Showing posts with label Fitzgerald. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fitzgerald. Show all posts

Monday, July 7, 2025

Paperback 1123: Miss America / Daniel Stern (Popular Library G464)

Paperback 1123: Popular Library G464 (1st ptg, 1960)

Title: Miss America
Author: Daniel Stern
Cover artist: [Mitchell Hooks]

Condition: 8/10
Value: $20

Best things about this cover: 
  • Now that's a redhead. That hair's so orange it's pink.
  • Wow, this lady really likes stationery.   
  • This is a movie tie-in. I've never heard of this movie. What's more, I cannot find any proof that this movie exists, or ever existed. Nothing by this name appears in Carroll Baker's filmography, and nothing she made in this general time period seems to have been based on this novel. I have no idea why they'd say there was a movie when there is no movie. I feel like I've uncovered a mystery. Possibly a very boring one, but still. Mystery!

Best things about this back cover: 
  • OK, not to be that guy, but ... well, I am that guy, so ... it's The Beautiful and Damned, not The Beautiful and the Damned, dammit. This blurb is not up to the lofty editorial standards I expect from the ... [squints] ... Lansing State News.
  • "Her most intimate statistics were common knowledge." What could her "most intimate statistics" be? What are anyone's "most intimate statistics?" Number of sex partners? Bra size? Cholesterol? 
  • This back cover copy tells you precisely nothing except that there's some hot celebrity "goddess" and she ... has a life ... not covered by the press. You don't say!
Page 123~
Just before we rang the bell, Cathy turned to me and said, "I've got a confession to make. You know that first night, when you played those quartets? I came expecting to hear jazz quartets. I thought I'd fall down when you started taking out the string instruments."
String instruments!? Well, sure, that's enough to make anyone fall down. I'm writing this from the floor right now, and that's just from hearing about it.

~RP

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