Thursday, March 11, 2010

57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 51

Title: The Yellow Room (Dell D179, 1st thus, 1956)
Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
Cover artist: "Cover design by Push-Pin Studios"

Yours for: $6


  • Who runs like that? She looks like she is either shouting "O lawdy lawdy" or preparing to throw a boomerang
  • The world's only nonuplets furiously clean the walls of the "Hollywood Squares" set
  • This book should have been called "Nine Yellow Rooms Which Are Actually Mostly Orange"

  • I haven't laughed this hard at the tag line on a book's back cover in some time.
  • After reading this back cover, it appears the tag line *should* have read "A Smell of Rancid Flesh"
  • OK, at "... and something else," we know it's a dead body. I was holding out hope that the last word on the cover would be something like "squirrel," "gnome," or "Smurf," but no...

Page 123~

She protested almost wildly, but he did not listen.

What the hell does "almost wildly" look like? What am I supposed to be picturing, Mary? Ugh. Thank god there's just one more MRR book to go. Her writing is unbearable, even in tiny pieces.

~RP

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7 comments:

Jen Alien-Spouse said...

Wouldn't this cover design make a great quilt?

Miri said...

She's dancing ... duh ....

heehee ... oooh I LIKE this game!!!

Deb said...

That cover reminds me of those "spot the one that's different" puzzles that drove me crazy in my youth. (I have no excuse for the crazy I am today.)

Random White Guy said...

I run like that.

While shouting "O lawdy lawdy! I's don't know nuttin' 'bout birthin' no baby!"

Marla said...

"almost wildly" = wearing a wet T-shirt, but also a bra.

Michael5000 said...

Aww, crap, unbearable writing? And me with a Mary Roberts Rinehart cued up after I finish my Edward Bulwer-Lytton novel!

True story.

Michael5000 said...

OK, I just finished "The Circular Staircase," which seems to be maybe the only MRR book you haven't done here. The verdict? Her writing is entirely bearable. Nothing especially amazing about it, though. Here's what I put on Goodreads:

"An old-school and fairly pulpy mystery packed with enough contrivance and coincidence to make Charles Dickens blush. Rineheart gets points, though, for crafting a lively character in her rich, ditsy, spoiled, not always likable but ultimately decent narrator."