoo! in any fashion. 

I went to figure out what the Turbify message meant and discovered that the file manager had changed.  I had no idea what to do about the DNS, so I decided that it was time to jump off the Yahoo! GeoCities train.  If I was going to have to learn how to use a new interface anyway, then I needed to gain control of the situation.

That's what I have been doing the last few weeks.  The incredible amount of work involved is exactly why I had stayed with my original accounts. 

I have set up three GoDaddy web hosting accounts and have been working on migrating the sites off of Turbify and onto GoDaddy.  I will now be in full control, and the Yahoo! GeoCities train cannot continue to take my sites to random places.

NewWorldZorro.com is finished.  It has been fully moved to GoDaddy and looks good in all browsers. 

Series-Books.com is on GoDaddy and looks good in all browsers except for Google Chrome.  The problem is that some images are on ZorroLegend.com.  Some are also on NewWorldZorro.com, but NewWorldZorro.com has been moved to GoDaddy, so those images are fine.  For whatever reason, the Chrome browser won't load the images from the Turbify server onto the sites as hosted by GoDaddy. 

On the surface, this makes no sense.  The HTML files for Series-Books.com have the full URLs to the images on ZorroLegend.com.  The images load fine in the other browsers, just not Chrome.  I have a suspicion what the problem might be, but it's not worth investigating since I'm going to close the Turbify accounts sometime soon.

You might be wondering why many of the Series-Books.com images are hosted by the other two sites.  This goes back to the free GeoCities sites that I originally created.  The storage space was limited, and I had so many images for the series book cover art galleries that I had to place a bunch of them on the other two sites.  I have left them where they were placed even though I have had paid accounts for more than 15 years.

This week I worked on migrating ZorroLegend.com to GoDaddy.  Once complete, all of the images on Series-Books.com should show up again on Chrome.  Turbify has not changed ZorroLegend.com to the new file manager.  The other two sites had been changed, so I was able to create backup files that I then uploaded to GoDaddy.  Since ZorroLegend.com is still on the old file manager (as in the old Yahoo! GeoCities version from 20 years ago), I have to use FTP.  I first had to learn how to use it, and with my thyroid-impaired brain, that gave me some difficulty.

I figured it out and got the files migrated.  However, around 500 of them failed.  Some hosting services limit FTP to 2000 files, and ZorroLegend.com has over 2,500 files.  Turbify is making this hard for me by forcing me to use FTP and then I am limited on the number of files that can be transferred.

I realized that I could just do another transfer but start with other folders.  Most of the missing files were transferred over.  I then manually looked for missing files.

Today I changed the name servers for ZorroLegend.com over to GoDaddy, and I'm hoping for the best.  The main page loads fine, but some other pages are returning errors.  I will wait until DNS propagation is further along, and then I'll check to see if the pages load.

I have been working on this during all of my downtime at school this week.  I am determined not to lose this weekend to website migration like I did last weekend.  I hope that with just a small amount of additional work that all three sites will be 100% up by the end of this weekend.

How I Wasted a Saturday...

I have three websites that I created circa 2001-2003, some 20 years ago.

Series Books for Girls
New World Zorro
Zorro: The Legend Through the Years

At the moment, the first two sites are screwed up to some degree due to today's misadventures.

The sites were created on the Yahoo! Geocities interface.  The original URLs for my sites were as follows.

www.geocities.com/brmthebgs

www.geocities.com/newworldzorro

www.goecities.com/thezorrolegend

Each site was on a different Yahoo! account, and the account IDs can be seen at the end of the URLs.  

Yahoo! got tired of its older assets, gradually shutting everything down.  Geocities was shut down, and the sites were moved to Yahoo! Small Business.  By the time that happened, I had already purchased domains for all three sites, so the URLs had already changed to what they are now.

Yahoo! Small Business then rebranded to Aabaco.  No problem, that just meant that I logged in through a different-looking page.

Aabaco rebranded to Luminate.  Okay, this was getting a little weird, but I no longer cared much about any of the sites by that point.  I just let Yahoo! rebrand and didn't worry about it.

