Paperback 350: Strumpets' Jungle / Sloane Britain & Any Man's Plaything / Rubel (Dollar Double 951)

Paperback 350: Dollar Double 951 (1st ptg / 1st ptg, 1962)

Title: Strumpets' Jungle // Any Man's Plaything
Authors: Sloane Britain // Rubel (HA ha, one name, like Collette, or Ludacris)
Cover artists: Robert Bonfils // Robert Bonfils

Yours for: $40


Best things about the "Strumpets' Jungle" cover:

• One of the craziest covers I own. First of all, full frontal female nudity? They cover the nipples with a narrow tree branch, but leave the crotch wide open!? Is the dark patch hair? Or does she shave and that's just a shadow? These tree lesbians are wild!
  
• Second, tree lesbians?
• I find this cover incredibly creepy, as it reminds me of nothing so much as the crucifixion. There's Jesus lesbian, and then Thief #1 lesbian over there, and then ... I guess the Thief #2 lesbian is off-screen. Really horrifying. Or else they are being eaten by tree creatures (Ents?) who really love voluptuous lesbians. Or else this is some sylvan lesbian sex rite that my lesbian friends have somehow never told me about.
• I'm no ecosystem expert, but that doesn't look like a "jungle."
• And in case you didn't know, "3rd Sex" = homosex...ual

Best things about the "Any Man's Plaything" cover:

• She is antithesis of women on the other cover, as she is wearing panties *and* concealing her pubic region with her hands.
• There's nothing very "shocking" looking about this cover. Pretty girl in her underwear, not letting you peek at her crotch. Only the shoes suggest she has anything on her mind besides shutting the door on you and getting some rest. All I know about her is that she has very good balance.

Page 123 of "Strumpets' Jungle"~

"Paula, I don't understand. What were they ...?"
"Never mind that for now," I said. "We've got to get to our classrooms."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 55

Titles: Catch-as-Catch-Can / Then Came Two Women
Author: Charlotte Armstrong
Cover artists: Uncredited / Uncredited

Yours for: $9

• Had mainstream cover artists / designers just given up by the mid-60s. I'm seeing a lot of slop lately. What is the concept here? Girl in pink dress running — OK. But then, what, a rough pencil sketch of her shins from a different angle, blown up as a background + random EMT running to check her gigantic left ankle + wee man tickling her right heel??? Maybe the lady in the pink looks so nauseous and is running so fast because she's trying desperately to escape from this cover concept. "Oh god, it's terrible, boo hoo, save me!"
• When Drexel Drake talks, people ... honestly, I don't know what people do. Drexel Drake is a porn name.

• Responsible housewife by day, trashy Cougar by night...
• Love the attire on the women. Also love little miss Bad Seed in her best buggy-riding attire.
• "God, I hate my two moms..."
• That is some supernatural shit that Bad Seed's hair is doing at the tips.

Page 123~ (from Catch-as-Catch-Can)

But she could see. That his hand and arms moved nervously and secretly to thrust the gun into the thick shrub beside which he was standing. He turned his body and wavered like a shadow.

Who let her break that first sentence in two like that?! Jebus! Also, I'm trying to imagine what that last sentence is supposed to look like. And failing.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

57 Books from the University Book Sale: Books 30 and 31

Don't ask me why, but these two seemed to go together...

Title: The Old Man and the Boy — Crest d555 (1st ptg, 1962)
Author: Robert Ruark
Cover artist: N/A

Yours for: $5

• Imagine a simpler time ... when a book with a title like this wouldn't scream "pedophilia"
• Hey, look, it's the highly unasked-for and unauthorized sequel to "The Old Man and the Sea"
• "Long story short, I shot that boy and his head now hangs over my fireplace."
• "Straight from the exciting experiences ..." — please, please don't tell me.
• The real title of this book is "Tomatb Hlanho Edndey," which is Swahili for "White Man In Silly Clothes Thinks He's a Hunter"

• Please tell me that the guy with the spear is not "The Boy"
• Two things I don't want my reading material to be — "homespun" and "salty"
• "Smells?"
• "Everyday living" — imagine the kind of balls you'd have to have to use that phrase above that picture.
• Deciding his quarry was too fat and stupid to bring him honor, the warrior turned and walked slowly home.

