Paperback 774: Strive and Succeed / Horatio Alger (Value Book 102)

Paperback 774: Value Books 102 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: Strive and Succeed
Author: Horatio Alger
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• Strive and succeed at beating the shit out of other boys.
• "Yeah, I took your tie. Whaddya gonna do about it, punk?!"
• This must be the part where the boy grabs his bootstraps and pulls himself up. Otherwise, it just looks like some rich, entitled fuck is picky on the poor drunk kid.

Best things about this back cover:

• That name again: HORATIO ALGER!
• Aw, man, for a split-second I read that as "stories … of hard-on success," and I was intrigued.
• I once read a book about a "supposedly worthless mine." It was called "The Luminaries." I wish I had read this one instead, for many reasons, not least of which is its reasonable 184-page length.

Page 123~

The two boys started for the school, and arrived nearly half an hour early. They entered the house, and, by means of a stout cord, soon secured the hen to the "master's" chair.

It's a heart-warming tale of honesty, thrift, perseverance and poultry pranks.

~RP

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Paperback 729: Something's Got to Give / Marion Hargrove (Popular Library 222)

Paperback 729: Popular Library 222 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: Something's Got To Give
Author: Marion Hargrove
Cover artist: familiar but Uncredited [Earle Bergey]

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Boobs. FUN. Boobs are FUN. I get it now.
• Damn, that's pretty sexy for radio.
• A Lady Lay Abed Too Long … and so she conceived twins? With captain Pipey McChinless there?
• Those Children-of-the-Corn twins will haunt your dreams.
• Question smoke! Nice.
• She is flipping you off.

Best things about this back cover:

• OK, that opening line is Great: "It happened in bed…"
• More Popular Library Nothingness. Ugh.
• Audiences *love* "babies screaming in neglect." Don't you miss the days when paternal incompetence was charming?

Page 123~

"He couldn't have been too hungry," I pointed out, "if he left one of the peas on his plate."

Enjoy your future eating disorder, kid.

~RP

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Paperback 678: Four From Planet 5 / Murray Leinster (Gold Medal s937)

Paperback 678: Gold Medal s937 (PBO, 1959)

Title: Four From Planet 5
Author: Murray Leinster
Cover artist: [Paul] Lehr

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• Yes, if I were in Antarctica, these kids would indeed freak me the fuck out. I would make that exact trepidatious gesture with my left hand ("Fear Hand!"). But wait ... he has a camera on a tripod. Maybe they're a singing group and he's their manager and they're terribly lost and he's decided to use this free time to take some promotional photographs. Yes, that makes sense.
• I really, really wish I could see the guy's face. Seems crucial. I need to know how I'm supposed to feel about this Aryan Children's Brigade. My default position is "terrified." 
• The cover copy does imply that "unknown terror" is a given, and we're just waiting around to figure out what kind. 

Best things about this back cover:

• "Utterly invincible telepaths will broadcast your shabby sins to the world! Gird yourselves!"
• I assume this ends with the kids forming a band and singing their way into civilization's heart. Or with the revelation that one of the kids is really Jesus. 

Page 123~

"The kid got past three electric fences, and we don't know how. He must know plenty about electricity."

Brilliant. I'm now rooting for the kid.

~RP

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Paperback 576: The Day the Sea Rolled Back / Mickey Spillane (Bantam 14597-5)

Paperback 576: Bantam 14597-5 (1st ptg, 1981)

Title: The Day the Sea Rolled Back
Author: Mickey Spillane
Cover artist: Maroto (?) — book is illustrated (!?) by "Maroto"

Yours for: $16
Best things about this cover:

• In honor of Hurricane Sandy (and just because it's next in line), I give you: the opposite of a storm surge!
• I assume that chest is full of Cheerios 'cause no way that kid lifts it otherwise.
• I'm weirdly in the middle of the latest Lemony Snicket book (gorgeously illustrated by Seth), which features a strange ex-sea landscape like the one suggested here.
• Unless Hammer is about to emerge from behind that boat skeleton and put some .45-sized holes in those kids, I don't think I want to read this book.

Best things about this back cover:

• Mickey Spillane: Stud.
• If you ever wondered what it would be like if Mickey Spillane wrote a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book ... well, first of all, you are alone, and second of all, here you go!
• Bar code! Well there's an unwelcome stylistic development ...

