Paperback 829: Up Above the World / Paul Bowles (Pocket Books 75222)

Paperback 829: Pocket Books 75222 (1st ptg, 1968)

Title: Up Above the World
Author: Paul Bowles
Cover artist: Harry Bennett

Estimated Value: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Ooh, I love legitimate fiction. So classy.
• Swamp glove monkey scarf something something.
• Attempt to break most obscure Guinness World Record goes horribly, unspeakably wrong.
• There was a brief, terrible period in the '60s where cover artist just mashed all pictorial elements together into ugly globs.

Best things about this back cover:

• Paul Bowles! That name again … Paul Bowles! Thanks, boring cover.
• "… with mere strokes of words" (so *that's* how writing works)
• I want to change "gifts" to "cocks" in that last blurb. Just 'cause.

Page 123~

She hesitated and took a sip of coffee. "But what have we got in common?"

~RP

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Paperback 326: Terror in the Sun / Richard Glendinning (Gold Medal 237)

Paperback 326: Gold Medal 237 (PBO, 1952)

Title: Terror in the Sun
Author: Richard Glendinning
Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• Sexy swamp ninja.
• It's a weird cover—eerily still. Not tarted up. Not violent. Works by suggesting the threat of approaching menace. I admire her locks and curves, but the focal point of this painting is clearly her eyes. The sideways/backwards glance. Like someone's following her. Cool.
• Realistically, she's about three seconds from being blindsided and devoured by a crocodile.

Best things about this back cover:

• Leaving aside the nonsensical quality of the simile (original sin just *is*—it doesn't "sweep"), I love that first sentence. And the second. And the last.
• Having read this back cover, I know almost nothing about this novel, but this kind of skeletal, sparse, overdramatic cover copy is far more likely to hook me than a clear or thorough description of the plot might. I don't wanna know what happens. I wanna know what it's gonna *feel* like to read this thing.

Page 123~

"Oh, I'm tough enough, Johnny boy. I have to be hard because I want things the soft can't have. I know the way I've got to go to get them, and I won't mind squaring a few accounts along the way."

Wow. That is pure hard-boiled poetry. Quintessential tough dame talk. I think I love you, Swamp Girl.

~RP

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