Page 123:

The Willie was about half coaled out, and he was flopping and spluttering in the water.

I don't even know where to begin ...

*****

Title: How to Work with Tools & Wood — Pocket Books 1057 (1st ptg, April 1955)
Author: Fred Gross (ed.)
Cover artist: photo (Meyer Studios)

Yours for: $10

• I believe this is the sequel to "The Old Man and the Boy," wherein the old man takes the boy to see his dunge-... I mean, workshop.
• "Have you ever ... worked with wood, Billy?"

• This back cover is a relief, as it is mercifully dull instead of nightmarishly suggestive.

Page 123~

As the bottom is accessible from the end, it may be sawed out and then trimmed to line with the chisel if necessary.

That's some good handyman porn.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Donations to the Collection: Lust Lodge

Title: Lust Lodge (Nightstand Books NB1621, 1962)
Author: Don Holliday
Cover artist: that guy who did so many of their covers ... whatsisname!

Happy Halloween! You're welcome.

• The Hand!! "Nice to meet you Mrs. ... I ... uh ..."
• X marks the spot, dang!
• Did they even plan to draw a guy into this shot originally? His sliver of head and Random Hand look like total (awesome) afterthoughts.
• I like her underwears. I choose to ignore the fact that she has Ronald McDonald hair.

• Yet another classic from the Absurd Two-Word Intro .../... Outro school of back cover writing.
• To say this is bad writing is really to give bad writing a worse name than it already has.
• Three "wantons" (counting front and back)! Plural, adjectival, possessive. That's gotta be a record.

Page 123~ (brace yourselves ...)

"Don't be melodramatic," she said, blowing smoke once more. It hung in a grey cloud above her, as though prognosticating a storm at the cloud. How symbolic I've become, Beverly thought, looking at the cloud.

As though doing a what at the where now?

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 288: Bianca in Black / Elizabeth Sax Rohmer (Airmont M3)

Paperback 288: Airmont Books M3 (1st ptg, 1962)

Title: Bianca in Black
Author: Elizabeth Sax Rohmer
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: not for sale (gift of Doug Peterson)


Best things about this cover:

• First of all, if the cover is to be believed, then the bride wore navy. Second, it appears the bride also wore a wig the color of pink lemonade.
• If Elisabeth Sanxay Holding and Sax Rohmer and Cornell Woolrich wrote a book together, it would be this book. In fact, I'm not convinced "Elizabeth Sax Rohmer" is a real person. Who gives his first name to his daughter as a middle name? Elisabeth Sanxay Holding was very big at the time this pb was published, and many of her book covers have this rain-streaked, pseudo-gothic look to them. Cornell Woolrich wrote "The Bride Wore Black," a great revenge story (though his greatest was probably Rendezvous in Black, one of my favoritest works of crime fiction of all time).
• "Bianca" means "white" in Italian. Cute.
• God, her neck is a hot mess. Looks like a colorful, irregular UPC (i.e. barcode).
• Doug Peterson gave me a bunch of campy old paperbacks when I saw him at a recent crossword tournament I attended. I'll be showcasing them all week. This is the first of four.
  

Best things about this back cover:

• Now they're just patently, blatantly, shamelessly ripping off Cornell Woolrich (who wrote "The Bride Wore Black")
• "Internationally famous mannequin"!? More famous than that chick from the movie "Mannequin?"
• I wish the front cover had more "daring black swimsuit" and less "startling red-gold hair."

