Paperback 360: The Big Bust / Ed Lacy (Pyramid X-2037)

Paperback 360: Pyramid X-2037 (PBO, 1969)

Title: The Big Bust
Author: Ed Lacy
Cover artist: F. Pfeifer

Yours for: SOLD! (10/8/10)


Best things about this cover:

• [Insert joke about connection between title and woman's rack here]
• For a woman who's tied up, gagged, and carrying a tiny drowning man in her stomach, she's awfully concerned about those guys behind her. Lady, you've got your own problems.
• I have reluctantly tagged this post with "Redhead" label, though honestly I don't know what you call that color.

Best things about this back cover:

• Geek observation #227: "Supercharged" is just "surcharged" with "P.E." inside it. . .
• So the woman is like good pancakes. Well, who wouldn't want to tail that?
• If the boardwalk is "bikini-filled," does that mean the ocean is filled with naked women (who, presumably, all left their bikinis on the boardwalk)? I hope so.
• One of these paragraphs should immediately be countered with "That's what she said!"

Page 123~

Walter awoke me at one-fifteen and watching for snakes, back of a crumpling wall, I changed into the woolen underwear and rubber suit, Rhoda's $60,000 bra doubling as a jock strap.

[Speechless]

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 325: Honest Sex / Rustum & Della Roy (Signet Q3857)

Paperback 325: Signet Q3857 (PBO? 1969)

Title: Honest Sex
Authors: Rustum & Della Roy
Cover artist: no

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• "Honest Sex"— Honestly? No thanks.
• If "Rustum & Della Roy" aren't pseudonyms, I don't know what are.
• These folks better be swingers—otherwise this book is going to be a Major disappointment.
• I like how the punch line of the entire cover (besides the author names) is "Christians"; you're just reading along, figuring you're looking at any old sex book, and bam. Sexy Christians, eh? Hmmm, I'm intrigued ...

Best things about this back cover:

• Whoa whoa whoa! Which of these things is not like the other!? Dear lord. The fact that "Abortion" is even on this list gives me a pretty idea of what these authors think of kinky (or even ordinary) sex.
  
• The "Playboy" endorsement does, however, give me some hope ... I really, really can't wait for Page 123 on this one.

Page 123~

Reluctant wives (rarely, reluctant husbands) are sometimes involved after persuasion by their spouses. The reports on the experience are so favorable—including a great deal of unanimity on the improvement of the marriage as a result of such experience—that we have hypothesized that the cause may lie deeper than the simple fact of having coitus with two or more partners. Unfortunately, we have had no personal contact with anyone who has participated in any club or even minimally organized mate-sharing.

A little clinical, but awesome nonetheless. First, that parenthetical aside. Nice. Second, "coitus." Yuck. There's a word designed to make you Not want to have sex. Third, "Unfortunately..." HA ha. "Me and Rustum were just talking about how we wish we knew some swappers so we could, you know, do some, uh, first-hand research, as it were."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 25

Title: What Happened to Amy? (SBS T 579, 1969)
Author: Jane Edwards
"Cover design by" [???]: Julio Freire

Yours for: I think I have to give this to my sister

• Guess 1: her chin grew a hand-like appendage
• Guess 2: she bought a hideous shade of lipstick at Woolworth's
• Guess 3: she was drowned in a flood of Depression-colored paint
• Guess 4: an alien life form (part fox, part scorpion) attached itself to her cranium
• Guess 5: she caught sight of herself in the mirror after one of her evil sisters abused her hair in the middle of the night while she was sleeping: "Oh ... boo hoo ... I used to look like Crystal Gale ... sob."

• "Leave her clothes behind"?? — I may have to revise my list of Guesses

Page 123~

"This affair gets more mysterious all the time. The more we find out, the less we know."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

PS Thanks to Dan at "The Casual Optimist" for including this site in his list of "10 Websites for Vintage Books, Covers, and Inspiration"

57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 22

Title: You'll Like My Mother (Fawcett T1418, 1969)
Author: Naomi A. Hintze
Cover artist: Harry Bennett

Yours for: $5

• "I think I *will* like your mother. She sounds ho- ... whoa! Is that her? Oh ... man. I, uh, I have this thing I have to go to now. Band practice, I think."
• MILF! (Mom I'd Like to Flee)
• "Maybe if I hide under this giant Fabio wig, mom won't see me..."

• Dear Best Sellers, "THEY" has no antecedent. Thank you.
• We need to revive the word "CHILLER-DILLER"
• Book-of-the-Month Club News is creeping me out with its metaphors. "It's like watching a demonic baby emerge from the birth canal. You'll love it."

