Waiting on Wednesday: The X-Files: Origins: Devil's Advocate by Jonathan Maberry

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine where we spotlight upcoming releases that we're eagerly awaiting.  Last week I shared the first book in this series.  This week I'm going to go ahead and share book 2, because I can't wait for this new series!  Here is the blurb from Goodreads:

How did Fox Mulder become a believer? How did Dana Scully become a skeptic? The X-Files Origins has the answers in this young adult origin story.

The X-Files Origins: Devil's Advocate will explore the teen years of Dana Scully, the beloved character depicted in the cult-favorite TV show The X-Files. Her story is set in the spring of 1979, when serial murder, the occult, and government conspiracy were highlighted in the news.

The book will follow Scully as she experiences life-changing events that set her on the path to becoming an FBI agent.

Don’t miss The X-Files Origins: Agent of Chaos, by Kami Garcia, about 17-year-old Fox Mulder.

What book or books are you eagerly awaiting this week?

And while you're here, make sure to go here and enter my "Let's Get 2016 Over With a Giveaway."  US only though, sorry.

Waiting on Wednesday: The X-Files: Origins: Agents of Chaos by Kami Garcia

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine where we spotlight upcoming releases that we're eagerly awaiting.  This week I've picked a brand new series based on what was one of my all-time favorite TV shows EVER!  I was one of the biggest fans of The X-Files, well, except for the very last season.  And I watched most of the new season they had a year or so ago, and so now I'm excited to see some of my favorite authors writing stories about the main characters growing up.  This first one is about Fox Mulder!

How did Fox Mulder become a believer? How did Dana Scully become a skeptic? The X-Files Origins has the answers.

The X-Files Origins: Agent of Chaos explores the teen years of Fox Mulder, the beloved character depicted in the cult-favorite TV show The X-Files. His story is set in the spring of 1979, when serial murder, the occult, and government conspiracy were highlighted in the news.

The book will follow Mulder as he experiences life-changing events that set him on the path to becoming an FBI agent.

Don’t miss The X-Files Origins: Devil’s Advocate, by Jonathan Maberry, about 15-year-old Dana Scully.


Did you ever watch The X-Files?  Do you like when they write books about your favorite tv shows?  After the fact?  What book or books are you eagerly awaiting on this week?

While you're here, you should go check out my Let's Get 2016 Over With Giveaway - Part 2.

A to Z April: X Reviews - The Xander Years by Keith R.A. DeCandido/The X-Files: Book of the Unexplained by Jane Goldman

As you might have guessed, finding books for the X reviews was one of the hardest for the whole challenge.  I had about 6 to choose from and 3 were ones I had already posted reviews here on the blog, so I didn't want to do them again.  So the ones I've chosen are the other ones I hadn't reviewed for the blog.  And they are actually companion books to two of my favorite TV series.

First is The Xander Years Vol. 1 by Keith R.A. Candido.  If they did a volume 2 to this, I didn't ever get ahold of it, not from lack of trying I'm sure.  As when I started working at a bookstore, I began trying to order every last Buffy  book I could.  Unfortunately many were out of print, and I didn't want to order from used at the time and pay ahead of time.  I became a huge fan of the name Xander because of this show, and if I'd ever had a son, I would have wanted to name him that.  Here is the somwhat long blurb for this book from Goodreads:
TONIGHT, PART 1The argument started when Cordelia saw what Xander was wearing.

He had only just walked into the Bronze when Cordy started in on him. "My "God, " what is that outfit?"

"It's called 'clothes.'"

"No, "I'm" wearing clothes. "You" are wearing rags. Xander, do you even know what it means to accessorize?"

Shaking his head and rolling his eyes at the same time, Xander replied, "Yeah. "To accessorize." A verb deriving from the noun "accessory." Loosely defined as, 'Caring way more about what you're wearing than necessary for simple human interpersonal contact.'"

Gesturing as if she were pleading with Xander to not jump off a high ledge, Cordelia said, "Xander, clothes are what define who you are to the world. They put out a message that says, 'I'm cool' or 'I'm a jock' or 'I'm a computer geek" or in your case, 'I'm a loser with no redeeming social value.'"

It went downhill from there, at least up to the part where they made up by necking near the restrooms.