The Yahoo! assets of Luminate were purchased by Verizon or moved to Verizon.  I don't even know.  I have had other concerns during the last five or so years, so I didn't pay much attention.

I still had access, and that was all that mattered.  I checked on one of the sites last month and discovered that it (along with the other two sites) had been acquired by Turbify during the last six months.  The interface had changed to Cpanel on two of the sites and was still the old Yahoo! file manager on the third site.

I am still being charged by Aabaco each month, and the name hasn't been Aabaco in years!  What nonsense is this?  They sell the assets but keep using an older name to charge their clients.  Maybe that's to avoid us doing a chargeback since we'll recognize the old name.

I was annoyed and decided that this needed to end.  The only way to stop this idiocy was to remove my sites from the former Yahoo! Geocities assets.  

For lack of a better idea, I signed up for web hosting on GoDaddy.  I went with it only because I already had a user ID.  It might not be the best choice, but I needed a fast solution. This was two weeks ago.

I then looked up how to transfer a domain.  Every step of this has required me to do Google searches to learn what to do.  It has been a mess.  It's still a mess, actually.  But anyway...

I figured it out.  I initiated the domain transfers of series-books.com and zorrolegend.com.  I had to wait one week for newworldzorro.com due to when the registration was last renewed.  Domains cannot be transferred until 60 days after a renewal.  

Last weekend, I got the series-books.com files in place and the site changed over to the GoDaddy web hosting.   

I'm keeping all three Turbify accounts until I have this entire mess fixed.  It's going to be awhile.  I won't risk losing the sites, so I'm paying twice for hosting for each site right now.

The series-books.com website is partially hosted by newworldzorro.com.  Even though I moved series-books.com last weekend, many images remained on Turbify.

Today I worked on newworldzorro.com.  It didn't work.  I had purchased GoDaddy web hosting where one account can host up to 10 domains.  I spent most of the day trying to get newworldzorro.com to work as hosted with my new series-books.com account.  I could not figure it out.

I googled for information, finding someone with the same problem who also couldn't get it to work.  That was when I gave up.  

I created a second GoDaddy account just for newworldzorro.com.  I finally have it working... sort of.  It looks awful.

Zorrolegend.com is still fully on Turbify even though I now control the domain.  I will finish the other two sites before I work on it.

What happened today is that I made multiple mistakes.  At one point, series-books.com showed the home page of newworldzorro.com.  Later, I had two Series Books for Girls websites online at series-books.com and newworldzorro.com.  And then after that, newworldzorro went down when I removed it from my first GoDaddy account and created the second GoDaddy account.

So now, the newworldzorro.com DNS propagation is under way.  I'm seeing different versions of the site when I refresh, one of them significantly more screwed up than the other.  Since many of the series-books.com images are hosted by newworldzorro.com, series-books.com is also screwed up to some degree.

Some pages could even be missing from within the sites.  I'm afraid to look.

I haven't lost any of the content.  I still have the Turbify accounts in place.  I had to go back to both of the sites on Turbify at least once today when I screwed up.

So that's how I spent my Saturday.  I will be working on this on Sunday, but I should hopefully make more progress tomorrow.

There could be some typos in this post.  I'm not sure that I care.  

Bee Gees How Can You Mend a Broken Heart Documentary

The documentary The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart was released in December and can be streamed online via HBO Max.  

I didn't have HBO Max, but I could join for $14.99 per month.  I also could have signed up for a free trial and then cancelled after watching the documentary.  However, I wouldn't have a copy of the documentary.  Therefore, I purchased a DVD that was sent out for review purposes.  It didn't cost much less than $14.99, but the point is that I have a copy of the documentary that I can keep.  That's how I roll.

Since I purchased a DVD that was "for review purposes," I decided that I should review it here.  Besides, I am going to put up posts of some of my Bee Gees stuff at some point in the near future.  Adding photos to the new Blogger is quite a drag, so it's taking me awhile to motivate myself into finishing those posts up.

