Wordliness is next to oddliness or something like that today in The 2023 PopCult Gift Guide. We’re recommending a few books from folks who have had books recommended by us in previous years.

The catch is, these are NEW books!

We’ve got a work of Young Adult humourous fiction, a loving look at classic lunchboxes and a trilogy of novels that are sci-fi sequels to books we first told you about years ago.

So pull up a comfy chair and get a strong light, we’re going readin’, folks.

Jack & Jill: Fury Hill
by Frank Conniff
Podhouse Press
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8218286804
$12.99 from Amazon
$25 autographed, from The Author

If you have a fan of MST3K on your holiday shopping list, this hilarious, brisk read is the perfect gift. It’s a modern spin on a classic nursery rhyme, courtesy of TV’s Frank, Frank Conniff.

Blending Jack and Jill with Mad Max: Fury Road, Coniff treats us to a post-apocolyptic fairy tale where getting a drink of water is the least of their worries.

As the brief publisher’s description says, “As the world fell down a hill, each of our crowns in their own way were broken. Jack and Jill: Fury Hill.”

It’s an all-ages book, and yet still manages to be delightfully twisted.

A perfect gift for anyone with a sense of humor.

Available from Amazon or directly from Frank Conniff himself, who will gladly autograph it for you personally, and then he’ll take it to the post office and personally mail it to you from New York City!

Lunch Box Memories
by Jason Young
Self Published
$25 (Canadian) from Jason Young/Oldtimes Digest

Nostalgia merchant, Jason Young strikes again, this time with a book that looks back at classic lunchboxes from days gone by.

For the last couple of years, Jason Young has been self-publishing some terrific books about the fringes of pop culture where your humble blogger likes to shine his spotlight.

This time around he tackles one of the most heavily-collected items that, a few decades ago, was a ubiquitous part of the childhood experience..the (usually) metal lunchbox, which was often accompanied by a matching Thermos.

Lunch Box Memories is a full-color, 170-page look back that includes a foreword written by an Aladdin lunch box artist, a chapter on the history of lunch boxes themselves, and more than 100 featured old metal lunch boxes that are sure to include your favorites. It’s profusely-illustrated and will be a great gift for any lunchbox collector, aspiring collector, or just any fan of pop culture of that certain era of coolness from the 1960s to the 1980s.

The Starchildren Saga
Tales from the HoloDrome
ISBN 9798866884025
$22.99

The StarHaven Tales
ISBN 9798866890941
$22.99

Beyond the HoloDrome
ISBN 9798866899494
$22.99

by Thomas Wheeler
Self-published
Available from Amazon by clicking on the ISBN number

The StarChildren return in a trilogy of new sci-fi adventure novels from author Thomas Wheeler. We told about the earlier books in this series in previous Gift Guides, and now it’s a bounty of adventure with three new books filled to the brim with outer-space action.

In these new volumes the StarChildren encounter amazing new worlds of adventures, new friends and allies, even as their island home is detected by outside forces that may well have plans of their own.

The third, fourth, and fifth books in the series that has been compared to “Star Trek meets Jonny Quest” are available in paperback and Kindle e-book form, exclusively on Amazon.

These books would be the perfect gift for fans of old-school science fiction and adventure. The series is a throwback to the golden age of science fiction, with echoes of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Isaac Asimov and Jules Verne, but with an modern setting.