 It is now October 2016, which means it must be time for another Monthly Reads video where I summarize what I did in the past month and talk about what's coming up. These monthly wrap up videos by the way, as well as the occasional update videos that I do, consistently get more views than my book reviews. So I will definitely continue to do the Monthly Reads videos. You may have noticed that recently I've been adding more and more links to previous videos at the ends of my book review videos. And I've been doing it manually in the video editing and then manually adding YouTube annotations at the end. And I'm going to have to stop doing that because I think the annotations are going to be non-functional or a thing of the past in the near future. So I'm going to start experimenting with these cards they call them. I'm going to put one up here right now that will link to the 30 second sci-fi patronage page at 50th Street and I will also link to the new 50th Street YouTube channel where I've been publishing the various videos that I did during my big trip in the first half of September. Speaking of which, I spent two weeks on the road, if you haven't seen me talk about this already. On my way up to North Carolina and Virginia stopped at Dragon Con along the way. I did interviews and made videos every single day. A week or so after I got home I started editing those videos. Just yesterday I posted an interview that I did with Frank Brunner, the comics artist who's known for his work on Doctor Strange and Howard the Duck back in the 1970s. And in the days to come during this first week of October there's a whole bunch of other video interviews that I made at Dragon Con so go over there and look for those. Okay let me talk about books and what I read, what I listened to and new acquisitions for September. I have done here on the table more than 30 books. I found lots of good sources of books while I was driving. I have to shake my head because I really overdid it. Okay first let me cover the audio books that I listened to while I was driving. I listened to quite a few, more than I usually do. First the ones that I already reviewed, Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman. I reviewed that one while I was still on the trip. Highly recommended Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins. Already reviewed that, highly recommended Carry by Stephen King which is my most recent review, mixed review on that one. The first thing I listened to when I started driving was an old audio tape performance of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. It's something I've heard about all my life. I've always wondered about it and it was a complete waste of my time. Awful, just awful. The live audience on the tape wasn't entertained either. Don't bother. This other audio tape set I listened to was a BBC cast performance of Redwall by Brian Jax. It's spelled Brian Jacques, like a French name, but he pronounces it Jax. And I really liked this. I really enjoyed this. I may give this its own review. And there's a whole list of audio books that I did not enjoy. I listened to the first hour of something called Inside a Silver Box by Walter Mosley. Turned it off after the first disc. Onboard of the Gods by Rochelle Mead. Same story. Listen to the first disc. Turned it off. And surprisingly, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. Listen to the first disc. Turned it off. I did not like it. And then the last thing I was listening to as I pulled into my driveway, I was about halfway through a murder mystery called Snow White Must Die by Neil Newhouse. The fact that it's not science fiction and just a murder mystery means that of course it's not going to be surprising. And it's not going to have much of a payoff. But I'll probably finish it because I was liking it so far. For the rest of these books, I'm going to point the camera down at the table and show you all of these. But before I do that, I want to show you this. I just finished reading this a couple of hours ago. The Callisto Symphony by Andrew Cullen. I picked this up at the Decatur Book Festival in Atlanta where they had tables and tables full of books by local authors, unknown authors, first time authors. And they had a small selection of science fiction. I wanted to be supportive of the authors there. I wanted to pick up a couple of science fiction books that I wouldn't normally pick up. And this was one of them I picked up. It turns out Andrew Cullen has never written science fiction before. He has never written a book before. And it shows. This book has so many problems that I couldn't put it down. I had to go all the way through just to see how bad it got and wow. This is so special that I'm going to give it its own review after October horror month. So look out for this. Alright, the table full of books. Okay, this is it. All stuff that I bought in September, the last 30 days. I'm going to start with the first batch that I bought, which are these along the middle here. I was driving north toward Atlanta and I saw a sign on the freeway for Gotwell's books, G-O-T-T-W-A-L-S. And it is so unusual to see a highway billboard for a bookstore. So I had to pull over and see. And they have locations in several places in Georgia. This one location turned out to have a fantastic science fiction section. It was huge. It shared an aisle with an even larger Christian book section, but what are you going to do? So I spent a little time looking and I picked up some stuff that I haven't read before plus one thing I have. Here's a Gene Wolf. There are doors. As I said in my last Monthly Reads video, I need to read more Gene Wolf. The series solution by Bob Shaw. After reading Orbitsville, I really want to read more Bob Shaw. And they had this The Darkling Wind by Samtao Socoritco, if that's how it's pronounced. He goes by S.P. Samtao these days. I reviewed Mall World years ago and that's one of my all-time favorite books. And I've never read anything else by