I didn't learn anything new about the Bee Gees from the documentary.  After all, I have read The Ultimate Biography of the Bee Gees, which is 688 pages long.  When I read it, I didn't skim at all.  

Since I know everything about the Bee Gees, I know what was left out of the documentary.  I will mention some of those things and link to some videos, for those who might want to know more of the story.

The biography has great archival footage with a lot of clips I hadn't seen before.  It's also a really good overview of the Bee Gees from 1967 through 1980, especially for those people who know little about the group.  The biography skims over the 1980s and has almost nothing from the 1990s and on.  That was disappointing, although I understand why they focused almost exclusively on the late 1960s and the 1970s.

The HBO biography barely mentions the beginning of the Bee Gees' career in Australia.  It would have been nice to have seen more clips from this time period, especially considering what precocious songwriters they were.  

"The Three Kisses of Love" - written by Barry Gibb and recorded by the Bee Gees in 1963 at ages 16 and 13 

Here is "Spicks and Specks" from 1966.  The video has a "preview only" watermark over it, but it's still a great video.

 

The movie Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band from 1978 is not mentioned at all, and this shocked me.  The movie is such a debacle that its inclusion in the documentary would have been highly entertaining.  As best I can guess, the HBO biographers wanted to go from Saturday Night Fever to the Spirits Having Flown tour and straight into the disco backlash without covering any other topics.  That part of the biography is quite compelling and sad.  The Bee Gees happily singing on stage during the Spirits Having Flown tour is juxtaposed with Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in 1979.  I felt so sorry for the poor Bee Gees.

Back to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  It is a musical starring Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees.  The entire plot of the movie is based on Beatles songs.  Many people, myself included, believe that it is actually what started the downfall of the Bee Gees.  The movie is.... extremely boring and quite stupid.  The movie couldn't have helped the Bee Gees' legacy leading into the disco backlash period.  Here's the trailer from a recent DVD release.  The trailer makes the movie seem like it might be worth watching.  It's not.  The movie is that bad.  

 

Most irksome is that the HBO biography completely ignores the Bee Gees' career after around 1985.  The Bee Gees's career has three phases:  pre-disco, disco, and post-disco.  When I initially became interested in the Bee Gees during the early 1990s, it was because of the disco songs.  When the only songs I knew were the disco songs, that was my favorite era since I knew of nothing else.  As soon as I purchased other albums, the post-disco era immediately became my favorite.  Currently, I like the pre-disco and post-disco eras equally the best.  Disco was only in first place when I initially was drawn to the Bee Gees.  Once I knew the entire song catalog, I moved away from the disco in favor of everything else.  That is true for a large number of Bee Gees fans, probably most of the hardcore fans.

Most people aren't aware of the Bee Gees' middle-of-the-road rock and pop from the post-disco era.  That's because the disco backlash has been a decades-long phenomenon from which the Bee Gees cannot escape.  The HBO documentary even seems to have been impacted by the disco backlash, since it largely ignores the last part of the group's career. 

Here is a sample song from each of the Bee Gees' five late career studio albums.

"You Win Again" - 1987 (The disco backlash was in full force at this time.  "You Win Again" was a hit worldwide, except in the United States where it was ignored.)

"One" - 1989

"Secret Love" - 1991 

"How to Fall in Love Part 1" - 1994

"Alone" - 1997

"This Is Where I Came In" - 2001



I used to be annoyed that people only think of the Bee Gees as a disco group and nothing else.  At this point, I no longer care.  I am gratified that the disco backlash has faded some.  Years ago when I was still quite annoyed, I took the time to figure out what percent of the Bee Gees' entire song catalog is disco.  I came up with around 5%, which means that 95% of the song catalog is not disco.  It's a shame for the Bee Gees to be hated for just 5% of their song catalog.

The HBO documentary is excellent for what it covers.  It really needed to be at least 30 minutes longer in order to include more of what was left out.  Also, a closing statement about how the Bee Gees legacy continues to suffer from the disco backlash might have been in order.  While the disco backlash is not nearly as bad as it once was, it is still in play.  For instance, Bee Gees songs don't get streamed nearly as much as the other hugely successful legacy acts. 