Page 123~

In my mind's eye I fixed a firm picture of that fawn-and-brown cat catching that one gray rat. One rat; there were no more.

This is, by far, the most interesting thing happening on this page.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 15

Title: Lipika (Jaico, 1969)
Author: Rabindranath Tragore (trans. Indu Dutt)
Cover artist: I doubt it

Yours for: the taking

• I have no idea what this is. I got it mainly because I have no other pocket books from India.

• What in the world do they do at "InterCulture Associates?" Really hoping it doesn't involve mail-order brides.
• "India's Own Pocket Editions" — take that, you Penguin-pushing UK bastards!

Page 123~

Indra: —Whether it is progress or retrogress, the fact remains that whatever brings disruption it produces frustration. When the Great moves away from the sphere of the small, the greatness becomes meaningless like a burdensome load.

Talk about a "burdensome load" ...

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 240: The Sour Lemon Score / Richard Stark (Donald Westlake) (Gold Medal R2037)

Paperback 240: Gold Medal R2037 (PBO, 1969)

Title: The Sour Lemon Score
Author: Richard Stark (pseud. of Donald Westlake)
Cover artist: Robert McGinnis

Yours for: $39


Best things about this cover:

• I appear to have hit a super sweet pocket in my collection — an original Parker novel with a McGinnis bondage cover!? Wow... book's got some minor scuffing, but is otherwise in gorgeous, barely read condition.
• Is that look in her eyes fear? Or maybe the man with the gun is the good guy, and what she's really thinking is, "Uh ... little help, Captain Handsome-pose?"
• Actually, she's not tied up — she's a puppeteer who is operating her marionettes remotely via a (really) complicated system of pulleys and levers. You can tell she is backstage at an old theater, as she is clearly reclining on the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Best things about this back cover:

• Look, real blurbs from actual, marginally credible news sources!
• HA ha — love the "(back)" part of the second Boucher blurb. "Oh ... paperback ... I see. How modern."
• If you have never read Westlake, you could do worse than to start with the Parker novels. They were all recently reissued by Chicago Univ. Press (see here), and this summer, you can check out Darwyn Cooke's comic adaptation of the first Parker novel, "Hunter" (preview available here), a first edition of which is also in my paperback collection ... somewhere.
  
• See Man Booker-prize-winning author John Banville rhapsodize about the Parker novels here.

Page 123~

The thumb out there jabbed and jabbed at the bell. She couldn't ignore it, no matter what.

~RP

Paperback 177: The Sex Education Racket / Phoebe Courtney (Free Men Speak, Inc, unnumbered)

Paperback 177: Free Men Speak, Inc, n.n. (PBO, 1969)

Title: The Sex Education Racket - An Exposé
Author: Phoebe Courtney
Cover artist: a purveyor of nightmares

Yours for: SOLD (Feb. 09)


Best things about this cover:

• Oh, god, who are these kids and what are they doing on this cover? Are they all hopped up on sex ed?
• "After receiving sex education in school, Peter looked at his stepsisters Marcia and Cindy in a whole new light..."
• These kids are so much more horrifying than Anything you'll find inside this book (which is mostly specious anti-communist and anti-"Negro" nutjobbery - don't ask me what either has to do with sex education, because I just can't tell you)
• "Phoebe Courtney" went on to inspire the sitcom "Friends."
• This book is in amazing condition. Appears never to have been read. Shocking.
  
• I love the idea that sex ed is a "racket." All those sex ed fat cats, rolling in all that sex ed money. Say no to Big Sex Ed! (Hey, I knew a guy named "Big Sex Ed" once ... so that's what his name meant)
  

Best things about this back cover:

[late addendum - this woman is famousish in the history of radical right politics in America: see here. Why oh Why is there no mention of her husband on this book cover!? Thanks for the reference, Steve]

• Oh ... my. Hello, Misssssss Courtney. Don't you look ... happy.
• What is her hair doing!? Maybe Miss Courtney is a perfectly reasonable human being whose mind is being controlled by some kind of parasitic mock-hair creature.
  
• I love that she wrote a "series of pamphlets" (who is she, Thomas Paine?) called "TAX FAX," many years before "FAX" was a household term.
• Like any good, husbandless, sexually repressed woman with hair pulled so tight on her head that her face is contorted into a permanent smile, she likes to keep a "massive German Shepherd dog" around the house.
• How much would you like to bet that Phoebe Courtney was into some seriously kinky shit.
• There is a section of blank pages at the back of the book marked "Your Notes"

Page 123~

If you oppose sex education in the schools, then you will want to do something about it.

