I just have a quick note about Programming Roleplaying Games in DirectX-- it's a fine book for structure and design purposes, but it's all written with DirectX 8, which is pretty outdated. If you don't already know DirectX, or at least have a good chunk of programming experience, you might be better off with a different book to start.

More generally, there is a lot of good information in a lot of books that would be hard to duplicate with browsing around online, particularly with regard to game programming. But if you're just starting out as a programmer, your money will be better spent on a solid introductory programming book for your language of choice (C# is great, as is Python). Programming games is a specific application of programming in general, and trying to do the games end of things too big and too early can be very demoralizing.

In general, you should probably avoid very topic-specific books (Program XXX in YYY), especially as a beginner. They quickly become outdated very quickly, and as a beginner you are not usually equipped to fully understand and extrapolate the material when technology has moved on. Basically, reading these kind of books early on is a bit like reading a recipe book and calling yourself a chef -- you might make a mean meatloaf, but that doesn't mean you understand food. Then later, once you are more sound in your base of knowledge, they will generally be quite useless to you -- at that point, its better to read lots of papers or more general books, then develop your own solutions. The exception to this rule is a rare few books, such as those by David Eberly (which, while specific and shallow in title, are both broad and deep in content).

A good rule of thumb, I find, is to ask yourself whether you see yourself referring to this book in 5 years, or whether you will regret buying it in hindsight. I have an entire (7foot tall, 3 feet wide) bookshelf, which is nearly half programming and technology books -- every book on my shelf fits neatly into one of those two categories, and I love or regret each purchase in kind -- especially when it comes time to move to a new apartment. Bad books don't amount to much more than dead trees and back pain.