I hope that this documentary helps to lessen the sting of the disco backlash a bit more.

People Selling Books or Requesting Book Valuation

I rather often have people contact me wanting me to assess the value of their books.  They often spend lots of time typing up a long list of what they have.  Most often, they have Nancy Drew books.  One recent message went like this. 

Hello...you look like an expert on Nancy Drew. Could you help me? I have 44 books.

The Bungalow Mystery 1930​ /25 Chapters​ Original text/First Printing
The Bungalow Mystery 1930​ /25 Chapters​ Original text​ ​most likely printed in 1955
​The Mystery at Lilac Inn 1930​​/25 Chapters/Original Text/Most likely Printed in 1953​
The Secret of Red Gate Farm 1931​ 25 Chapters/Original Text/ Most likely printed in 1955/56 With Dust jacket​
The Secret at Shadow Ranch 1931​ 25 Chapters/Original Text/ First Printing​
Nancy's Mysterious Letter 1932 ​25 Chapters/Original Text/ Most likely printed in 1954​
​The Clue in The Diary 1932​​ 25 Chapters/original text first printing ​
The Password to Larkspur Lane 1933​25 Chapters/Original text/First Printing​
The Password to Larkspur Lane 1933 (c​olored front cover) 25 Chapters/Original Text/Printed 1964/65 (aprox)​ (I can only fit some of them here) Can you help me value them. I need to sell them Thank you

I received three other messages with the rest of the books listed.  I felt bad that this person spent so much time compiling a list which did not tell me anything.  I had very little idea of what this person had to offer since I need to see the books to assess age, condition, and value.  I'm not going to take the time to ask questions or even ask for photographs. 

Speaking of photographs...

These people obviously haven't read my series of posts, "Buyer Confusion on Nancy Drew."  In that series of posts, I detail all of the information that can be gleaned just by looking at a photograph of a Nancy Drew book.  The copyright page information is normally not necessary, nor is the number of chapters.  Here are two posts that will help explain what I mean.

Buyer Confusion on Nancy Drew #3
Buyer Confusion on Nancy Drew #9

My point?  Don't type up a long list of titles, copyright dates, and number of chapters.  Take a photograph of the books with the spines facing out.  That's all I need.  I can give an approximate value by looking at a group photo of books with the spines facing out.

Even better, just go ahead and search eBay for the books you have, then click on "sold" items in the left sidebar.  It's really that simple.  What the books sell for is what they are worth.

I also often have people contact me wanting to know if I wish to purchase their books.  Here are two examples of messages that I have received in recent months.

I have a number of old Erle Stanley Gardner books (Perry Mason and others) as well as Dana Girl Series books that I am looking to get out of my basement. I would be happy to send you a list if you are interested in seeing specific titles. Thank you.

Hello! I enjoyed looking through your site. Do you purchase books in this era?

I ignored both of these messages.  They weren't worth the trouble.

Another recent message read, "I have eighteen books from the Beverly Gray series. Do you have any interest in them?"  Of course, that person could have had Beverly Gray at the World's Fair with a perfect dust jacket, but it's rather unlikely.  Once again, I didn't want to take the time to try to figure out what they have.  Besides, most of the Beverly Gray books are not currently worth much.  I'm not purchasing any to sell at this time.  I responded, "Only if you want to sell them for about the cost of postage. You'd probably get more selling them in an eBay auction. I don't need any of them for myself, and others who are building a set would be willing to pay more."  And that is the truth.  You don't want to offer me your books unless you want to sell them cheap.

I had someone else want to sell me a very scarce book.  She wanted me to make an offer.  I'm not sure why saying what one wants for a book is so difficult.  I replied upfront that I wouldn't offer much and that I would rather the book be sold to someone who needs it.  She persisted, so I made an offer since it is scarce (despite not really wanting the book) of what I could pay and be able to sell it at a narrow profit.  She was disappointed in my offer and finally told me what she wanted, which is about the current market value.  I have to pay less than what a book is worth in order to sell it to get my money back.  I can't pay the current fair market value for books I already own.

