Trip To The Book Store

We've had some extremely rainy and windy (up to 60 mph!) weather since last night, which is the first of the winter season for this area. So naturally, we've had fallen trees, fences, and power poles littered everywhere, and for California, that means lots of traffic accidents too!

Anyways, while I was at work today (I've got one of those office cubicle jobs), we've been experiencing multiple power outages ranging in length from a couple of minutes to a couple of hours! Later this afternoon, our department manager gave us the go ahead to take off early. I bolted outta there and instead of heading straight home, I decided to drop by our local Borders to check out a book I've been interested in.

After weaving around decimated plant life, automobile accidents, and flooded corners, I arrived at the book store. I went to the Military History section hoping to find the Osprey series of books dedicated to ships. To my unfortunate surprise, there were no ship books from the series to be found! Oh well, I guess not this time.

I rounded the corner of the aisle of books and ran into Transportation section. Normally, the only books on naval vessels in this section are usually about the Titanic, but I decided to browse through and give it a shot at finding something interesting. Sure enough, I found a great book, The Complete Encyclopedia of Sailing Ships 2000 BC - 2006 AD!

The book, written by John Batchelor and Christopher Chant, is not as meaty as I would expect for an encyclopedia (it runs for 318 pages), but it had enough entries to keep me happy! It has loads of color pics too. The entries are of specific sailing ships and generic types as well. It's organized by the year the ships were generally created. The only major gripe I have with the book is that there are no dedicated entries for events. For example, the Battle of Flamborough Head was only mentioned in passing in an entry for the Ranger! And no dedicated entry for the Bonhomme Richard or Serapis? For shame!

In all, I didn't get the book I wanted, but I've got some nice substitute reading for this weekend instead.