 Welcome to Church of the Chair, where we love a good book haul. I'm your host Dee, and today I'm showing off some stuff I got at book outlet. Unfortunately, we have entered hissing season, and what hissing season means around here is you're probably going to have a little bit of a hiss in the background while my air conditioner runs, because out here in the office, before I turned on my air conditioning, it was 98 degrees. It is now halfway decent, and I don't feel like sweating my ass off trying to shoot a video. So I apologize in advance if there is a hissing. I do have a Yeti mic. It is set to mono directional, which is just me, but this office is so small, it picks up damn near anything. So what I have today is a book outlet haul that I was able to get thanks to you guys. First, a friend of mine sent me a bunch of gift cards, and if you watched the live book hauls I did during book outlets, I believe it was the summer sale, where everything was mostly about $6.99 and under. That's where that came from, but I was also accruing points from that, and based on those videos, I was able to, using their refer a friend link, get enough points to get 11 new books. Now there are two books here from Amazon that I bought with my own money, so I'm going to show those off as well, but we're going to just go ahead and jump right into it. I'll show you exactly, well whatever book I get I will tell you exactly where it came from. Starting off as an author that I had never heard of before, reading For You and Only You by Caroline Kepnes. It's the fourth book in the Joe Goldberg series, and I somehow this author never even crossed my cone of vision, but her name has dropped multiple times in the book, and while I was researching my National Book Awards finalists read through, I'm only doing the short listed ones, not the long listed ones, but I'm doing all of the finalists and all of the winners for the past decade or more. I'm going all the way back to 2011, and I happen to find this on book outlet, which is Matrix by Lauren Groff. I am not going to be reading the blurbs for any of the books that I'm looking forward to reading, that's how I do that on this channel, because I don't want any kind of spoilers whatsoever, so none of the National Book Award finalists and winners I will be reading, especially something like this. I want to go in with absolutely no preconceived notions about what I'm going to expect, especially when it's a new author. So Lauren Groff's Matrix is the first one. The next one I got, and I just got through reading In the House in the Dark of the Woods, and that review should be up probably next week, because I still have to review Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez. That'll be up tomorrow, that one's already filmed, I haven't shot the review for this one, but I picked this up, because I had no idea that Laird Hunt was a finalist for the National Book Award, and this is the book that he got that nomination for, which is Zory. So this is Zory by Laird Hunt. I also somehow accumulated several more, several others, other books of his, and I was shocked to find out that they were all the same author. I know that sounds weird, but there's a couple books that I picked up, Never Home and The Evening Road that just looked good. I think I got them at, not, I believe I got them at the library for a quarter of a piece, but this one was $6.99, it was that book outlet, and of course I'm back on that National Book Awards bubble. So we'll be reading this at some point in time. I'm working my way up from 2011 all the way to present day. It's going to take me a while. Luckily, most of these books are short every now and again, you get something like A Little Life or The Luminaries that are 700, 800 pages, but most of them are pretty short. I love this author, by the way, so I'm really excited to get to this one, but this one is a couple years after 2011, and I still have, for the 2011 books, I still have to read Binocular Vision, which I'm working my way through. It's a short story collection by Edith Perlman, and I'm also, I have The Tiger's Wife by Tia O Brett, I believe is how you pronounce it. So that's what I have coming up next on that read through. The next thing I have is, of course, another National Book Awards. All the ones I'm showing up front are National Book Awards, and they're all from Book Outlet. This is The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers. This is a more recent one, I believe. It doesn't say when, and I could, let's look it up. I know it's recent. Let's see here. Yeah, this one is, man, publication, I take that back. It is a 2013, so it's not that far away, but yeah, The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, and some of them aren't going to have the sticker on them because they're actual first edition hardcovers. So that one. Next up, I got The Profits by Robert Jones Jr. Again, I have absolutely no idea what this is about, and I'm not going to be reading the back cover copy. I will say that I really enjoy this cover, even though it is super simplistic. I love the face almost like a mountain range, and you have the water and the sun. I really dig the subtlety of this cover, and this is also a longer one. I have noticed that most of the books that win the National Book Award are usually between 200 and 400 pages, but of course, there are the longer ones like A Little Life and Luminaries and Black Leopard Red Wolf as a couple other ones. Okay, so next up we have The White Tiger by Erevind Adiga. I believe Aravind, Aravind Adiga