There's a "handling the media" guide and everything. This book is awesome in that it represents early evidence of the albatross that now hangs around the neck of the Republican party: it's anti-science, anti-black, anti-public education, anti-union, anti-masturbation (seriously). It's also very much pro-ugly/scary book covers. Further, it's apparently responsible for ushering in the 70s' lamentable obsession with earth tones.

~RP

Paperback 127: The Up-Tight Blonde / Carter Brown (Signet P3955)

Paperback 127: Signet P3955 (PBO, 1969)

Title: The Up-Tight Blonde
Author: Carter Brown
Cover artist: Robert McGinnis

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• The phrase "naked chicks"
• The McGinnis girl in the painting; the one holding the painting, on the other hand, is a hot mess and / or a transsexual.
• What has she got in her left hand? Some kind of orb or yo-yo? Is she trying to hypnotize me? That orb, coupled with the expression on her face, is freaking me out.
• I don't know what you call the "color" of this book, but it's Hideous. I think I'm going to name it "cheap luggage" or "walrus"

Best things about this back cover:

• Oh yes, the girl from the painting looks much better in stark isolation like this.
• The back cover copy goes from making every naked reference and pun in the book until finally devolving into a ... Monopoly metaphor?
• "A new kind of flesh game" - remind me - What was the old kind?
• Is that what they call "negative space?" All that ... emptiness in the top half of this cover? Bold aesthetic choice. Or else the printer just wasn't centered. Who knows?

Page 123:

Her eyes rolled listlessly as she turned away. I backhanded her against the nearest side of her face, and her head jerked upright again.

Thus answering the question: What do you do with a blonde who's UP-TIGHT? (A: You smack her in the face so that her head jerks UPRIGHT). Read all about it in "Al Wheeler's Man's Man's Guide to Manhandling Naked Chicks."

~RP

Paperback 80: Kiss and Kill / Ellery Queen (Dell 4567)

Paperback 80: Dell 4567 (PBO, 1969)

Title: Kiss and Kill
Author: Ellery Queen
Cover artist: Robert McGinnis

YOURS FOR: SOLD! (mid-August, 2008)


Best things about this cover:

• "That's right, Skipper. You got me. I killed Mary Ann. I wanted all you luscious men for myself. Is that so wrong?"
• She has peach talons.
• McGinnis women are often quite sexy, but this one - yikes. Icy, bored, mannish, and clownishly bewigged.
• The saddest thing about this cover is that McGinnis's particular specialty was the, er, lower half of women; alas, that part remains hidden here behind some kind of bedsheet drapery.

Best things about this back cover:

• Ugh, same picture. Come on! Although here, she appears to be saying "... you talkin' to me?"
• "Barney Burgess" - that's up there in the "Hilarious Detective Names" pantheon.

RP

Paperback 72: The Jagged Orbit / John Brunner (Ace 38122)

Paperback 72: Ace 38122 (1st ptg, 1969)

Title: The Jagged Orbit
Author: John Brunner
Cover artist: Uncredited


Best things about this cover:

• Gotta love the olde-timey computer script: "Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate ... The Jagged Orbit!"
• In the future, the universe will be run by giant, anthropomorphic gumball creatures.
• If this cover, and the endorsement from Philip K. Dick, don't make you realize that everyone in 1969 was high, then I hereby offer Exhibit B...

Best things about this back cover:

• I love how "this world of ours" (circa 1969) sounds just like "this world of ours" (circa 2008).
• Thomas Disch gives us a good example of why more people don't write blurbs in the middle of acid trips. "The styling is now" is something we should all start saying. That, or "Eat it!"

RP

Paperback 71: The Cardinal and the Queen / Evelyn Anthony (Dell 1075)

Paperback 71: Dell 1075 (1st ptg, 1969)

Title: The Cardinal and the Queen
Author: Evelyn Anthony
Cover artist: uncredited


Best things about this front cover:

• I am not quite convinced that people in the 17th century dressed like this or had hairstyles like this.
• What is she doing with her hands/fingers? I understand she has to keep that pointless sash up somehow but it looks like she's saying "Kneel! Right here! You heard me!"
• In case you are wondering, the "Cardinal" is Cardinal Richelieu, the "Queen" is Anne of Austria (Queen of Louis XIII), and the canopied bed in the background means they are totally doing it.

RP