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"Sadly, Mystery! Viewers never got to see the payoff to this classic romance. Sayers wrote about the marriage in 'Busman's Honeymoon', which couldn't be filmed for Mystery! Because Sayers had sold the film rights to Hollywood in the 1930's; it was turned into the 1940 film 'Haunted Honeymoon', but efforts to secure the rights for the new BBC-TV version weren't successful."
This book is packed with such information and many great stills form many Mystery! programs. Now I need to see the ones I missed.
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This, the Restored and Annotated version of 20,000 leagues, is a VAST improvement over previous English editions. The translation is very well done, and the annotations explain what has been changed and what previous translations accomplished.
Highly recommended!
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There is a bridge, a heavy, strong, and a very capable bridge. Ironically, built by the US Army several years before. It is the only big strong bridge across a river separating North Vietnam from the south.
A formidable armored column from the north is approaching, intending to use this bridge as their avenue to overtake the south. It is somewhat late in the war, and America is pulling out ("Vietnamizing" the war), but there is a lot of pain and agony still to go through. The destruction of this bridge slowed the advance of the northern armies by three years.
The book is written on the detail level and therein lies its fascination. We see that Capt Ripley climbs over barbed wire fences, swings across the under girding of the bridge, and fights this battle from street to foxhole around the little town of Dong Ha (just a few miles from the DMZ). The writing is wonderful and gripping, putting you face-to-face with the action as it unfolds hour by hour.
This book does lack a few essentials. The full context, with appropriate maps, in time and space is missing. Additionally, the reader is sometimes lost (as I was) in the minute details of the action at the bridge. A very local map or two would have helped.
The heroism of Capt Ripley is focused on his action in moving around under the bridge, while under direct small arms and cannon fire. It is difficult for a reader to appreciate this without almost an engineering drawing of the undersides of the bridge. We read of channels, stringers, girders, piers, all three stories above the river. Capt Ripley was swinging, crawling, and hauling explosives. I (and maybe this is the engineer in me coming out) would have loved to see drawings showing the design of the bridge, with little arrows and annotations ('crawled from here to here', 'pulled xx pounds of explosvie across this girder', 'I was here when the rifle bullets came in', 'the tank shell hit here').
Finally, we note the very emotional and wonderful human touches, the radioman, the commander of the South Vietnames unit, the commander's bodyguard, are described very well; their humanity is very apparent, as is their own dedication to their country. While we learn a little about them, more would have been a great addition. Similarly with Capt Ripley's American compatriot, Major Jim Smock (USA, Armor), who was with him at the bridge.
The book is 186 pages long; it could have been twice that and welcome.
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This veritable tome on collectible card games does contain a complete list of cards and prices for every game and every expansion to every game published in the English language up until the book's publication date in 2001. Additionally, it contains some lists of cards for expansions and games slated to come out after its publication date, but no prices are given for sets not available on the secondary market at the book's press time. These lists are very complete, and are specially tailored to each individual game. Thus, the lists can provide extra info such as the color, type (creature, instant, etc.), and rarity of every magic card; the alignment (light or dark), type, and rarity of every Star Wars card; and other type and rarity information modified for each individual game. The lists also place a checkbox next to every card name, allowing you to mark which cards you acquire.
However, it is not only the lists, but the extra info that truly makes this first-of-its-kind book shine. First, every game and every expansion has a short essay preceding the card list in which experienced players and "industry insiders" discuss the merits and flaws of the game. These discussions are usually very helpful in determining the quality of a game you have never seen, and are a remarkable resource for anyone trying to decide which new collectible card game to begin playing, or which expansion to buy into for a current game. These essays often contain a brief version of the game's mechanics, as well as how the game was received in the general market. Also, other bits of info, such as what the company was doing or planning when a particular set was released is in these essays, helping you to see how the themes and cards of the sets link together (or how they were supposed to link together). Additionally, special boxed sets and other unusual releases sometimes get their own mini-essay, a nice extra touch.
As useful as the essays are, Scrye has gone further, giving every game (not expansion) no less than 4 different 5-star ratings: one each for the quality of the game's concept, game play, card art, and the size and availability of its player pool. Providing an alternative to reading the essay (or a reminder of what it contains), these ratings help to sum up the reviewers' impressions of the game in each different area, and also allow you to focus on one specific issue most important to you (game play, for example).
Aware that their readers would be unfamiliar with many of the games in this volume, Miller and Greenholdt have provided a number of different tools to help readers navigate through the releases of unfamiliar games. Most impressively, there is a full-color section containing pictures of the backs of a card from every game, as well as the fronts of one or more types of cards from every game. This allows you to identify a card's parent game by appearance, and also gives you an idea of the quality and style of artwork on games you haven't seen (which may help you decide whether to purchase some of that game). Next to the card art in the color section, there are complete lists of every expansion for each game, neatly categorized into basic sets, expansions, and special sets, useful for quick reference of all the parts of a large game such as Magic: The Gathering. Also in the color section is a guide to determining a card's physical quality (poor, good, fine, near mint, or mint), an extra bonus.
All this would have been enough to make the Scrye CCG Checklist and Price Guide more than worthwhile, but there is still more excellent info stored within its hundreds of pages. In the front, there is a time line, organized by date, of every release for every game in the book. Also in the front are a variety of introductions, some on the general trends in CCG during each year, some on determining how to sell your cards and what price you might expect (there is even a page on online card auctions), and a foreword by Peter Adkison, the founder of Wizards of the Coast, the company that created Magic: The Gathering. And yet, there is still more! In the appendices, there is info about CCGs in foreign languages, about the collectible miniatures game Mage Knight, and even a section on "pseudo-collectible card games," or card games that had interesting features or were similar to CCGs, but were not truly part of the genre.
Miller and Greenholdt have created an amazing volume of valuable information for almost anyone involved in collectible card games in any way. From the exhaustingly thorough listings to the helpful essays and introductions, The Scrye Collectible Card Game Checklist and Price Guide is an invaluable tool and a fine chronicle of a new genre of game that could only be fated to grow in the years ahead.
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A celebration of wood. As a huge fan of this natural building material I was delighted with the rich and endlessly varied illustrations. This is not, I should add, a "how to build" book. There is relatively little text, and all illustrations are full colour photographs of real wooden houses (no line drawings, or plans.) But that said, I have drawn great inspiration from it, and would use it directly to instruct a carpenter or architect I was working with.
For all who truely love wood as a buliding and decorative material, this book is a must.
editor/ranchandhome.com
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