Page 123~

"Normally, Natalie has a very good brain."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 268: The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything / John D. MacDonald (Gold Medal s1259)

Paperback 268: Gold Medal s1259 (PBO, 1962)

Title: The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything
Author: John D. MacDonald
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $23


Best things about this cover:

• "IT'S 9:30, STEVE. TIME TO GIVE BACK THE GIRL!" / "Aw, but we were goin' to a clam bake ... that didn't feel like a three-year harem lease at all!"
• That analogy makes one wonder: how many times can Bonny Lee fuck in one day? Do the math. Even if you're getting it from your entire harem only once per day, in three years, that's still well over a thousand times. And Bonny can do that in one day? No wonder the cover's on fire. The friction alone...
• More font awesomeness, though here we're pushing the wackiness factor a little hard.

Best things about this back cover:

• "If you've ever had a yeasty yearning ... please, see your doctor."
• YEASTY is, very coincidentally, a word in today's NYT crossword puzzle.
• Apparently John D. MacDonald books like to get cheeky. First there was the metapaperbackery of "A Key to the Suite," and now there's the cliche-subverting and self-erasure of "The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything."
• "Sheesh!"
• If you don't know who Thorne Smith is, see this. More to come in future Pop Sensation installments.

Page 123~

He looked at her, sitting erect, six feet away. Her back was arched, her shoulders good, the waist slender, the lime slacks plumped to the pleasant tensions of her ripeness.

I laughed out loud at "her shoulders good." What is he, a caveman? "Ugg want woman. Ugg want that woman. Hair pretty. Shoulders good. Slacks plumped. Ugg want."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 263: A Key to the Suite / John D. MacDonald (Gold Medal s1198)

Paperback 263: Gold Medal s1198 (PBO, 1962)

Title: A Key to the Suite
Author: John D. MacDonald
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $24


Best things about this cover:

• File under "novelty cover." One of the most stylistically unusual covers I own.
• It's a meta-cover. A cover about covers. It's explaining the conventions of paperback covers to you. Instead of author / title / blurb, you get three very polite complete sentences. And a lot of loopy orange carpet. And a single shoe.
• Love how even the Gold Medal insignia is brought into odd color and design schema. Also, the font on the author and title is awesome-o.

Best things about this back cover:

• I guess I kind of like the all-caps typewriter font. And the way the back cover mimics an interoffice memo. That first paragraph is pretty gripping, too, as back cover copy goes. Granted, with the back covers we've seen so far, the competition isn't exactly tough.

Page 123~

He knew he was still a little bit drunk, but not very much, because the prolonged strenuous taking of the woman had boiled it out of his blood.

Many people love MacDonald's writing. That leads me to believe that sentences like this one are the exception in his writing, not the rule. "The prolonged strenuous taking of the woman?" Sound like something out of "The 19th-century Gentleman's Guide to Hunting and Calisthenics."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 261: The Couch / Robert Bloch (Gold Medal s1192)

Paperback 261: Gold Medal s1192 (PBO, 1962)

Title: The Couch
Author: Robert Bloch
Cover artist: movie still

Yours for: $18


Best things about this cover:

• He wanted to confess, but she wouldn't shut up about the mole between his eyebrows, so he opted to kill instead.
• Agent: "Well, kid, the good news is, you're on the cover of the paperback tie-in. The bad news is, there's a lady's hand where your face should be. But hey, your hair looks terrific."
• Robert Bloch wrote "Psycho," but by now you know that.

Best things about this back cover:

• Mmm, more stiff lying. What's the opposite of "chemistry?"
• This is the story of a copywriter who hated paragraphs longer than once sentence.
• Seriously, he hated them.
• The only name I recognize here (besides Bloch's) is Blake Edwards. He directed the Peter Sellers Pink Panther movies. He is married to Julie Andrews. Also, he was born William Blake Crump! That makes Owen Crump here his ... I'm gonna guess brother ... nope. He's way older than Edwards. Why won't any site tell me how they're related. Not even imdb. Am I really supposed to believe they're not related, with a name like "Crump?" Come on.

Page 123~

"And that's the real reason you wanted to kill me. Because in your mind, I took the place of your father."

