Paperback 465: The Loving and the Daring / Francoise Mallet-Joris (Popular Library EB84)

Paperback 465: Popular Library-Eagle Books EB84 (1st thus, 1957)

Title: The Loving and the Daring
Author: Francoise Mallet-Joris
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $20

Best things about this cover:

• This is how older lesbians prey on young girls—their acute sense of hearing.'
  This was a groundbreaking novel. No one had yet dared to tell the story of lesbian acrobats.
• "This stairway doesn't seem to go anywhere. Let's just go back to Starbucks." Sorry, that was a line from "The Loving and the Undaring."

Best things about this back cover:

• You can tell which is the 15-year-old girl because she hasn't learned how to sit ladylike and still cries when she skins her knee. You can tell the older, predatory lesbian by her icy disdain and slacks.
• It's like the reviewer is teasing me by nearly saying "frank" a million times but never actually saying "frank." Asshole. Wait ... "frankly" ... Uh, OK. That'll do.
• Taut and sensitive and on the brink of explosive release! Wait, I think my brain involuntarily rewrote copy there ...

Page 123~

Two women near the edge of the dance floor were squabbling over a gay little brunette that each wanted to tear from the arms of her indignant lady partner. It became a fight, with hair pulled and slaps exchanged.

Clearly this book should've been titled "Indignant Lady Partner" — "I demand satisfaction! Pistols at dawn, bitch!"

~RP

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Paperback 198: Tombolo / Nicholas Fersen (Popular Library - Eagle Books EB36X)

Paperback 198: Popular Library - Eagle Books EB36X (2nd ptg, 1955)

Title: Tombolo
Author: Nicholas Fersen
Cover artist: That guy who does all the Popular Library covers whose name I just don't know

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• "See you later, lady. Thanks for all the sex. We enjoyed it."
• Least comfortable sex location ever. By a longshot. Rocky, dirty, uneven ground, surrounded by bombed out ruins. "Let's put some rebar in the foreground!" "Genius!"
• Her hand ... it's astonishingly suggestive. Is it just resting there? Going somewhere? Pulling dress down? Hiking it up? Write your own narrative.
• I love how the jolly fat guy is waving and she's got this look like "Yeah, @#$ you, you putz." Akimbo arm helps establish the defiance.
• "Not for the weak-stomached," i.e. "This book will make you barf!" Thanks, St. Louis Globe Democrat!

Best things about this back cover:

• The full akimbo!
• She has her own boy harem. Awesome.
• If you like degeneracy, this is the book for you. "Sinkhole!" "Sex and savagery!" "Thundering tide of passion and violence!" And, of course, what would a book about Italian degeneracy be without a "vicious Negro" (!?)

Page 123~

He's gon' listen to me, Emmanuel thought, and rejoiced, knowing nothing about the gin and what had happened a few hours before in the heat, in the filigree of sunshine and the strident sound-layers of insects.

If the writer is trying to make the reader feel the pain of his characters, he seems to be doing a good job. If I had to read 150 pages of writing like that, I'd be begging for mercy from God and repenting all my sins.

~RP

Paperback 130: You Kill Me / John D. MacDonald (Popular Library - Eagle Books G507)

Paperback 130: Popular Library - Eagle Books G507 (2nd ptg??, 1961)
Title: You Kill Me
Author: John D. MacDonald
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• The former title - which tells you everything about the difference between selling hardbacks and paperbacks. "You Live Once" = subject intransitive verb adverb = "zzzzzzz," whereas "You Kill Me" = subject transitive verb object = entire lurid plot in three words = sales gold
• She has a wasp waist and is wearing vaguely waspish colors
• "I am crazy for the salsa dance!"
• She has that ambiguous look of reckless abandon / sadistic glee
• John O'Hara is straight-up awesome - many paperbacks by him in my collection, some we've already seen.

Best things about this back cover:

• Well, not much. Another image retread.
• For once, the copy writers got it right: "a go-to-hell" look. Nice.

Page 123~

"I put my shoes on and stood by the car in the darkness. Soon I heard the sounds of his dying."

~RP

Paperback 102: Don't Get In My Way / Frances Clippinger (Popular Library - Eagle Books EB50)

Popular Library - Eagle Books EB50 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: Don't Get In My Way
Author: Francis Clippinger
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• Mixed messages: "Uh, lady, I'd be happy to get out of your way if you'd just let go."
• Yellow jumpsuit! If this is indeed a "Movie Colony," then she is a stand-in for the lead in "The Ronald McDonald Story"
• The Sacramento Bee always gives the best blurb: "Love and hate? ... you don't say!"

Best things about this back cover:

• "A story of people who hate themselves and bore themselves" - hey, it's about grad school!
• Ah, the Loser Hug (the head-to-breast kneel-hug performed by loser man on girl who is too good / hot for him). Here's another version (same publisher, interestingly)
• "I can't hear your heart!" / "Uh, that's my spleen."
• "Aw, gee, why won't the hot naked blond lady look at me? Can't she feel my raw, nervous power?"

Page 123~

She was sitting on the edge of the green garden couch and she looked up at him with a dumb, savage helplessness that excited him brutally.

~RP

Paperback 76: I Am Fifteen - And I Don't Want to Die / Christine Arnothy (Popular-Eagle Library EB95)

Paperback 76: Popular-Eagle Books EB95 (1st ptg, 1957)

Title: I Am Fifteen - and I Don't Want to Die
Author: Christine Arnothy
Cover artist: Mitchell Hooks

YOURS FOR: $9


Best things about this cover:

• It's hard to make fun of a 15-year-old who does not want to die, particularly when the people who might kill her are Nazis.
• This book was apparently published in order to capitalize on the brief vogue in diaries written by young girls hiding from Nazis.
• She's pretty chic for a war victim.
• This cover is slightly boring (not nearly Hooks's best work) but I do love the barbed wire detail around her ankles, and the color of the sky.

RP

Paperback 14: Popular Libary-Eagle Books EB96

Paperback 14: Popular Library-Eagle Books EB96 (PBO, 1957)

Title: Just So Far
Author: Floyd Miller
Cover artist: Unknown

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• It's not Myra's fault - few people can resist Rex
• "I said listen to my heart, you shirtless bastard!"
• I am as much a fan of big breasts as the next guy, but that right breast is disturbingly large, aggressive, and ominous - it's hard to imagine it has a twin nearby
• I wonder what she has in her supremely tiny pocket - the pocket, like her right breast, appears strangely ... centered. What kind of dress has pockets over the crotch?
• That boat is either menacingly phallic or hilariously random; I can't decide.

Best things about this back cover:

• In the upper left, that's about as close to someone's copping a feel as you are likely to see on a pre-1960 paperback
• It's Big Shirtless Ron again! You'll remember him from the front cover.
• He's shirtless, but she's got on spiked heels - doesn't anyone know how to dress for a picnic anymore?
• Bottom right: Is he preparing to kiss her or adjusting her cervical spine?
• "Myra became a complete wanton" - slightly better than becoming a complete won-ton.

RP