Paperback 1034: The Professor and the Co-Ed / Babette Hall (Belmont B50-786)

Paperback 1034: Belmont B50-786 (unknown ptg, 1967)

Title: The Profesor and the Co-Ed
Author: Babette Hall
Cover artist: Uncredited

Condition: 7/10
Estimated value: $10

Best things about this cover:

• The Advanced Hugging seminar was beginning to take its toll on Steve's knees...
• "Oh Steve, I want ... I want ... something for these bare walls. A kitten poster, maybe? Oh, I wish I lived in a different dorm. Babette Hall is so drab!"
• I like how this cover subverts expectations by placing a generic dude's back where the Great Girl Art should be.
• I apparently own multiple editions of this book.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Don't look so frightened!" he shouted, terrifyingly
• "A child of sixteen?" I did not know they made "Co-Eds" that young.
• "The teacher in me" 1000x LOL that's what she said
• What is "the world's oldest predicament"? Prostitution? Pregnancy? Gym class?
• Ladies Home Journal with the fake blurb! "Could you give us a blurb?" "Uh ... would you accept an aphorism?"

Page 123~

At seventeen sixteen was a million miles away. Why, I could hardly remember it, principally because I didn't especially want to.

I gotta borrow this one. "You ate the last donut." "Did I? ... I don't remember?" "It was 10 minutes ago." "10 minutes ... it's like a million miles." "There's still powder on your face. And on your hands. Look at your hands." "I don't especially want to."

~RP

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Paperback 1033: The Black Mass of Brother Springer / Charles Willeford (Black Lizard nn)

Paperback 1033: Black Lizard (no number) (1st ptg, 1989)

Title: The Black Mass of Brother Springer
Author: Charles Willeford
Cover artist: Kirwan

Condition: 9/10
Estimated value: $35-40

Best things about this cover:

• An interesting variation on the "Killer's POV" cover. Hands that would normally be coming to strangle her are instead filled with Bible.
• Those thumbs get creepier the longer you stare at them.
• Willeford is a master. I have read stuff where he has written really interestingly and provocatively about race (and racism). I have no idea what kind of territory this book gets into, though...

Best things about this back cover:

• He was white. She was ... ? So much white male gaze here. No idea if the book critiques or revels in this whole way of seeing blackness. I'd guess the former. I really should read it.
• Jim Thompson is the author that got me into vintage paperback collecting (long story I'll tell some other time, when one of his books comes up ... or maybe I've told it already—I've been at this blog a long long time and there's lots I've forgotten about what stories I have and haven't told). Anyway, the irony here is that I don't care for Jim Thompson any more. He was the gateway ... but now the gateway has dissolved, or become irrelevant, or something. Weird how these things happen.
• I think my next collecting effort will involve these '80s Black Lizards, before the imprint was bought out by Vintage (those early Vintage/Black Lizards were part of the whole Jim Thompson Gateway To Paperbackville...)

Page 123~

The shadow I stared at was not a part of the regular inventory I saw every day.
      And then the shadow stretched.

~RP

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Paperback 1032: Behind the Flying Saucer Mystery / George Adamski (Paperback Library 53-439)

Paperback 1032: Paperback Library 53-439 (1st ptg, 1967)

Title: Behind the Flying Saucer Mystery
Author: George Adamski
Cover artist: what is this cover, anyway?

Condition: 8/10
Estimated value: $8-12

Best things about this cover:

• What am I even looking at?
• Feathers?
• Wood shavings?
• Arrow heads?
• How 'bout you "rip the curtain of secrecy" from whatever this picture is?
• And the little white streaks? Is this supposed to be a Rorschach-type dealie where I basically ascribe meaning based on my paranoid imagination? What if I'm just bored?

Best things about this back cover:

• The QAn*n folks have nothing on this guy
• "Since that fateful day in 1952 when he first lost his fucking mind, George Adamski became a known lunatic who somehow got a book contract"
• "Men" LOL
• The Brothers!
• The Silence Group, Can I Join Please Shhhhhhhhh.... No Talking Ever
• "Revolutionary" and "new" are both angry at being dragged into the whole "twelve-planet solar system" conversation
• Jeez louise, this isn't his first UFO conspiracy theory book!?

Page 123~

... for he [Patrick Moore] had been one of the British astronomers, along with Dr. H. Percy Wilkins, who had confirmed the existence of the Mare Crisium bridge on the moon. He must have known for certain that someone had been using the moon as a base of operations, and the only logical ones were people from other planets.

Yes, that does sound like logic. Also, the idea of the Mare Crisium as the site of a lunar colony appears in Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, also from 1967, though I am sure that is a total coincidence, because no way George Adamski is getting his totally scientific ideas from fiction, no way, and if you don't believe me then you're probably part of the Silence Group. You Silence Groupies never quit.

~RP

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