Books Update: January 2013

JANUARY 2013

Just cleaning out my posting queue. I'm not very likely to keep up with this junk anymore. I will occasionally mention some key interesting books I get from time to time but not every bloody one. OH great I have one other grossly outdated update in my queue. UGH.

A Very very late update, why even bother?

Well here I am trying to keep up with this and my main supply as of now is Ebay. I hardly go to the brick and mortar stores anymore especially the expensive ones. I gotta go cheap with everything. Also some of the books I'm chasing are of older vintage.

First Up to Bat: Screwball by Tug McGraw and Joseph Durso. I got this book through Ebay for $5.59 + $3.95 shipping.

Screwball

By Tug McGraw and Joseph Durso

Due to being totally lazy and procrastinating on this self-administered assignment of updating books I have recently purchased the rest of the books for this month I will not list how much I got the book for. I got them all through Ebay. I'm just listing them below.

Books mentioned in this post:

Doctor Who: Apollo 23

V- The Original Miniseries (2011)
Screwball

Soulless

Doctor Who: Borrowed Time

Book Update: February 2012 Books

FEBRUARY 2012
(Very very late)

I'm really really really beyond late with this one. Practically a full frakin year. I started this originally way back at the end of February 2012 for a beginning of March posting obviously that didn't happen. Partly because I am super backlogged on my doing book reviews and partly because I am extremely lazy at some things.  I wonder if I will ever get around to doing any more book reviews or reviews of anything. So here is the stack of dead wood I got way back in the month of February 2012.

Doctor Who: The Monsters Inside 

by Stephen Cole

First up is a book from the new series of Doctor Who from an author I already have a few DW books from. Doctor Who: The Monsters Inside by Stephen Cole features the 9th Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and Rose Tyler (Billie Piper). This book was the book to read for September in the Sci-Fi Book Club I'm in at Goodreads.com. It is a very good story. I don't want to spoil anything but it features the return of a monster that made it's Doctor Who debut in Season One, well technically Season 27 or something but Season One for the current rebooted series. The story would have been a pretty exciting episode for the show. This series of the current Doctor fills the hunger for new Who episodes when the show is between seasons or during the mid-season breaks just as the classic "New Adventures of Doctor Who" series filled the hunger during the non-existent years.

Next we have the two books from the spin-off series of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. - The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. of course. Now with The Man From U.N.C.L.E. there were 23 novels printed in the US with only 16 printed in the UK in a different order with different covers but the same story on the inside. To mix things up a bit and to confuse things The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. only had two novels printed in the US but four printed in the UK, yet there were five different stories. The first US GFU book is the same story as the UK book 2 again with different cover (slight variation in style but same posed picture from star Stephanie Powers) where the US book 2 was not printed in the UK.

The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.: The Birds of a Feather Affair

 by Michael Avallone

The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.: #2 The Blazing Affair

by Michael Avallone

Next up we have a book I got from the MLB Insiders Club. The 2012 Baseball America Almanac. Oddly the cover for this is slightly different from the one I saw online and the cover that my collection tracking site GoodReads has for it so I need to add it. This is the complete stats book that covers the previous season 2011. Since the Nationals did so well in 2012 I will need to get the 2013 Almanac when it is published. 

V Series

To Conquer The Throne

by Tim Sullivan

I am in the final stretch of my collection of the US printed V Books. Of the original series of books this book is the next to the last one to get To Conquer The Throne by Tim Sullivan.

I finished up my V Book Conquest with The Oregon Invasion by Jayne Tannehill. Now I have all the US published V books, someday I might try for the UK published versions.

From the Classical Literature aisle I picked up a second copy of Mark Twain - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

First my original copy which is falling apart.

 Then we have the other version I plucked off of Ebay,

with the classic cover I'm more used to.

Then I found a copy of a book I have wanted for a long time. I have had the first book for ages and ages since it came out then this book I didn't know about until a few years after it was already very hard to find. Scroogie #2: Hello There, Ball! by Tug Mcgraw I think this was the book I got via the Barnes & Noble from an affiliate book seller. I forget how much I got it for but it was a bit high by my normal standards but I really wanted this book. This has the rest of the comic strips. I also in a fit of insanity bought an auction lot of Scroogie Comic strips clipped from the newspapers also from Ebayabout 70 or so total the seller claimed it was a "complete run" but it is only about half the run. Oh well.

Next we have a book that is similar to a book I think I talked about months and months ago (or maybe not I'm too lazy to check my older posts) The Little Pun Book assembled (edited?) by Robert Margolin published by Peter Pauper Press.

Following the PUN theme I got two books that my family had ages and ages ago at least the second book. Both are picture books by a photographer Bruce A. McMillan they are Punography and Punography Too. Each is very short only about 30 pages or so. He shows a series of four photographs that show some kind of progression and visual representation of a pun. Some of them are cute, and some are just plain awful. There are even a few that make you say "Huh?"

That is it for my February books I also got 3 books in July and 1 in August. I think I will combine those two months when I get around to them.

DVD Update (November and December 2011)

UPDATES for NOVEMBER and DECEMBER 2011

Wow! I noticed I had forgotten to mention my November DVDs when getting ready for this update that was supposed to be just for December UGH. I probably won't do much more than mention the titles since there are quite a few for November, not so many for December. Sorry due to the volume of November discs I will not add the covers, maybe I'll get back to doing that for my January list.

