Paperback 530: The Gay World / Martin Hoffman (Bantam Q4492)

Paperback 530: Bantam Q4492 (1st ptg, 1969)

Title: The Gay World
Author: Martin Hoffman
Cover artist: photo

Yours for: $7

Best things about this cover:

• Look! Tiny, tiny gays! So cute.
• That's how you contain the dangerous lure of the handsome gays—keep their pics thumbnail size.
• Also, this is how the "homosexual scene" stays so well hidden from the mainstream—strategic miniaturization!
• That looks like the wedding photograph from the first gay wedding, circa 1884. "Leopold and Jasper went on to run the most successful dry goods business in the greater Lansing area."

Best things about this back cover:

• "Occult!" That's a new one.
• I read "closest" as "closet."
• "Why do men become homosexual? Well, if you could actually *see* Leopold and Jasper there, you would *totally* understand. Trust me."

Page 123~

Since we know that as we ascend the mammalian scale, learning factors become more important the higher we go, we can postulate that if these factors are true for monkeys, it would seem they are true for humans.

Scienceish! I give this assertion a 7 out of 10 on the mammalian scale.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 22

Title: You'll Like My Mother (Fawcett T1418, 1969)
Author: Naomi A. Hintze
Cover artist: Harry Bennett

Yours for: $5

• "I think I *will* like your mother. She sounds ho- ... whoa! Is that her? Oh ... man. I, uh, I have this thing I have to go to now. Band practice, I think."
• MILF! (Mom I'd Like to Flee)
• "Maybe if I hide under this giant Fabio wig, mom won't see me..."

• Dear Best Sellers, "THEY" has no antecedent. Thank you.
• We need to revive the word "CHILLER-DILLER"
• Book-of-the-Month Club News is creeping me out with its metaphors. "It's like watching a demonic baby emerge from the birth canal. You'll love it."

Page 123~

In my mind's eye I fixed a firm picture of that fawn-and-brown cat catching that one gray rat. One rat; there were no more.

This is, by far, the most interesting thing happening on this page.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 240: The Sour Lemon Score / Richard Stark (Donald Westlake) (Gold Medal R2037)

Paperback 240: Gold Medal R2037 (PBO, 1969)

Title: The Sour Lemon Score
Author: Richard Stark (pseud. of Donald Westlake)
Cover artist: Robert McGinnis

Yours for: $39


Best things about this cover:

• I appear to have hit a super sweet pocket in my collection — an original Parker novel with a McGinnis bondage cover!? Wow... book's got some minor scuffing, but is otherwise in gorgeous, barely read condition.
• Is that look in her eyes fear? Or maybe the man with the gun is the good guy, and what she's really thinking is, "Uh ... little help, Captain Handsome-pose?"
• Actually, she's not tied up — she's a puppeteer who is operating her marionettes remotely via a (really) complicated system of pulleys and levers. You can tell she is backstage at an old theater, as she is clearly reclining on the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Best things about this back cover:

• Look, real blurbs from actual, marginally credible news sources!
• HA ha — love the "(back)" part of the second Boucher blurb. "Oh ... paperback ... I see. How modern."
• If you have never read Westlake, you could do worse than to start with the Parker novels. They were all recently reissued by Chicago Univ. Press (see here), and this summer, you can check out Darwyn Cooke's comic adaptation of the first Parker novel, "Hunter" (preview available here), a first edition of which is also in my paperback collection ... somewhere.
  
• See Man Booker-prize-winning author John Banville rhapsodize about the Parker novels here.

Page 123~

The thumb out there jabbed and jabbed at the bell. She couldn't ignore it, no matter what.

~RP

Paperback 168: Tales of the Flying Mountains / Poul Anderson (Collier 01626)

***BIRTHDAY EDITION***

Truth be told, this book was not scheduled to be written up today. There was an interesting but visually bland book on tap for today, but I decided I needed something spicy to help me celebrate my birthday, so I skipped forward two books in line and found this. Enjoy!

Paperback 168: Collier 01626 (1st ptg, 1971)

Title: Tales of the Flying Mountains
Author: Poul Anderson
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• "Tales of the Flying Mountains," Or, "Psychedelic Ape Men Visit the Boob Museum"
• I've heard them called a lot of things. "Flying Mountains" is not one of those things.
• More proof that everyone in the early 70s was high. How I survived my infancy is a miracle.

Best things about this back cover:

• How many papers does Washington have?
• This book is apparently a collection of short stories, each of which originally appeared in Analog magazine between the years 1963 and 1965. Anderson published them under the pseudonym "Winston P. Sanders." They are all set in a common futuristic universe in which mankind has colonized the solar system. One of the reviews at amazon starts with the phrase, "Taking his cue from Chaucer..." (!?)

Page 123~

... and yet that spark, together with the dwarfed sun, reached across to grip this orb on which she dwelt and lock it fast for eternity.

This book should be called "Grip This Orb" (see cover painting)

~RP