Paperback 1016: Sex Diary / Nat Brand (Hi-Hat 103)

Paperback 1016: Hi-Hat HH 103 (PBO, 1963)

Title: Sex Diary
Author: Nat Brand
Cover artist: [Uncredited]

Condition: 9/10 (tiny notch up top, else Perfect)
Estimated value: $20-25

[Newest addition to the Doug Peterson Collection]

Best things about this cover:

• Oh, sorry, I see you're studying. I'll come back later.
• "Knock knock" "Who's there?" "ORAL" "ORAL who?" "ORAL the salacious sight gags used up or do you have one more you'd like to try out?"
• Of all the disturbing things here, the most disturbing is that either that dude wants to put beer in a martini glass or else that gin needs a bottle opener (?!). Or else that's champagne, in which case everything is wrong, burn it all down...
• Oh, and her mouth. That is also disturbing. The mouth-to-Everything-Else ratio is way, way off.

Best things about this back cover:

• As if this back cover type were not hilarious enough, this one omits the closing phrase! It's supposed to go "RIDICULOUS OPENING PHRASE... / Cover copy that sounds like it was written by a prurient 11-yr-old then translated into Ukrainian then Portuguese then Urdu then back to English again... / RIDICULOUS CLOSING PHRASE." I have countless examples of this very type of back cover. And yet, here, I am forced to use my imagination to finish off the final sentence. The depraved inkstains of her WHAT!?!?! LUST PEN? SIN QUILL? I'm gonna lose sleep over this.
• "The entries of the facts of her lust sessions" ... [steps back, admires wordsmithery, kisses fingertips] ... MWAH!
• "Penetrating pen" ... "every shocking inch" ... The subtlety! It's maddening!

Page 123~

His hands slid haltingly on her belly.

I think we're done here.

~RP

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Paperback 793: The Roman Way / Edith Hamilton (Mentor Books MD213)

Paperback 793: Mentor Books MD213 (1st ptg, 1957)

Title: The Roman Way
Author: Edith Hamilton
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Not sure why I own this. I mean, it has none of the sexual promise of "The Greek Way."
• Apparently ancient Rome was populated predominantly by very boring zombies who loved statuary.
• Seriously, this looks like a very badly programmed MMOG.

Best things about this back cover:

• The thing I admire most about the ancient world is all their stars were so big they only needed one name, like Cher or Beyoncé.
• What a bewitching, haunting, slightly frightening author photo.
• "… who on her ninetieth birthday was made an honorary citizen of Athens." Sadly, she did not survive the notoriously brutal "jump in" ritual.

Page 123~

Virgil sees no reason why cattle disease is not a subject for a poet.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

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

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 226: Roxana / Daniel Defoe (Royal Giant 24)

Paperback 226: Royal Giant 24 (1st thus, 1953)

Title: Roxana
Author: Daniel Defoe
Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Yours for: $20


Best things about this cover:

• "The piquant classic about powdered peruques and saucy foppish sex games played in front of ornate mirrors"
• "Pardon me, madam, but I've lost my pinky ring and I was wondering if, perchance, it had fallen between your magnificent breasts. Let me just look ... and look ... still looking ... is that it? ... no ... wait ..."

Best things about this back cover:

• Wrap-around cover - hot!
• This is actually the back cover of a VHS tape entitled "Slumber Party Girls of the Restoration Era"
• "Dance, rummy, dance .... now sing 'I'm Every Woman' ... now raise the roof ... that's it ..."

Page 123~

Under these dreadful apprehensions I looked back on the life I had lived with the utmost contempt and abhorrence.

Been there.

~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

Club Meditations

"Top Ten Things I Learned While On Vacation At Club Med - Cancún Yucatán"

10. White women should never, ever wear their hair in corn rows.

9. Nothing feels better at the end of a hot day than cold, clean sheets.

8. Yoga is best done outside, toward dusk, looking out at the Caribbean, with a cool breeze blowing and a large iguana or two hanging out nearby.



7. Pilates is a very intense workout, and far less fruity than its ridiculous name would suggest.

6. French women have next to no compunction about exposing their breasts to a brutal mid-day sun and their lungs to pack upon pack of cigarettes.

5. My daughter (and this is very recent) enjoys few things as much as sitting by herself absorbed in a book. I find this unbearably adorable. On this trip: Ramona the Pest and Mr. Popper's Penguins.

4. Mexican theme parks will not protect you from your own idiocy. It's up to you not to fall down precipitous stone stairs, tumble into the manatee tank, or curiously cross the small moat to angry spider monkey island. "Guard rails? ... We don't need no stinkin' guard rails!" [P.S. Spider monkeys are my new favorite animal, narrowly edging out the coati and the tapir, which I also got to see up close]

3. After about day five, the Club Med experience begins to lose its capacity to relax, the way that socks, after a while, lose their elasticity and just sort of hang there on your ankles.

2. The Sheltering Sky is a novel best read in an impoverished country while being waited on hand and foot by natives whose language you don't speak.

1. The sight of a ten-foot crocodile gliding slowly in your direction across the surface of a still lagoon at twilight is pretty fucking awesome.