Here's another message I received from someone else.

I have 9 Ken Holt by Bruce Campbell books, 12 Rick Brant by John Blaine & Science Projects by John Blain. I also have 4 single books: Rover Boys at School, Mystery of the Timber Giant, Hardy Boys House on the Cliff & Divers Down. All are in good to excellent condition.
I tried to write more descriptions, but ebay would not send the message because I included my email address. But they deleted the message that I had taken so long to write!
If you know of anyone or if you are interested in buying the lot of them, please contact me.
I do not have the time or patience to sell them myself individually.

This message sounded promising so I gave suggestions on how this person could get a message to me.  I couldn't give an email, either, for the same reason that this person couldn't, but I gave some options. I never heard back. I don't understand why I was contacted, then the person didn't follow through.  It could be that they figured out the value of Rick Brant's Science Projects and reconsidered offering the books to me.  I can't say that I blame them.

I am receiving requests for me to buy books around once each week.  As mentioned, I often ignore the messages.  Whenever I engage them, I find that I end up wasting my time because they want more for the books than I wish to pay.

Most of these people contact me because they don't want to sell on eBay.  They say that it's a hassle.  Somehow, they think that I will happily take whichever random books they have.

I suggested that one person utilize the series books groups on Facebook.  That person doesn't use Facebook.  I get it; many people don't use Facebook due to privacy issues or because they think Facebook is stupid.

I have a Facebook account, but I have very little personal information in it.  I do have my correct birth date entered, but Facebook wouldn't know if someone entered a fake date.  If you don't trust Facebook, you can set up an account in such a way to fully protect your privacy.  If you do that, you can then not use your account for anything except for the groups.  I only use Facebook for the groups.

Here's my advice:  If you are going to contact me or anyone in an unsolicited email wanting them to buy books, you need to provide upfront the price you want as well as photographs of the books with the spines facing out.  It saves so much time and trouble.

I also want to add that I am not currently interested in buying books, except for certain very specific and difficult to find books for my collection.  I am trying to cut back on my extra books, so I am not interested in purchasing bulk lots or any books that are duplicates of books I already own.

Previous posts on this topic:

People Who Want to Sell Me Books
People Who Want to Sell Me Books #2

Selling Books to Raise Funds Quickly

Recently, a collectible Nancy Drew item was put up for sale on eBay at an exorbitant price.  The item is probably worth around $25 to $35 and was priced at $1,500.  The seller stated that money was being raised to pay for medical bills.  Unfortunately, the item will likely not sell for an amount that will help unless the seller gets very lucky.

This started me thinking about what items I might sell if I were ever in a position to need to raise funds quickly.  The fastest approach would be to sell my most valuable books, but those are not books I wish to sell since I would never find replacements.  I feel that the best approach is instead to sell lots of books that are not of great value that could always be replaced without an incredible amount of trouble.  Ideally, these books should be ones that are not of great importance to me that I don't think about very often.  And of course the books would need to be sold at current market value so that they would sell quickly.

At least half of my collection is double-shelved behind other books.  The books that are of less importance are the ones I cannot see that are hidden behind the books that I can see.  I do not see the hidden books more than once or twice per year, so I could let go of many of them very easily.  All of the books seen in the following photos are some of the books that are shelved behind others.

I don't care much for the white spine Dana Girls books, so I would sell them if necessary.  I could sell my Whitman books with jackets and my Kay Tracey picture cover books.  I do have a habit of selling books as I tire of them, and some of these books are ones that I have considered selling, which means I would have no trouble selling them if I needed to raise funds.

I could also sell the rest of my Melody Lane books.  I don't like them very much.  I have already sold my assorted Lilian Garis books, because I doubt I will ever read the stories.  I don't keep collectible books that I will never read.  I only keep the ones that I have read or believe that I will read someday. 