him. So they had this. I picked it up. The World is Round by Tony Rothman. I don't recognize that author. The description sounded good. And The Devil Will Drag You Under by Jack Chalker, which I haven't read since high school. I mentioned it in one of my book tag videos and it's something I want to re-read. And then there's a classic, which I've never read, The Integral Trees by Larry Niven. The hardback and beautiful condition with the dust jacket and everything. Moving on. The next purchases I made were at the Decatur Book Festival in Atlanta. That was quite an experience. There were a lot of antique book dealers there. I published a video on the 50th Street channel about the Decatur Book Festival in which you'll see this one dealer had a box full of old fantasy and science fiction magazines. The box said $5 each. But they only charged me $12, which means these are $3 each. I should have gotten more. But I went into this trip and into the book festival saying that I wasn't going to spend a lot of money on books, so I just got these four. Like I said before, the book festival was where I picked up Calisto Symphony and I picked up this other thing right next to it, The Way of the Den or The Deheen, however you want to pronounce it, by John L. Clemmer, unknown author. This looks self-published. I've noticed on a lot of these self-published books they don't put publication dates on them. This one has a 2016 copyright on it, so this is brand new. And look, here's the table of contents. All the chapters are just numbers. I read the first few pages of this, and at least this guy has a grasp of science fiction language, unlike the other one. That's it for the book festival. Now, here we go, on the last leg of the trip when I was coming back down south through Florida, came through Jacksonville, is when I found this tremendous bookstore called The Chamblin Bookmine, and it's appropriately named. I've never seen anything like it. It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen. I've published a teaser of it on my channel and on 50th Street, and I'll show you a little bit more here when I'm talking about it. It just goes on forever. I visited two locations. They had one in downtown Jacksonville and one a few miles away, and evidently they had another location. But I was blown away. I was speechless. The science fiction sections in this bookstore were so large that often not only did they have things arranged alphabetically by author, but in many cases, authors had their own section because they had so many books by any given author you could guess, and in many cases they had every book by that particular author. I did an interview with the owner that I'll publish on the 50th Street channel when its term comes. You have to see it. But here's the stuff that I got while I was at the book mine. And I was restraining myself seriously, but this is $50 worth of books here. And I don't spend money on books. They had good prices on used books, unlike some of these big bookstores that charge basically new book prices. They had good prices. Okay. They had a section of science fiction anthologies. I got a couple here that are edited by Donald A. Walheim, just from 72 and 78. And a couple here edited by Judith Merrill. These are Dell books with $0.50 cover price here and $0.75 here. These are from 1965 here and must be 62 here. I can't wait to read those. Got some Joan V. Vinge. I've said in recent months how much I'm impressed with her. So I got some of her stuff here. She was one of those authors that they seemed to have everything she'd ever written. And I picked this up too. Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. Good price on it. I've heard so much about this book. All of it good. Well, it's going to be my turn. And more Bob Shaw. There were two sequels to Orbitsville. They had both of them. So I picked those up and I thought I should get something else by Bob Shaw. And they had a lot of Bob Shaw stuff. So it took me a while to dig through them and read the descriptions and find one that sounded like I might like it. And wow, they had a lot of Robert Sheckley. So I picked up two Robert Sheckley books. If you've never read anything by Robert Sheckley, you should do so immediately. Just fantastic stuff. This was a novel. This one is an anthology of short stories. I can't wait to read that stuff. And this is a book that I've never read, but I'm familiar with the name E.C. Tubb. And I've seen it on shelves before. And the cover painting and the title of it are so interesting. I finally said, ah, what the hell? Pawn of the Amphalos. All right. I'll get to that someday. And finally, the day after I returned from my trip, I went to the library to return some stuff. And they were having a big sale on hardback science fiction. I got these five books for $6. And these are big ones, big books, all with dust covers, dust jackets. Greg Behr, fantastic author, Queen of Angels, haven't read that one. The Orion Protocol by Gary Tigerman. I have no idea. No idea. A guy named Tigerman. Is that really his name? The World at the End of Time by Frederick Paul. This is a book I've heard about. Not one that I've read. Haven't read much, Paul. I should read more. Terry Goodkind, The Pillars of Creation. Terry Goodkind is a name I see all the time. Never read any. And Children of the Wind, Five Novellas by Kate Wilhelm. I cannot wait to read this. Hardback in almost perfect condition with the dust jacket. Kate Wilhelm. Can't wait. Wow, there's so much here. Okay, so a new book review is coming up later this week. Be sure to like and subscribe, and please visit 50th Street where I'm doing more and more stuff all the time. See you soon. I want to welcome my new subscribers, and I want to thank my regulars who have stuck with me all this time. And I especially want to thank those of you who have gone over to the new 50th Street channel and subscribed over there. There is a colossal amount of new stuff coming to 50th Street. So keep watching.