Bloch was sure into this "kill your parents" stuff.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 230: Lust Cult / Don Elliott (Robert Silverberg) (Midnight Reader 419)

Paperback 230: Midnight Reader MR 419 (PBO, 1962)

Title: Lust Cult
Author: Don Elliott (pseud. of Robert Silverberg)
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $20


Best things about this cover:

• What the hell happened to her torso. It's like taffy ... or krazy bread. Yikes. Everything from the bottom of her breast to the middle of her ass needs to be ReDone!
• When Thing isn't hanging out with the Addams Family ...
• This is actually a nicely designed cover, as sleaze covers go. Like the rectangular segments - very mid-century modern.

Best things about this back cover:

• I can tell you that, compared to the back covers of many sleaze novels, this one is remarkably lucid. That is, it doesn't sound it was translated from English into Urdu by a Swede and then back into English by a half-witted Czech.
• "I'm gonna be late again tonight, honey ... yeah, I've got that damned Sin Meeting I was telling you about ... yeah. Boss really wants us new acolytes to work hard pushing his new 'Shrine of Evil' theme parks ... OK, I'll call you when we're done Embracing Lust!"

Page 123~ (this better be good)

His hands went to her blouse, cupping the ripe thrusts of her breasts.

Oh yeah. That's the stuff. OK, I cheated - that's page 124. But page 123 was all descriptions of driving. Just ... driving. No fun.

I have to believe that if I google "ripe thrusts" right now I get exactly zero hits. . . 71 hits! That's insane. They appear to be all porn sites, although hit 1 appears to be about some kind of lemon. I'm not clicking through to find out.

~RP

Paperback 224: Two Surgeons / Richard Meade (Lancer 70-012)

Paperback 224: Lancer 70-012 (PBO, 1962)

Title: Two Surgeons
Author: Richard Meade
Cover artist: Harry Schaare

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• Doctor does not look interested. He looks disgusted. "Put your collar back down and get out of my office."
• She looks like the lead singer of a New Wave band and / or a man.
• Color scheme is entitled "Aquatic Nausea"
• What up with that finger-painted smear between their heads. There's daubing, and then there's sloppiness / laziness.

NO BACK COVER - scanner is dying a hard, horrible death and will likely have to be replaced. I'll see what I can do.

Page 123~

Garth nodded and left the operating room. In the corridor, he paused to light a cigarette. The smoke tasted good, abating some of the uncertainty that gnawed at him.

Smoking - good for the body and the mind. Just ask this surgeon...

~RP

Paperback 220: Frenchie / Aaron Bell (Kozy Books K171)

Make-Your-Own-Commentary Experiment, Part IV - add your thoughts on this book in the "Comments" section (man, I am so jealous of you guys right now - you have no idea how hard it is to hold off from commenting right now)
-----

Paperback 220: Kozy Books K171 (PBO, 1962)

Title: Frenchie
Author: Aaron Bell
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $18



Page 123~

"There are no others, John. Just you, and I, and my fiance [sic]."

"Your fiance [sic]?" said Robertson, stunned at the news.

"Why not? I have no romantic ties with anyone else. That is. [sic] I don't think I have."

~RP

Paperback 196: Carrie Corrupted / Rock Logano (Midwood F209)

Paperback 196: Midwood F209 (PBO, 1962)

Title: Carrie Corrupted
Author: Rock Logano
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $16


Best things about this cover:

• "Carrie Corrupted stars in ... 'Beige Mardi Gras'!"
• "Co-starring random sitting guy whose face is too hideous to show"
• I have a new pseudonym. It is Rock Logano. I can't even look at that name without bursting out laughing.
• I should find Carrie hot, but I just find her ... well, corrupt. Even the hint of garter belt isn't doing it for me. And the artist's gone to the trouble of exaggerating the nipple and the belly button and everything. Dang.
• "First Printing Anywhere" - suck it, Bulgaria!