NOVEMBER 2011 Discs

Casper
Captain America: The First Avenger
Doctor Who: The Movie R1 (double dip I already had the R2 Version)
Green Lantern
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
Forbidden Planet (50 Anniversary Edition)

Doctor Who: The Five Doctors 25th Anniversary Edition (Another double dip I have the regular old release with just the DVD update version, this has the original broadcast version and the DVD update version)

DECEMBER 2011 Discs

The Smurfs (2011)
The Incredible Hulk (3 Disc Special Edition)
Cowboys & Aliens (2011)
V: The Complete Second Season - This is the 2009 reboot series. Unfortunately the 2nd season was the final season for it and I hear the ending was left hanging. Dag nabit.

July Books Update

Here are the books I got in July. This first batch I almost thought about making it's own little post since they are from the same series. I still might have to do a special posting on this series sometime. Anyway on with what I've gotten during the month of July.

These first four books are from the series of sci-fi books based on the early 1980s television series "V" which fans know is about a race of reptilian aliens who disguise themselves as being more humanoid. They pretended to come in peace but really wanted to conquer and take all our water and resources. I didn't know it at the time but after about a year or so the series of books switched from being published by Pinnacle Books (the same US publishers who published a 10 book series of Doctor Who Novels from televised stories) for the first 11 books to being published by TOR Books (the folks who published the popular Fantasy series Gor by John Norman) for the final 5 books + the new novelization of the original story (of the original mini-series and "Final Battle" mini-series in one book) re-edited to tie into the "Second Generation" which is the novelization setting up the reboot television series. With the change in publisher I noticed a slight change in the cover designs. The Original Pinnacle books have the book title and author's name at the bottom, while the TOR books have the author's name and book title at the top of the cover.

 

The Crivit Experiment by Allen Wold. When I first saw the author's name I thought it was weird (my contacts were not focused right) that someone would use the pen name Alien World. Silly me.

Path To Conquest by Howard Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein might be more well known for his involvement of Star Trek novels and Trek Conventions.

Below The Threshold by Allen Wold. There is that Alien World guy again.

Symphony Of Terror by Somtow Sucharitkul. This is this author's second V series book the first one I already have (but haven't read) was called The Alien Swordmaster. From the synopsis on the back of this one it looks like the author is once again pulling from his Thia heritage since there is a Ninja in this one.

I found a nice cover gallery on a website for these books plus the UK versions of the books which I think I will try to pursue sometime. www.tonystrading.co.uk V Books Gallery The only thing they don't show is the very original green cover to the book "The Pursuit of Diana" I think that was only a hardback version. They even have the "Annuals" that were published in the UK (they do that thing over there). I have the 1986 one.

Switch to another genre completely.

MLB Insiders Club 

I got another installment from the MLB Insiders Club Book Library. The series that is like those Time-Life series that have 20-30 books or more and you get one book every 6 weeks or so for about $20-$30 or whatever they charge. This latest book is "Inside The All-Star Game". I get a little frustrated with these books and the occasional DVDs the MLBIC sends me because they are never in any database of known books or DVDs in the collection tracking sites I use. So sorry there is no picture of the books cover. I don't think I'll get a chance to scan mine in before I post this at the end of the month.

Next up to Bat:

Safe At Home: Confessions of a Baseball Fanatic by Alyssa Milano.This is sort of an autobiography mixed in with a fangirl's ravings of her fave team and the sport that she learned to love because of her father.

December DVDs and a CD

I was going to post this back in December when I only had gotten 3 DVDs but I got 6 during the month. Some months I'd have many times that anyway First I had gotten my second DVD from the MLB Insiders Club. Plus a surprise. This one was not $10 as the first one was. I was sucker fished into a $30 ($29.98) "Major League Baseball: Memorable Moments". As with the previous DVD this one is a repackaged disc which of course No websites have good large scans of, not even the MLB Insiders Club Website shows any of the DVD covers. UGH.

Next my order from the Quality Paperback Book Club came through. I got a double dip of "Sex And The City 2" so I can compare the standard issue with the Target Exclusive version. Also so I could have a cover that has Kristin Davis and Kim Cattrall on the cover not just SJP (or actually a semi-look-a-like in wearing shades to cover the fact it's a stand in)

Then I got the Complete First Season of the 2009 "V" Reboot series. Now I can compare it to the original 1980s series.

Through Columbia House I got the Leonardo Dicaprio movie Inception.

The Movie version of the 1980s smash TV show The A-Team (2010) from Target. It was enjoyable, pretty good they didn't mess it up too much.

Also from Target I got "Family Guy: It's A Trap" the third Star Wars Movie Parody. They probably won't do parodies of the prequels.

In the music department I got a couple of CDs of Jen Chapin, Harry's Daughter her 2004 album "Linger". Proceeds of the album go to World Hunger Year (WHY) and her 2006 release "Ready". From the samples of her stuff I've heard online she is really folky, following pretty much in her dad's footsteps.

I also got Paula Cole "This Fire".

[I might get around to adding some cover images of these things sometime later, maybe maybe not]