possibly, and of course, anytime I put anything light blue on this camera, for some reason I get the fleas of someone called them, the artifacts or whatever the hell all this nonsense here is. And if anybody knows how to fix that, please let me know down there in the comments. It doesn't happen with it doesn't happen with this, this, well, maybe it is happening a little bit with this, but anyways, it's a weird glitch. Yeah, The White Tiger, this is coming to Netflix, I guess, according to this right here. So that's cool. All right, this is the last one for the National Book Awards that I picked up. And I believe this is another, excuse me, I believe this is another finalist and not a winner. And that is Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain. And of course, this one is a first edition hardcover. So it doesn't have a, it doesn't have any stickers or anything on it. And also those aren't stickers, those are actually built into the cover art. So it's not like you, you can remove them or else, trust me, I 100% would. Yeah, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, which is a very interesting title. And also there's a blurb here from Carl Marlantes, the catch 22 of the Iraq War. I couldn't finish catch 22. I'm hoping this one goes better than that one. I believe what's the author's name, Joseph Heller, I believe. I have read other books by him, but I couldn't get into catch 22. The next two books that I'm going to show you are from Amazon. And I will read the blurb of the second one, not the first one, because this one is a sequel to Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead. This one's called Crook Manifesto. And it is a series involving the main character. I don't know, it does not say, and I don't want to read too much into the description, but it is, I believe it's detective fiction, literary detective fiction. I'm excited to start them. I wanted to get at least one more book in the series before I started them. So I will get to the first one, Harlem Shuffle sometime hopefully this year. Alright, next up is one that I am going to read the description for. And I'll read the description for all the rest of these. If you don't want to do that, if you don't want to listen to that, you can always scrub past me doing it. Just take your cursor, click on the little bar at the bottom of your screen, the red bar, and slide it over until you see a new book cover. My buddy Chad Lutzky has a new book out. And yes, we are friends, we are good friends, we talk all the time. I just need to let you know that up front, but I'm also a massive fan of his, and I was a fan of his before I ever met him. My friend Gregor Zane put me on to him and ever since then I've been a massive fan. So what is Broad Street Bastard about? It is a prequel of a prequel of a book. I know that's confusing, but let's get into it. While working through his 12 step program, 18 year old Jax gets a new job and his first apartment. Now when I say this is a prequel of a prequel, I believe this is the prequel to a book with Jax in it called A Slow Burn on Riverside. I love that book, absolutely adored it. And then that one is a prequel, he's writing them in reverse. That one is a prequel to the same deep water as me or you. I'm sorry if I got that wrong, I'll check in just a second to make sure I got it right. But staying clean and out of trouble never did come naturally. And this time, trouble finds him. What starts as a season of promiscuity ends in morbid fashion. Now it's up to Jax, that's J-E-X, to uncover who wants him dead. Slice of life, coming of age, with the bruised face of dazed and confused and the heart of Rivers Edge. Alright, let me get these titles right. He puts his books in the back I believe. Alright, yes. Slow Burn on Riverside. And then it's the same deep water as you is the first book, but right now it is the last book. So this is this, Broad Street Bastard is a prequel of Slow Burn on Riverside and Slow Burn on Riverside is a prequel to the same deep water as you. We're going to get through this, I promise. But anyways, this is my next read after I get done with, well I already got done with it and that was in the house in the dark of the woods. So this is the next book I'm picking up. I'm also reading Imaginary Friend because that's the book that won the Time for a Tome poll over on the community channel. So I'll be reading both of these books at the same time. Next up, and here's a word of warning for anyone wanting to go to book outlet, but by now I'm sure that all of us readers and consumers have noticed that if you buy something offline, sometimes even in a brick and mortar store, you're not going to get the quality that you would assume you should get for buying a brand new product. And this is it. It has a tear up here, has a tear there, and it is actually bent. It came literally, I don't want to do it again, but it literally came folded in half and I've been working on it. But yeah, so just be careful when you're buying online, you're not going to get really good quality. So if you want really good quality, go to a brick and mortar store and hopefully they haven't treated their books like garbage. But this is essay, one of SA Cosby's first books and it is my darkest prayer. I think he has other ones out as well. But I got this just to complete my collection. I already own Blacktop Wasteland, Razorblade Tears and his newest one, All the Sinners Bleed, which I will be reading to Shell here in the next couple of months. So if you're looking forward to my review of that one, it is