Best things about this back cover:

• Customarily, "strange pleasures" involve girl-on-girl action. Therefore, I was gravely disappointed to find out that Carrie's "strangeness" is run-of-the-mill masochism.
• "More than her fair share of female equipment" sounds, frankly, horrifying. "Carrie, I don't know how to tell you this, but ... you have six ovaries. I'm sorry."

Page 123~

"The main attraction is to be the movie he made of you and those muscle boys."
"Oh no ... " Carrie gasped.

~RP

Paperback 193: Naked Nurse / Ben Anderton (Chariot Books CB-216)

Paperback 193: Chariot Books CB-216 (PBO, 1962)

Title: Naked Nurse
Author: Ben Anderton
Cover artist: [Robert Maguire]

Yours for: SOLD (June '09)


Best things about this cover:

• Semicolon? Really? Did you think that would look fancier than your run-of-the-mill comma? And what is up with that first dash, after "Raw"? What did the comma ever do to you, copywriter guy?
• That's right, my first comment about the cover of a book called "Naked Nurse," which depicts an honest-to-god naked nurse, was about punctuation. That is how I roll.
• "She admired his skill in surgery" - Really? She does not look like she is "admiring" anything. She looks like she is cowering in fear. Naked fear.
• The art is actually first-rate and looks suspiciously like the work of the legendary Bob Maguire (his female faces and hair are very distinctive)
• Ben Anderson's chosen pseudonym was woefully inadequate
  

Best things about this back cover:

• Oh god. And I thought the front cover had punctuation issues. It's a bloodbath back here. "White capped" needs a hyphen, the dash after "nurse" is ridiculous and superfluous, there should be a comma after "Young" ... jeez louise, there's subject / verb disagreement in the description of "Lynn!" I can't go on. You can see the carnage for yourself. I wonder if Chariot Books outsourced their cover copy-writing to, let's say, the Ukraine, and then had the Ukrainians forward their work to Laos for proofing...
• "Penetrating" - tee hee
• "For Men" - you don't say ...

Page 123~

The local minister who performed the ceremony, so far from the strident complexities of the city, had expressed his pleasure in learning that the community was to have a new expert surgeon to help care for their ills.

Oh boy, an expert surgeon! No more getting appendectomies from Floyd the Barber! Hurrah!

~RP

Paperback 184: The Case of the Haunted Husband / Erle Stanley Gardner (Pocket Books 4512)

Paperback 184: Pocket Books 4512 (11th ptg, 1962)

Title: The Case of the Haunted Husband
Author: Erle Stanley Gardner
Cover artist: McGinnis or an imitator

Yours for: $8


Best things about this front cover:

• "Well, hello there, Tall, Dark and ... Immaterial."
• I think she is the one being haunted. Not to nitpick, but ...
• "Even after death, Steve was an abusive alcoholic asshole" - seriously, he's totally going to throw that miniscule, undead martini in her face
• I love McGinnis and McGinnis-esque women; I can never tell what age they are - they have young women's bodies, I guess, but there's a maturity to them that is world-wise and dead sexy. Women, not girls.
• This woman, while very hot, has some evolutionary defect, as her right "hand" is clearly some kind of withered, three-fingered claw / lizard appendage.
• The early 60's were all about the Down Arrow! Why, who can forget Paperback 181 ...?
• 
  

Best things about this back cover:

• Random arm!
• I question the editorial decision to leave back-cover readers with the word "stink" lingering in the air

Page 123~

"Did you examine the steering wheel of the car to see whether there were any traces of lipstick on it?"

Sometimes I like to put lipstick on my steering wheel ... you know, so I'll have someone (imaginary) to talk to on the way to work.

