Paperback 308: A Room on the Route / Godfrey Blunden (Bantam 947)

Paperback 308: Bantam 947 (1st ptg, 1951)

Title: A Room on the Route
Author: Godfrey Blunden
Cover artist: Uncredited [Schaare???]

Yours for: $17


Best thing about this cover:

• Soviet singing sensation "Drago" was in constant danger of being mauled by his overzealous, sex-crazed fanbase of lonely Nanas. Here, security moves in quickly to save him.
• This book was apparently published in that narrow window of time when "Soviet" had not yet found a "Union" to modify.
• This guy's like a Soviet Jesus. Look at his beatific face, the halo of light around his head, the way he's being mistreated, the way he appears to be looking plaintively at us, admonishing us to give up our sinful ways... you've got Mary there in foreground, Mary Magdalen in background, Roman centurions coming to take him away ...

Best things about this back cover:

• N.K.V.D. — secret police organization that preceded K.G.B.; not, as I'd originally hoped, the shortened name of 90's boy band New Kids with Venereal Diseases.
• Every book should come with "mounting action."

Page 123~

The men in the factory felt they had made a victory.

The men in the factory then headed to their ESL class to learn more about how to make a sentence that sounds right in English.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

57 Books from the University Book Sale: Books 35 and 36

Last two non-fiction (-ish) books from my library sale haul. They make a nice pair, I think.

Title: Jefferson: A Great American's Life and Ideas (Mentor 70 — 2nd ptg, Dec. 1952)
Author: Saul K. Padover
Cover artist: Jonas

Yours for: $5

• Love the way "Abridged" is used as a major selling point — "Finally, our most important Founding Father, in a dose you can manage!"
• Floating Head of Thomas Jefferson backed by the Floating Declaration of Independence. My Most Powerful, Floatingest cover ever.
• "This planting season, why not outfit your team with Dr. E. J. Samuelson's newly patented Invisible Oxen Rigging! Amaze your friends as your oxen appear to pull your plow by sheer force of mind alone ..."

• "Living Words ... written on dead sheep."

Page 123~

For Aaron Burr was not famous for virtue or steadfastness of character, and the idea of such a man's occupying the presidential chair was disturbing to responsible men.

Title: Masters of Deceit (Pocket Books 75099 — 22nd ptg!?!?!, 1966)
Author: J. Edgar Hoover
Cover artist: Ben Feder (designer)

Yours for: $10

• "The Communists Will Spray Our Most Precious Documents with Ketchup, Make No Mistake!"

• "Hello, Frederick's of Hollywood? This is, uh, Edwina Hooverston ..."
• Blurbed his own book. Clever.

Page 123~

Five minutes later, a fourth person, a woman in a dark coat, arrives. Everything is quiet: no loud voices, no cars parked in front, no reason for the neighbors to suspect that a Communist Party meeting is in progress.

This book is really a fantastic window into Cold War paranoia. I might actually read it.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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 145: The By-Pass Control / Mickey Spillane (Signet P3077)

Paperback 145: Signet P3077 (1st ptg, 1967)

Title: The By-Pass Control
Author: Mickey Spillane
Cover artist: photo cover

Yours for: $6


Best things about this cover:

• Ugh. Ugly multi-colored text crowds this poorly designed cover. And what is that photo? A leftover still from a Prell ad shoot?
• What is it with Spillane covers and naked blondes with hair that looks starchy and untouchable?
• Apparently the "By-Pass Control" is located at the base of her skull. Stop her, Tiger!
• "Multi-murder" is a ... noun?
• "They called him 'Tiger' because ... well, he snarled during sex, frankly."

Best things about this back cover:

• And you thought that little red dot was just some kind of sale sticker. In actuality, it is one of the least explicable book design concepts in paperback history. Maybe it represents the Communist menace. Or Tiger Mann's passion for gumballs. He's irrepressible!
• I'm not sure that Denver Post blurb is as positive as the publishers seem to think it is.
• How many different ways can a book convey to you that it contains rough sex? "Snarling sex," "deadly sex," "rough-tough touch," etc. Maybe the red dot symbolizes the marks Tiger leaves on his many sex partners / victims.
• If you wanna read the awesomest, most over-the-top, ridiculous conflation of rough sex and politics, please read One Lonely Night, where Hammer hammers a commie girl, and when he's done with her, she is red ... white and blue. USA! USA! Rough sex cures women of their political delusions. Who knew? Thanks, Mickey!

Page 123~

"Don't bother packing ... just get on the first one out [...]." I laughed and added, "Besides, you can use a vacation."

"Sure, without clothes?"

"What better kind?" I said.

"I didn't mean it like that," she told me, a lilt in her voice, "but you're making it sound awfully interesting. I'll see you shortly, mud dauber."

He's not just a Tiger. He's also, it seems, a wasp.

[Organ-pipe mud dauber - Trypoxylon politum]

~RP

PS Here are some Hillbilly Hussy covers ... if you're into that sort of thing (and I am - here's one of my own)

Paperback 39: Ace D-478

Paperback 39: Ace D-478 (PBO, 1960)

Title: Spacehive
Author: Jeff Sutton
Cover artist: Uncredited

"Hi honey, it's me. Yeah, can you tell me how to hold these compass thingies again? I'm pinching it between my thumb and forefinger while holding it in midair, but nothing seems to be happening. Uh oh, I gotta go. A miniature Soviet fighter just threw a gigantic numbered spider web over me. I'll see you tonight." [click]

Mmmm, Space Race anxiety. Thank you, Sputnik!

RP