Going through some boxes of old books that my mom brought over from their house, I found these among the forgotten gems in those dusty old boxes.  Pac Man themed Archie, a guide to defeating that darn Rubik’s Cube, and an orientation to my beloved Apple //c.

I was among the first to get that new Apple computer, a pseudo-portable version of the Apple //e.  Sure, it had a handle, but it was like stapling a handle to your PC.  The power supply was external, there was no battery, and you had to lug a monitor with you as well.  Still, it was a capable and dependable little computer.  I soon shrugged off this paperback for the ring-bound Technical Reference Manual as I started digging into the guts of the machine.

I like Archie comics as a teenager.  I’m not sentimental about them, really, I just think it was cool to find one with a Pac Man theme on the cover.  I’m sentimental about THAT.

Maybe it’s time to take another crack at the Rubik’s Cube.  I never had the patience for it as a kid.  This summer somebody handed me a Pyraminx, the tetrahedral equivalent of the cube, and I was still able to solve it in under two minutes.  That pesky block, though, always bested me.  Perhaps I should read this book and give it another go!

Among the other treasures I found are piles of old Peanuts paperbacks, which I plan to share with my kids.  Peanuts cartoons are timeless, insightful, and the star of countless hours of my childhood.  I’m excited to sort through the rest of these and find appropriate places on my bookshelves to make them available for our family.  While I love archiving things digitally, there’s just something about having a book to draw from the shelves.  These are one of my favorite parts of the 80s.