~RP

Paperback 173: Too Many Clients / Rex Stout (Signet J2334)

Paperback 173: Signet J2334 (1st ptg, 1962)
Title: Too Many Clients
Author: Rex Stout
Cover artist: Bill Johnson

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• "I love my blankie!"
• This is more mustard than any one cover should have to endure.
• The floating head of Nero Wolfe looks none too pleased with this flirtatious, naked hussy. It's as if he's thinking "So this is what selling books has come to - PFUI!"
• Good example of how paperback sellers learned to develop brand recognition - the whole left panel, with huge author name and logo Nero head, will get repeated on a whole series of Rex Stout mysteries. Thus cover art gets squished - the title seems almost irrelevant.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Sex wasn't Nero Wolfe's specialty" - yeah, we can pretty much tell from his expression on the cover
• Someone should win an award for the phrase "satin-upholstered bower of carnality."
• An ad for a John O'Hara book! I Love John O'Hara, and he used to be Ridiculously popular.
• Bantam is one of the few publishers I can think of who would use their back covers to advertise books Not by the author of the book itself - though this ad seems oddly placed and poorly demarcated, with nothing but a font color change and a black bar to let you know the bottom half of the back cover is unrelated to the top.

Page 123~

"They killed him. That's obvious. They killed him."

Well of course they killed him. That's obvious.

~RP

Paperback 153: Seed of Doubt / Day Keene (Dell 7733)

Paperback 153: Dell 7733 (1st ptg, 1962)

Title: Seed of Doubt
Author: Day Keene
Cover artist: Clark Hulings

Yours for: $6


Best things about this cover:

• "Explosive," "Seed," and a variation of "semen" all on one cover!? That's ... ballsy. Also makes me a little queasy. Oh god, all this seed-talk is making even "Unexpurgated" look pornographic.
• "You expect that man to take care of that baby!?"
• "You expect us to believe that that man is responsible for that stain!?"
• The judge looks like he wants to say "Excuse me, sir, but the fencing class is down the hall."
• "The pattern of ANATOMY OF A MURDER" - HA ha. High praise. That's like saying "As many pages as THE GREAT GATSBY" or "Set in the same general region as GONE WITH THE WIND"

Best things about this back cover:

• Cast of characters! With quotes!?
• "I'd rather see her dead" - I hope he's not supposed to be sympathetic character. "No wife of mine..." - how many does he have?
• "I loved Eric so much ..." - of course. Women love men who would rather see them dead than see them bear the child of another man.
• "Who is to say that I was wrong ...?" - nice defense, Perry Mason. I believe This Court is to say, you jackass.

Page 123~

Jenny emerged from the restaurant wearing a tight black skirt and a green blouse under a thin white sweater that accentuated her heavy breasts. She pretended to be surprised to see him.

"You still here?"

Eric continued to pick his teeth. "It would seem. You live far?"

Eric is suave - he knows what all real men know: that there is no surer way to seduce a heavy-breasted lady than to pick your teeth.

~RP

Paperback 112: Un-Man and Other Novellas (Poul Anderson) / The Makeshift Rocket (Poul Anderson) (Ace Double F-139)

Paperback 112: Ace Double F-139 (PBO / PBO, 1962)

Title: Un-Man and Other Novellas / The Makeshift Rocket
Author: Poul Anderson / Poul Anderson
Cover artist: Uncredited / Uncredited

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• "This is a sad day indeed for Mexican space wrestling..."
• This painting is actually beautiful and haunting, while also being silly - a combination that goes right to the heart of why I collect these damned things
• I like the combination of genres - it's like scifi, western, and war story all wrapped into one (check out the dog tags hanging from the helmet of his presumably fallen comrade)
• "He could be stilled etc.": More proof that tag-line writers in the 1960s were completely and utterly high

Page 123~

"Ha ha!" bellowed van Rijn. "We spill all their apples, eh? By damn! Now we show them some fun!"

Best things about this cover:

• "Hey, has anyone seen grampa?"
• I can only hope that in the future, that style of mustache does indeed make a flaming comeback
• Um ... there is a pipe-smoking green goblin in that crate. I'm just sayin'...

Page 123~

This book has only 97 pages! So ... Page 23!

As for the longer-range scheme - oh yes, the plan. Well, like most terra-formed asteroids, Grendel had only a minimal gyrogravitic unit, powerful enough to give it a 24-hour rotational period (originally the little world had spun around once in three hours, which played the very devil with tea time) and an atmosphere retaining surface field of 980 cm./sec.².