coming. It's just going to be a while. I got a lot to get through. But this one is, I don't mind reading the backs of this one because whoever does the blurbs for Cosby, probably different people, they usually don't get anything, they don't give anything away. I Handle the Bodies. Whether it's working at his cousin's funeral home or tossing around the local riffraff at his favorite bar, Nathan Waymaker is a man who knows how to handle the bodies. A former Marine and Sheriff's deputy, Nathan has built a reputation in his small southern town as a man who can help when no one else can. This already sounds fantastic. When a beloved local minister is found dead, his parishioners ask Nathan to investigate. But things get complicated and Nathan must use all his varied skills to navigate the murky waters of small town corruption, even as dark secrets of his own threaten to come to the surface. So yeah, my darkest prayer by SA Cosby. If you have not read Cosby, you are definitely, definitely missing out. Go check him out. I suggest starting, I haven't read this one yet, but I suggest starting with Blacktop Wasteland or Razorblade Tears. They aren't series. You can start any of the books at any point in time. You can go support him by buying his brand new book, which is All The Sinners Bleed. Highly recommend him. The man in my eyes can do no wrong. Also, he's known as Black Lion King over on Twitter, and he has a great Twitter. Go follow him over there. I do not know Cosby well enough to consider him a friend, but I have spoken to him in the past once or twice. Next book we have is, I'm just letting you guys know, I'm not bragging, I'm just letting you guys know when I know an author or when I have interacted with them. That's the only point I'm making there. Next one is Leech By Heron Innes, I believe, E-N-N-E-S. This is a book I tried to buy with the gift cards my friends sent me, and they were sold out when I went back to use my points. They had it in stock, so I grabbed it anyways. I really love the cover, and I read the blurb because I have no idea what I'd be coming into. Is it actually about leeches? What's it about? So I actually read this one. I'm going to read it to you now. On an isolated chateau, as far north as north goes, it almost sounds like poetry, the Baron's Doctor has died. The Doctor's replacement has a mystery to solve, discovering how the Institute lost track of one of its many bodies. For hundreds of years, the Inter-Provincial Medical Institute has grown by taking root in young minds and shaping them into doctors, replacing every human practitioner of medicine. The Institute is here to help humanity to cure and to cut, to cradle and protect the species from the apocalyptic horrors their ancestors unleashed. In the frozen north, the Institute's body will discover a competitor for its rung at the top of the evolutionary ladder. A parasite is spreading through the Baron's castle, already a dark pit of secrets, lies, violence, and fear. The two will make war on the battlefield of the body. Whichever wins, humanity will lose again. That's the kind of blurb I'm talking about. Don't give me any characters, not too much character stuff, only the relevant information. I don't need to know all that stuff, I just need to know what kind of story I'm getting into, and this one, that's a perfect blurb for me. Which brings me to the question, what's a perfect blurb for you? What do you like to know, and do you even read descriptions of books before you jump into them? Or do you just go by word of mouth, or do you cover by like me? I'm guilty of doing both. I usually buy books based on negative reviews if people absolutely hate them. A couple of keywords would be, this book makes no sense. I usually love those books. This book didn't go anywhere. I love books that kind of meander and go around as long as there's some kind of heavy theme or something along those lines. Another one is, I am, this one is funny to me, and is like, I don't understand it. Like, there wasn't a single, the quote would be, there wasn't a single character I liked. I don't have to like a character to get into a story. In fact, I prefer stories about characters that are despicable. An explanation, not an explanation. An example of that would be me and my wife recently watched Dashcam, and the main character, Annie, is absolutely despicable, and me and my wife were cheering the entire time for her to die. It was so much fun. I enjoyed the movie, but I hated, hated the character that we spent time with. I was rooting for the quote unquote monster or whatever the hell was happening, and I love stories like that. Same reason why The Ruins by Scott Smith is one of my favorite books, because those people were despicable. Next up, I've read a book by this author before. I need to read other ones from him, but I saw this was on sale for like $6.99. By the way, the summer sale is over, over on book outlet, but I do have the refer a friend link down there, if you want to click on that. I get points. They're not paying me to do this. They're not a sponsor. I'm not endorsed by them. But if you want to help me get points for future book calls, if you like these videos, definitely click on that link and go over and buy you something. But the other one I read was The Boatman's Daughter, and I absolutely loved it. So I grabbed The Hollowkind by Andy Davidson. Love the way this guy writes. This is, this might be YA? The next one I have is about the same size. And for even this one, yeah, this one, no, it's about the same size. Never mind. So