Xander returned home and fell more than sat on his bed, not even bothering to clear a space for himself -- he just collapsed onto the dirty laundry festooned on the sheets and stared at the ceiling. All in all, it had been a typical date: arguing for an hour, necking for an hour. "Not exactly how I pictured dating, he thought. Certainly not how all those fantasy dates with Buffy went in my head."

He turned toward the bedside table to stare at the photograph next to his clock radio. Willow's mom had taken that picture of Buffy, Willow, and Xander sophomore year. Buffy's hair was longer then -- so, if it came to that, was Xander's.

"Things were simpler then, hionship had been set.

Except, of course,for the necking part. That took another twelve years to develop.

The funny thing was, while Willow and Xander had gleefully formed the We Hate Cordelia Chase Fan Club -- they even held semiregular meetings -- Jesse had always had the hots for her, right up until the moment he died. And now Xander was dating her.

"Well, it could be worse, he thought. At least dating Cordelia isn't an immediate threat to my life. My sanity maybe, but not my life."

Shivering with a chill that had nothing to do with the typically warm Sunnydale night, he remembered a certain substitute biology teacher....

The 2nd book is from a TV series that I watched with  my mom, one that we loved and are excited to hear that there may be a reboot!  I was a huge X-Files fan.  Especially what they called the "monster of the week" episodes more than the mythology episodes.  These books, and I had two of them, were more about the true stories behind the UFO sightings and other wild stories that made up the TV series.  Here is a blurb from Goodreads:
At the beginning of its fourth incredibly popular season. The X-Files Fall 1996 season premiere had the highest rating Fox Television has ever achieved for a dramatic series. The show won five 1996 Emmy awards for special effects, outstanding writing, and best guest spots, and continues to garner new fans with each episode. HarperPrism is the only official publisher of The X-Files, and this season, we present three brand-new additions to satisfy the voracious appetite of the millions of fans.The facts behind the fiction are even more disturbing than the menace and mystery depicted in The X-Files episodes. Here are the actual accounts of UFO sightings, alien encounters, government cover-ups, psychic crime solving, faith healing, spontaneous combustion, reincarnation, and hauntings from which the show's writers draw their material for story lines. This in-depth, photo-tilled guide--complete with interviews from the show's cast, crew, and writers, as well as astonishing revelations from the world's leading investigations, scientists and officials--tells the terrifying stories behind our real life encounters with The X-Files.

Were you a fan of either of these shows?  If so, did you ever read any of the books that went with them?  Or did you even know they had books to go with them?  And while you're here, make sure you enter my giveaway below!

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Top Ten Tuesday: Top 10 Favorite TV Shows

Top Ten Tuesday is sponsored by The Broke and The Bookish.  This week's theme:


Let's talk about other types of stories! Top Ten Favorite Movies or TV Shows! (can break it down to top ten favorite romance movies or comedy shows etc. etc.)

So here are my top 10, there are more shows that I love, but I narrowed it down to these.  Once again, I'm not putting them in any particular order, just sharing them!

1.  The Big Bang Theory


  

2.  Buffy the Vampire Slayer




3.  The X-Files

4.  The Walking Dead




5.  The Young and the Restless

6.  Survivor

7.  The Amazing Race

8.  Supernatural





9. Glee




10.  Eureka





Some of these shows are no longer on, but will always be my favorites.  Love the stories in them, some I even read the books that are based on them!  So they do tie into reading for me.

If you had to pick your top 10 tv shows, would they include any of these? 

Review: Eat, Brains, Love by Jeff Hart

This is a book I added to my library request list when I got back from BEA a few weeks ago.  I was lucky enough to get to meet the author and get a copy of the second book, Undead with Benefits, so I figured I'd better go ahead and read the first one.  It also came in right before I was going to have surgery.  So I picked it up, and it was my next physical book read after I finished another e-galley.  This was definitely a fun zombie read.  And I guess I am loving that during my recovery time, I'm able to read about a book a day, which is what most books are meant to be read in. Well one sitting, but that's about impossible in life these days.