I don't like the Nancy Drew Diary that much.

I only have the white one because it was in with some other books that I purchased on eBay.  I have never cared about it and have considered selling it several times.

I have a lot of duplicates of the Nancy Drew books with internals.  Some of those could go.

I don't care much for autographed items, and I am probably one of the few collectors who feels that way.  I have already sold some autographed items.

I am currently selling some Mildred Wirt Benson documents that I purchased 5 1/2 years ago.  This is not to raise money.  I purchased the documents for the information contained within, and a PDF copy of each document is all that I need.  It is true that Benson owned and handled the documents, but that sort of thing doesn't matter much to me.  I regard the documents the same way that I regard autographed items, and I have begun selling what items I own that fall into that category.  They are great items, but it is best if they go to those who care more than I do.

The auctions can be found on eBay and close on November 16.

What items would you sell if you needed the money?   

The Age-Old Discussion of What Should Be Read

Recently, an article was published by Slate which was written in order to create lots of traffic by enraging readers so much that they would write articles and link back to the original article.  The article worked quite well, generating dozens of links and much discussion.  Here's a link to the Slate article followed by my response.

Against YA:  Read whatever you want. But you should feel embarrassed when what you’re reading was written for children.

Alrighty then.  I don't feel embarrassed to read children's and young adult books, although I don't tell everyone.  Sometimes it's not worth the effort.  Sometimes I don't feel like having to explain why to the narrow-minded people.  They won't get it no matter what I say.

I have noticed that many adults who don't read children's books do read young adult books, including members of my faculty.  So I'm not alone although I do take it quite a bit further than anyone else I know.  The target audience of this blog, however, reads just as many children's books as I do.

Several good rebuttals were posted in the aftermath of the original article.

No, you do not have to be ashamed of reading young adult fiction
Let's All Just Read More Great Books, YA Or Not
This Is Why Young Adult Books Are Not Only Acceptable, But Beneficial For Adults
In Praise of Reading Whatever the Hell You Want
Really? Are We Still Genre Shaming People For The Books They Like?
I Write Young Adult Novels, and I Refuse to Apologize for It

The readers' comments are the best part of each article, because they tell us what people really think.  The following statement from C. S. Lewis was heavily quoted throughout the comments.

"Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

Really, that's all that needs to be said.  People who point fingers at others and claim that their actions are immature are, in fact, the immature ones.  I didn't realize until reading all of this discussion that the young adult category has exploded in recent years and that more of the books are purchased by adults, like me, than by teenagers.  According to a recent study, 55% of the people who purchase young adult books are adults and 78% of those adults report that they have purchased the books for themselves.  The stigma against reading young people's books is not nearly what it once was. 

I prefer young adult books rather than adult books because I don't want the adult level of sex and violence in my books.  I enjoy the young adult dystopian novels, especially the ones with zombies.  Those do have violence and some gore, but since the books are young adult books, they don't take the gore all the way to the extreme.  I want a good story without the gratuitous sex and violence.

Some of the comments to the articles stated that there is nothing wrong with reading young adult books, but then the statement was qualified with as long as that's not the only type of book being read.  Others phrased it slightly differently, stating that there could be a problem with reading young adult books but only if the reader was reading nothing other than those books.  Exactly why is that a problem?

This spring I read only Nancy Drew softcover books.  I read them at the rate of one per day from February through early May.  Since I wasn't reading anything else, according to these people, there was something wrong with me.  Really?  I bet those of you who have enjoyed the reviews haven't minded at all that I read all of those books.

Now I'm reading only the Three Investigators books in order from #1-43.  I suppose that is equally bad, right? There must be something wrong with me.  No... no, there isn't.

I do better when I read every book in a series in rapid succession.  A few years back, I was reading and reviewing the Grace Harlowe series for this blog.  I made the mistake of reading other books in between reading the Grace Harlowe books.  The result was that I got massively sidetracked and never finished reading and reviewing the Grace Harlowe books.  That's a shame.