all these are about the size of YA books. They're not, they're nowhere near as big as the Coulson Whitehead book. But this is The Hollowkind. I really like the cover. It's subtle. I don't know if that's a panther or what. I'm excited for this one. So I'm not going to read the synopsis for this one. But yeah, I'm excited just because I love the way this guy writes. Next up, we have another author that I loved, one book, and decided to just grab everything, even though I haven't read anything else from him, is Christopher Buhlman. I read Those Across the River, which is basically Salem's lot, but with werewolves. And if you like the sound of that, I highly suggest you go pick that up. This is his fantasy book. I'm hoping, or something like a fantasy book, I believe. But yeah, the black tongue thief. I'm not even sure if this is like a first in the series, or if there's a series at all, or if it's a standalone. But I love the cover. Let me show this a little better. I love the cover, and it spoke to me. So I grabbed it. Once again, this was on sale for $6.99. Your smallest mistake could become your biggest adventure. That sounds cool. It sounds really cool. And because it's fantasy, I don't think it'd be too bad to read this, and I have no idea when I'm going to get to it. So I'll probably forget by the time I actually do get to it. Kinch Na Shanak owes the takers guild a small fortune for his education as a thief. Which includes, but is not limited to, lockpicking, knife fighting, wall scaling, fall breaking, lie weaving, and trap making. That sounds amazing. It also sounds like a couple of fantasy characters I've come across in some fantasy video games. Especially the trap making. Because the first thing that came to mind was Horizon Zero West with Aloy doing her the traps that she can set. Plus a few other small magics. His debt has driven him to lie in wait by the old forest, planning to rob the next traveler who crosses his path. But today, Kinch Na Shanak has picked the wrong mark. Galva is a knight, a survivor of the brutal goblin wars, and handmaiden of the goddess of death. She is searching for her queen, missing since a distant northern city fell to giants. Unsuccessful in his robbery and lucky to escape with his life, Kinch now finds his fate entangled with galvas. Common enemies and uncommon dangers force thief and knight on an epic journey where goblins hunger for human flesh, crackens hunt in dark waters, and honor is a luxury few can afford. It does sound good, don't get me wrong, but once again, and I run into this quite often, it sounds like the same old same old. Giants, goblins, dragons, elves, that kind of thing, and I'm really tired of the same old same old so I don't think I'm going to be getting to this one anytime soon. But I am trying to collect all of his books so maybe one day I don't know. Let me know if you guys recommend this one down there. Just because it has the common characters and tropes doesn't mean it has a common story. Even though I've read several of these about thieves, most recently we have Tracker who isn't really a thief but it's kind of the same build up as this one. That's Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James. So yeah, I don't know if I'm in the mood for this one, but yeah, I have it. I own it now so my Christopher Newman collection is getting bigger. The next one, it's going to sound funny because I read the back cover copy of the other books I got in the series, but I'm not going to be reading this one because I've already forgotten about those, and this one is the first book in the series. I've tried ordering it three times from eight books and my order either gets lost in the mail or never shipped and I get a refund. I've got a refund all three times. I found it on book outlet for, I think, $3.99. So yeah, this is where we're starting with this series, My Soul to Keep by Tanana Reeve Do. I love Tanana Reeve Do. I've only read The Between and I am slowly working my way through the Good House. But yeah, I'm excited for this one even if it is about immortals. I'm thinking vampires. It might not be, but she does things different enough with her characters that she's more about the characters and drama and character development and, you know, that kind of thing over, you know, there's always a good story. Well, at least in The Between there was. There's a good story, but with her writing I'm here for the characters, so I don't mind old tropes that have been overdone. Anyways, My Soul to Keep by Tanana Reeve Do. So that's everything that I have today and that's also all the time I have for you today. But if you've read any of these books, please no spoilers, but let me know down there in the comments whether you've read any of them, if you liked them, if you didn't like them. Especially if you didn't like them, because like I said, I buy books based on negative reviews and if you didn't like it, oddly enough, I'll probably end up reading it sooner. If you want to use some reverse psychology on me, that's fine by me too. I don't mind. I'm easy like that. Also, if you have a book haul of your own that you would like to share, please do so down there in the comments. I love going down there and finding just lists of books, because I always come across something that I have not heard of, because I can't find everything. So you guys help me out with my next purchases, especially when you guys are like, hey, I read, I got this, I read it and I didn't like it. I know I'm weird, but take that with you. But until next time, I'll hell the chair.