There are 3 main characters in this book.  Jake, who is kind of a loser type of guy, or maybe you'd just call him a stoner.  He's so out of it, that when the school takes their standardized test that is supposed to help them figure out what career they would be good at, he ends up not having any show up that he'd excel at.  Amanda is the next one. She is "the" beautiful, popular girl.  And then Cass, a girl who is a psychic, and the secret government organization, NCD, Necrotic Control Division, uses her to help find out who the zombies are and where they've gone.  You see there are zombies out there. But the government is able to catch and kill them before they get too far.  Usually.  It is a disease, but not like when you get bit you turn.  Not the normal zombie disease.  In fact it seems to be passed on like an STD in this book.  And it is kind of weird.  It seems they don't just change into brain eating, slow moving zombies.  Once they've eaten, humans, or maybe other animals occasionally, they heal and turn back almost to normal.  So when Cass gets into Jake's thoughts, she sees a normal teenage boy.  One that she thinks she could have been friends with.  Maybe even develops a bit of a crush on as she keeps going into his thoughts.  But on the road, Jake and Amanda may be developing a bit of a romance themselves.  They see that the high school where they kind of went crazy and ate there friends has now been named a school shooting site.  And then they see that supposedly they've been captured?  Which totally isn't true as they are still on the run.  Cass finds out this organization she's been a part of may not be all as good as she thinks it is.  The main boss, a scary nerdy guy wearing a bow-tie, seems to have some alternative plans for what to do with these zombies.  And it seems he has his own telepathic powers, and they are strong, and he can use them to basically do what he wants. 

A good story, you root for the zombies, and you also see a government secret, definitely one for fans of The X-Files, which I definitely am.  And the humor, the sarcasm of the characters gave me some laugh out loud bits.  One at the very end, I have to describe.  Jake and Amanda were hiding in an abandoned farm house, one that seemed haunted to Jake. At this point Cass has decided to go ahead and help the NCD catch them so she can go back to her old life and forget all this.  Jake and Amanda are starting to take their relationship into a more physical stage when Cass's crew catches up to them.  The front door slams open with a bang, and Jake can see a huge silhouette in the doorway, and he shouts:  "Angry ghost farmer!".  Okay, maybe call it out of contest where I've talked about it, but it still cracks me up.  That's my kind of silly humor I guess.  This could be a fun movie I think.  If they did it right, with both the right amount of blood and gore and seriousness, but also the right amount and kind of in your face humor, we know this is crazy.  Just like the book does. 

Can't wait till I get to my copy of the 2nd one from BEA now to see what happens next.

For the Good of Mankind? by Vicki O. Wittenstein

Thanks to Netgalley and Lerner Publishing Group for allowing me to read this e-galley over the summer.  My interest in this book was probably sparked from both the fact that I am a science teacher, as well as the fact that I read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks earlier this summer.  This book was really interesting to read about all the different things that have been done in the name of medicine, for the good of mankind, and these are things within the past century!  Now I had a bit of trouble reading the e-galley on my new Nook HD, I'm still learning with some of the documents on there.  So there were certain pages, the ones at the beginning of each section, that were maybe mostly all black background, that for some reason I could never seem to get them to load.
Some of the horrible medical experiments I'd heard of before, like the Nazis experimenting on their prisoners, as well as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, and the using prisoners for medical testing.  But there were other things that were new to me, and still very disturbing.  With the Nazi chapter they talked about a set of twins that I had actually read their book before, Surviving the Angel of Death.
One of the stories I had never heard about was a little boy who came to America from Australia to hopefully get a cure for his cancer, instead they tested some kind of radiation on him, and he died shortly after he visited.  The fact that they would take orphaned children and use them in their experiments was horrible to think about.  And there were also those in the military that it became part of their job to be experimented on.
The book goes through and talks about The Manhattan Project, as well as one I'd heard of from watching The X-Files, Operation Paperclip.
This is a really good book to have, probably most likely in a middle school library, but could also be used in high school.  While it may be a little simpler than you might think for students in an advanced class, it has so much history, as well as good science, that it would be great for students needing to research any of these events.  As well as I feel many students would find it just an interesting book to read.  I will definitely be recommending it to librarians I know, as well as science teachers that I feel could use it with their students.  Also some Social Studies/History students could probably use it.  And with the new Common Core Standards, it would be a great non-fiction choice for English classes as well.