I freely admit that I haven't read any books for adults in a long time.  I'm not sure what the last one was.  Years ago I read novels by Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, and others, but I've been caught up on series books and young adult books for a long time.  I should go back and read some more of the classics, but that's not a current priority.  Maybe someday.

These days I prefer reading books that are easy to read, where I don't have to think hard.  I'm exhausted at the end of each work day, and quite honestly, I don't have the energy to read a scholarly tome.

Books have always been escapism for me.  I read what interests me, regardless of the reading level.  Isn't that the way it should be?

Recent eBay Purchases Spring 2014

In January, I purchased a hardcover edition of Barbee Oliver Carleton's book, The Witches' Bridge.

The book is in rough shape and is a library discard.  The book is more commonly seen as a softcover edition titled The Mystery of the Witches' Bridge. 

In March, I acquired a hardcover library edition of Nancy Drew #151, The Chocolate-Covered Contest.  While not in the best shape, the book is a hardcover.  The hardcover books are quite difficult to find for most titles above #120. 

I purchased seven different French editions of the Nancy Drew Girl Detective books.  I like the cover art.

This next purchase is a recommended checklist of girls series books put out by the University of Minnesota.

The entire text of the book is available on the University of Minnesota website, and I have used their website for years.  Scroll on down the page to find the checklist of titles.  Unfortunately, they have a habit of moving the checklist around, which means that I have had to search for it at times.  I prefer having an actual hard copy of the information.  At least the information in my copy won't be moving around where I can't find it.

I purchased a likely first printing of the Dana Girls book, A Three-Cornered Mystery.

I am continuing my random quest to acquire Hardy Boys books with white spine dust jackets.  I am not looking for first printings.  Original jackets that are in at least the low-end of the condition I seek as well as a lower price are the key factors.

I also acquired these two Norwegian books.

The first book is the Nancy Drew book, The Spider Sapphire Mystery.  The second book is the Dana Girls book, The Secret of the Jade Ring.

Summer 2014 Blog Posts

Due to my increased reading output from this year, I have a large number of blog posts already written.  I have reviews of all of the Nancy Drew Girl Detective books as well as the Nancy Drew Diaries books.  I have also started reading the Three Investigators books and am reading the Valerie Drew short stories at the same time.

I was uncomfortable during the spring months when the Nancy Drew Digest reviews were the only posts being published.  Many of you enjoyed those reviews and were undoubtedly very pleased to have them.  My discomfort came from wondering how many regular readers of this blog were not interested in those reviews and hoping that those people weren't losing interest.

I have a number of people who follow this blog solely for the eBay-related posts or information about scarce series books and values, and I have not published any of those in a long time.  I have been remiss with respect to those topics.

I prefer to alternate what I publish so that the different groups of people who follow this blog get regular posts that they like.  Since I am now reading the Three Investigators books, those reviews will begin to be published soon and will be mixed in with the already-written Girl Detective reviews so that new posts will have more of a variety.

I am also catching up with writing about other assorted topics.  Early this year, I got the flu, which messed me up for around five weeks.  After that, my job consumed me as we prepared for the End of Instruction tests.  My mind gets cluttered during the spring months each year, and all I could do was plug away at reading the Nancy Drew books as I worked on finishing out the school year.

My mind has miraculously become uncluttered since Friday when the school year ended, so I have gotten caught up on writing about some assorted topics that should have been written in the last couple of months.  Here is a list of what I have already written for the blog and in the likely order of publication.