Page 23~ (it's only 119 pages long)

They scrabbled for footholds in the irregular crevasses of the ballast rock, then got past them and hauled themselves to the top by grabbing hold of the thumb-thick sea grasses.

Nothing good was ever "thumb-thick." Nothing.

~RP

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Paperback 456: Stairways to Sin / Kip Madigan (Fabian Z-114)

[With postscript about "Book Blogger Appreciation Week"]

Paperback 456: Fabian Books Z-114 (7th ptg, 1959)

Title: Stairways to Sin
Author: Kip Madigan
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $14


Best things about this cover:

• "So this is a sporting-house? Gee, neat. So, where's football and baseball and stuff? ... Badminton?"
• "Alright, Billy, I'll pull a quarter from behind your ear one more time, but then I have to get back to fucking strangers for money, OK?"
• Whoever did this cover painting this missed the art class about "perspective." And "proportion." And "good."
• "Windbreak?" Again, I have to wonder if cover copy in this era wasn't written primarily by ESL students armed only with dog-eared thesauruses and an admirable "what-the-hell" spirit.
• 7th printing!!!! Unless this thing had print runs of, like, six, I'm stunned.
  

Best things about this back cover:

• This is the first time I've ever seen "sporting" to describe prostitution. "I know that when I need a windbreak, I like to go sporting. Works every time."
• "Though his work is out of tune with the literati" ... HA ha. You could have stopped that sentence after "tune."
• "Incest for Rene"!?!?! Wow. Worst Christmas ever.
• Thousands of letters!!!! I would literally (i.e. figuratively) kill to read even a half dozen of those letters.

Page 123~

"I'm not dumb," she said, dauntless, "I'm just ignorant."

"For instance, what does 'dauntless' mean?"

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

P.S. it's something called Book Blogger Appreciation Week. I doubt this blog counts as a book blog in the sense that the Appreciation Week's organizers intend, as it's overwhelmingly about covers, not content. Anyway, here's my part—anyone listed under "Fellow Cover Critics" in my sidebar is worth checking out. My favorite book blog that is not mine is "Caustic Cover Critic." Always thoughtful writing about the good, the bad, and the phenomenally ugly in the world of book covers. And thus ends my contribution to building blogger "community" in anything but the most indirect of ways. Cheers.

Paperback 430: Free Woman / Katharine Brush (Dell 10c 18)

Paperback 430: Dell 10c 18 (1st ptg., 1951)

Title: Free Woman
Author: Katharine Brush
Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• This cover never fails to make me laugh—it's such a simple, visually succinct statement of the evils of the Career Girl. "Why does mommy hate us, daddy?" "Because she's a selfish harpy, Timmy. All women are. You'll learn."
• Or maybe she's just trying on a new suit at the department suit. "How do I look, dear?" "Well Timmy hates it, right Timmy?" "Something's wrong with my right foot, daddy."
• I like her gloves. A lot. I also like how she's verrrry subtly giving those two the middle finger.
• She is literally looking down her nose at them. "You two—bring the car around."

Best things about this back cover:

• "Jon is not your son. He sprang forth fully formed from my head. Now, bring the car around!"
• "At the height of her success, disaster struck, and she was ruined." Spoiler alert!
• "Like any unruly horse, she was broken by a man..."

Page 23~

She had finished school in June, and in September the first fruits awaited her—she was to be Director of Athletics, spelled that way in capitals, at a fashionable school for girls in Pennsylvania.

Oooh, capital letters. That *is* fashionable.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 413: SF Greats, No. 20 / Various (Winter 1970)

Paperback 413: SF Greats No. 20 (Winter 1970)

Authors: Donald Westlake et al.
Cover artist: Ed Valigursky (titled: "The Space Breed")

Yours for: $5


Best things about this cover:

• Picked this up at a public library sale for "Only 50 cents!," just like the cover says
• Apparently on whatever planet this is, kids are allowed to drink and/or do drugs, because *that* kid is wasted, or else hungover—look at those crazy dark eyes. Not right.
• I love how the dog is like "Fuck off, kid! I'm watching 'Ren & Stimpy.'"
• I'm a little worried for the dog. The boy's expression says "I love you," but the ominous, pail-holding man approaching from the background says "Dog—it's what's for dinner."

Back cover is just a B&W replica of the front, so ...