~RP

Paperback 104: Gun-Law for Lavercombe / Charles Alden Seltzer (Belmont 91-258)

Paperback 104: Belmont 91-258 (1st ptg, 1962)

Title: Gun-Law for Lavercombe
Author: Charles Alden Seltzer
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• "Oooh, I'm gonna moon you good, pardner!"
• Charles Alden Seltzer is a pretty uppity name for a guy who wants to write tough-guy westerns
• "I like girls that wear Lavercombe and Fitch..."

Best things about this back cover:

• Death by bull-whip has got to be a particularly bad way to die
• I like how "The Judge" is in quotation marks - I guess he got that name 'cause he likes to "destroy men with his bare fists," just like the judges in Biblical times
• "The Lavercombe Showdown" was an important precursor to "The Lindy Hop" and "The Hustle"

PAGE 123~

She saw Jerry hopping around. Apparently he was searching for something. A rock. Just as her horse reached the level at the bottom of the slope Jerry crouched, the rock in hand.

Then several things seemed to happen at once.

~RP

Paperback 97: L'Étranger / Albert Camus (Livre de Poche 406)

Paperback 97: Livre de Poche 406 (unknown ptg., 1962)

Title: L'Étranger
Author: Albert Camus
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $17


Another book sale purchase from last year. Despite being somewhat out of character for this blog, this cover is gorgeous. The book is in astonishingly good condition, with all its original perma-gloss still intact. Livres de Poche are impossible to date accurately. Copyright date is 1957, but the end matter advertises books that will be coming out in "the third trimester of 1962." Trimester? Is the entire country of France run on a University model? Anyhoo, it's a very very early Livre de Poche edition, if my online book merchant searches are any indication. Except for very slightly worn edges and normal page yellowing, this book is like new. The cover is brooding, muted, gorgeous, but as far as "hard-boiled" greatness goes, though, the real treat is the back cover:

• "That's right, I'm smoking a fucking cigarette. I don't care if you are taking a picture for the book jacket. I'm not putting it down. I'm Albert Fucking Camus. I won the Nobel Prize, motherfuckers. I can do whatever the hell I want, and you can kiss my atheistic French ass."
• I like the way the words float in black rectangles around him. It's very nice, from a design point of view - great contrast with the soft pastels and watercoloriness of the cover painting (which has wrapped around to the back - another nice touch).

Page 123~:

Il ma fallut un effort pour comprendre que j'étais la cause de toute cette agitation.

[It took some effort to understand that I was the cause of all this agitation]

~RP

Paperback 96: Jeopardy Is My Job / Stephen Marlowe (Gold Medal s1214)

Paperback 96: Gold Medal s1214 (PBO, 1962)
Title: Jeopardy Is My Job
Author: Stephen Marlowe
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: SOLD! (5/19/08)


Best things about this cover:

• "Jeopardy Is My Job: The Alex Trebek Story" - exciting!
• If you cover up or otherwise ignore the dot on the "i" in SPAIN, it really really looks like SPAM. I imagine that Chester Drum there is putting on his spam-handling gloves.
• What is he doing with that glove? Is he about to commit a crime? Or give some kind of probing examination? The whole thing is very O.J.
• I like how he's balancing Madrid on the very tip of his index finger

Best things about this back cover:

• Ugh, too much text
• "Robbie Hartshorn" - Well that's a silly name. I wonder if his heart (or hart) has been shorn, and if so, what that means.
• "They were paid a monthly stipend to do their drinking on foreign shores" - How do I get that job
  
• This whole description sounded boring to me until I got to "... the cave where Ruy lived with a gypsy woman ..." That has narrative possibilities.

PAGE 123~

"You are free to go," one of the Guardia said in English. "The Colonel says to tell you if you do not leave Rondo before dark," he added, the words heavily accented and hard to understand, "you are being in bad trouble."

~RP