International Shipping Rates from Top-Rated Plus Sellers

Nancy Drew Girl Detective #18 Pit of Vipers, #19 Orchid Thief, and #20 Getting Burned

May 2014 Book Finds

Nancy Drew #21 Close Encounters, #22 Dressed to Steal, and #23 Troubled Waters

The Three Investigators #1 Terror Castle and #2 Stuttering Parrot

Nancy Drew Girl Detective #24 Murder on the Set, #25 Trails of Treachery, and #26 Fishing for Clues

The Three Investigators #3 Whispering Mummy and #4 Green Ghost

Series Book Questions Spring 2014

Nancy Drew Girl Detective #27 Intruder, #28 Mardi Gras Masquerade, and #29 Stolen Bones

The Three Investigators #5 Vanishing Treasure and #6 Skeleton Island (in progress)

Recent eBay Purchases Spring 2014

Nancy Drew Girl Detective #30-32: The Perfect Mystery Trilogy

Nancy Drew Girl Detective #33-35: The Identity Mystery Trilogy

Nancy Drew Girl Detective #36-38: The Model Mystery Trilogy

Nancy Drew Girl Detective #39-41: The Eco Mystery Trilogy

Nancy Drew Girl Detective #42-44: Sabotage Mystery Trilogy

Nancy Drew Girl Detective #45-47: Malibu Mayhem Trilogy

Nancy Drew Girl Detective Ghost Stories and Super Mystery Books

Thoughts on the Nancy Drew Girl Detective Series

Revisiting Nancy Drew Diaries #1 and #2

Nancy Drew Diaries #3 Midnight Rider and #4 Once Upon a Thriller

Nancy Drew Diaries #5 Willow Woods and #6 Mystic Lake

If I stick with publishing every three days, these posts will take us up to the end of July.  I expect the later posts to be pushed back into August since more Three Investigators posts will be written and mixed in.  Additionally, I plan to review the Valerie Drew stories and will mix those reviews in as well.  You will probably get to read the first Valerie Drew review within the next two weeks.

Looking Ahead to the Next Two Months

This last week was spring break.  I had two goals: to get caught up on listing books for sale and to read as many Nancy Drew Digest books as I could.  I was hoping to get finished with the Digest books by today.  I succeeded, since I read #175 yesterday.  I have now written all reviews up through #175, even though the last few need to be proofread at least one more time.  Most of them have already been scheduled to be published, staggered every two or three days.

In addition to the reviews, I have also written a summary post about the Nancy Drew Digest series.

I have already begun reading the Nancy Drew Girl Detective series.  I knew that I would get to the Girl Detective books by the end of March, so earlier this year I stepped up my efforts in acquiring the last titles needed.

I quit buying the Girl Detective books new at around #10 because most books I was seeing had defects.  I had to quit buying from Amazon because of the defects, then I couldn't find nice copies in local stores.  If I was going to have to pay $5 or more per book, I wanted a perfect copy.  I began purchasing the books used as I found them.

I was down to around five titles at the beginning of the year.  I stepped up my efforts and reduced that number to just two by earlier this month.  I decided to go online for the last two to make certain that I have them in time.  The books were still going to cost at least $3 each as used copies including postage, and the sellers had no condition description.  I decided it would be safer to purchase the last two books new from Amazon.  I did so yesterday, and I should have the books within the next seven to ten days.

My goal is to read the entire Nancy Drew Girl Detective series and the Nancy Drew Diaries series by the end of May at the latest, preferably sooner if possible.  The only way I can get through the books fast is to avoid reading anything else.  When I allow myself to read something else, I end up getting sidetracked for one or more months.  I will never get these books read if I allow myself to read other books.  I have already denied myself at least three new releases since January that I very much want to read. 

When I finish the Diaries series, I will read the new releases.  I know what will happen:  I will most likely be reading contemporary books until around July.  Once I get past that, my plan is to read the entire Three Investigators series from start to finish followed by possibly the original text Hardy Boys books.  Whether I write reviews of those books remains to be seen, but hopefully I will.

In the next two months, you will most likely not see a lot of content in this blog other than the many reviews of the Nancy Drew series.  April and May are the two most hectic and emotionally draining months for me.  I am very glad that I have so many reviews written, because this blog will have continuous new content for a number of weeks.

I will probably not be listing many books for sale in the next two months.  I'm sure I will list some, but likely not very many.  As always, if you purchase books from me, they will be mailed by the end of the next business day regardless of how busy I am.  I may not get around to leaving positive feedback for a number of weeks, but the books will be mailed fast.