Page 123~ (from "Step IV" by Rosel George Brown)

The mother frowned at Juba, a little wearily. "You have decided to forsake the world and become a Watcher of the Holy Flame. Am I not right?"

Here she is watching the Holy Flame (the illustrations throughout this issue are wonderful):


~RP

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Paperback 361: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter / Carson McCullers (Penguin 596)

Paperback 361: Penguin 596 (1st ptg, 1946)

Title: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
Author: Carson McCullers
Cover artist: jonas

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• This looks like scraps from the picture file for a Monty Python animation sketch
• A rebus! I love these. OK, I'm going to say ... "Your heart cannot soar if your hands are chained ... and a kid sells fruit." Powerful stuff.
• Good example of the more abstract cover style of the '40s (jonas is legendary, and prolific)

Best things about this back cover:

• It's just a bio, so ... not much to say.
• Interesting how much focus is on her apparently surprising ability to treat "Negro" characters as if they were (news flash!) human beings. I guess that's all just in the Wright quote, but it stands out.
• This is my third "Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" cover. See also here and here.

Page 123~

Portia took up the Bible from the table in the center of the room. "What part you want to hear now, Grandpapa?"

"It all the book of the Holy Lord. Just any place your eye fall on will do."

~RP

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Paperback 358: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter / Carson McCullers (Bantam A1091)

Paperback 358: Bantam A1091 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
Author: Carson McCullers
Cover artist: Uncredited [faint signature on crease in bottom right corner looks like that of Mitchell Hooks]

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• Wow, that guy is selling it. Least appreciative audience Ever.
• I read this book twenty years ago and though I largely forget the plot I remember really liking it. I do, however, remember the first line, verbatim. "In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together." I think those are the mutes there: Tevye and the Undertaker.
• Little girl demonstrates that peculiar paperback phenomenon whereby people appear to be looking at things they could not possibly see from that angle—that man is both behind her *and* blocked by a man's belly.
• I like how the human beings are painted naturalistically but the surroundings are kind of surreal. I mean, look at that gray and white smear of a sidewalk. And that fire&brimstone sky.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Easy, girls, there's enough of me for both of you."
• LOVE her "Holy F*&^" expression.
• Not generally a fan of the multiple-scene cover—pick a scene and depict it, dammit, don't try to cram so much action into such a little space. Here, however, the paintings are discrete enough, and large enough, that there's not the usual feeling of chaos.
• No Pasadena Star-News blurbs here. All top tier publications.

Page 123~

"No. There was some definite thing you did that for. We been knowing each other a pretty long time, and I understand by now that you got a real reason for every single thing you ever do. Your mind runs by reasons instead of just wants. Now, you promised you'd tell me what it was, and I want to know."

~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

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Paperback 303: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter / Carson McCullers (Bantam F1762)

Paperback 303: Bantam F1762 (1st thus, 1958)

Title: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
Author: Carson McCullers
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• I'm going to go with "the font." I don't really like this cover.
• Why does this cover make me think the story takes place in China. I fell like this should be the cover of a Pearl S. Buck novel.
• Orange rules, as a color.
• That red drawing of a carnival is so incredibly tiny that I can hardly believe anyone OK'd its inclusion on the cover. What's it supposed to signify? It's too small to create much visual interest, and it bears no clear (or unclear) relation to the main painting. Just weird.

Best things about this back cover:

• "I am Carson McCullers and I am looking at you. Yes I am."
• "... an enduring masterpiece that will live on" — yeah, that's what "enduring" things tend to do. Ugh.
• What is "savage tenderness?" Is that when a native boy gently pats your brow? Or ... what? Was the design of this book (incl. decisions about cover copy) just given over to some intern? The whole thing feels ... not laughably bad, but just off.

Page 123~

Grandpa scratched his ear with a matchstick. 'Somebody got to stay home.'

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

P.S. Tomorrow begins the University Book Sale. I will be there when it starts and will not leave until I have acquired much goodness. I may have to bring helper monkeys to make sure nothing sweet gets by me. Look for the fruits of my labor beginning Sunday.

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 18: Avon F-148

Paperback 18: Avon F-148 (PBO, 1962)

Title: The Bad Man
Author: Joseph Wayne
Cover artist: James Meese

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

"Before he went to the gallows Al Cobb wanted to do one decent thing ... so he shot a man in the face and abducted his child"

Apparently "decent" meant "psychopathic" in The Old West.

RP