Paperback 967: Silent Sex / Jim Harmon (France F21)

Paperback 967: France F21 (PBO, 1962)

Title: Silent Sex
Author: Jim Harmon (credited on back) (?)
Cover artist: "Cover Photo by Ralph Poole / Cover posed by professional model"

Estimated value: $25
Condition: 8/10

Best things about this cover:

• Doesn't sound like much fun tbh
• Should the main visual component of the cover of a book called "Silent Sex" be the fabric pattern on the couch? Seafoam Sex!
• France books are ... so odd. They combine the fanciness of a fold-out front cover with the low-rent ickiness of everything else. Here's the out-folded cover:

• I guess we get a pretty good stretch of hind quarters there, but once again, I'm queasily mesmerized by the decor. Sex in a gilded frame!

Best things about this back cover:

• Whoa. 1920s Hollywood? Did NOT see that coming.
• Next time someone doesn't recognize your (or anyone else's) name, just follow it up with "... of the Purple Gloves?" and see what happens.
• I want to like Sherri Novak because like me she appears to be a medievalist of sorts, but that blurb makes no sense.
• I really want "Billy" to be a literal horse.

Page 123~

Now, six years later, he was sleeping at the side of a girl who had learned "tricks" from an under-the-counter book. Full circle.

He shook her awake. "Do the rabbit one again! Please!"

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 697: Out From Eden / Victoria Lincoln (Pocket Books 935)

Paperback 697: Pocket Books 935 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: Out From Eden
Author: Victoria Lincoln
Cover artist: Tom Dunn

Yours for: $7


Best things about this cover:

• FRANK!
• An interesting variation on the typical Great Girl Art cover—this is more like one of those annoying modern covers where the women are always facing away or their heads are out of frame and possibly there is mist or water. If you think I'm kidding, just want into what they call a "book" "store" and look around.
• Any sexiness she brings to this cover, the schlubby painter dude totally takes out of it.
• I am having a Hate/Love relationship with that mug in the foreground.

Best things about this back cover:

• Are there different varieties of Edens? An Eden of Pancakes, maybe?
• "Raffish"—wow, that's not a word you see .... ever. Cool.
• So that must be Jessica on the cover. She seems nice.
• I don't want to know the "special and painful way" Todd learned about love because I am quite sure the version in my head is much better.

Page 123~

"You mean a is to b as c is to d?" again the intelligence faded. "How could you? They're letters and arithmetic is numbers."

"A frank and moving story of a naked girl who learned algebra."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 577: Club Tycoon Sends Man to Moon / Felix Mendelsohn Jr. (Book Co. of America 13)

Paperback 577: Book Co. of America 13 (PBO, 1965)

Title: Club Tycoon Sends Man to Moon
Author: Felix Mendelsohn Jr.
Cover artist: [signature illegible] [Brennan? Boorman? Boron?]

Yours for: $20

Best things about this cover:

• That! That is what I want to look like when I'm 75. Like an old Greek rap star supervillain. If I don't end up with a Money Throne, a Soviet missile, and a real-life Modigliani model in my house by the time I die, I will consider my life wasted.
• I assume that throne is also some kind of hovercraft. I mean, why would you go through the trouble of building something that awesome if it couldn't fly?
• I bought this book because it is insane-looking. A silly-sounding title from a very minor press, written by a guy with a ludicrous pseudonym. If I had a "Kabinet of Kooky Kuriosities," I'd put this book there.

Best things about this back cover:

• You have no idea how much I *don't* want to know what "built-in stump" means.
• You can get your "World's Greatest Lecher" mug at CreepyChristmasGifts.com
• I love how "wonderfully gay" is echoed further down the page by "a bachelor by choice" (and, possibly, "Cryptanalyst").
• According to that final sentence, the author and I are 80% alike. This worries me.
• Publishers were correct in their prediction that this would not be Felix Mendelsohn Jr's last novel. He seems to have written one other, "Superbaby," which I Must Acquire:

Page 23~ (the book is exactly 122 pages long)

Wayne: "What's your line, Mr. Dormin?"
Dormin: "Laxatives."

Sure. Why not?

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

P.S. Hope my east coast readers weathered Sandy successfully. We had a state of emergency up here, but nothing happened. Still, I was prepared:


P.P.S. I've been meaning to post this pic of a sign for a local deli — in Endwell (!) NY — just 'cause. I haven't been in yet, but I am ... curious: