Sultry Sunday #6 - The weekly "Pop Sensation" crossover

Body fluids ahead .. brace yourselves for a below-the-belt "Sultry Sunday" (from Rex Parker's "Pop Sensation" blog)

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Paperback 153: Dell 7733 (1st ptg, 1962)

Title: Seed of Doubt
Author: Day Keene
Cover artist: Clark Hulings



Best things about this cover:

• "Explosive," "Seed," and a variation of "semen" all on one cover!? That's ... ballsy. Also makes me a little queasy. Oh god, all this seed-talk is making even "Unexpurgated" look pornographic.
• "You expect that man to take care of that baby!?"
• "You expect us to believe that that man is responsible for that stain!?"
• The judge looks like he wants to say "Excuse me, sir, but the fencing class is down the hall."
• "The pattern of ANATOMY OF A MURDER" - HA ha. High praise. That's like saying "As many pages as THE GREAT GATSBY" or "Set in the same general region as GONE WITH THE WIND"

Best things about this back cover:

• Cast of characters! With quotes!?
• "I'd rather see her dead" - I hope he's not supposed to be sympathetic character. "No wife of mine..." - how many does he have?
• "I loved Eric so much ..." - of course. Women love men who would rather see them dead than see them bear the child of another man.
• "Who is to say that I was wrong ...?" - nice defense, Perry Mason. I believe This Court is to say, you jackass.

Page 123~

Jenny emerged from the restaurant wearing a tight black skirt and a green blouse under a thin white sweater that accentuated her heavy breasts. She pretended to be surprised to see him.

"You still here?"

Eric continued to pick his teeth. "It would seem. You live far?"

Eric is suave - he knows what all real men know: that there is no surer way to seduce a heavy-breasted lady than to pick your teeth.

~RP

Vaginas have teeth, y'know

So I've been asking all of my coworkers what they think is going on with this woman's crotch. My favorite response is, "some kind of giant bug." I, myself, think it looks like dentata. I'm so happy we have this book in our young adult section!!

p.s. I'm happy to see that, although Harry Potter has gotten a sex change, at least he kept the scar (and yes, although it's a little hard to see here, that is a lightning bolt on her forehead).

Thanks the gods it's Phallic Phriday!

My good friend and co-consiprator who shall remain anonymous (but her name rhymes with Tabigail) just bought this book for the library. Why not just write SEX SEX SEX SEX SEX SEX SEX across the cover and be done with it?!?






Guess even underwater they're "happy ta see ya"!

Sultry Sunday #5 - the weekly "Pop Sensation" crossover

Welcome to this week's installment of "Pop Sensation" - A syndicated blogcast:

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Paperback 150: Popular Library 60-2299 (1st, 1961)

Title: The Dead Beat
Author: Robert Bloch
Cover artist: uncredited



Best things about this cover:

• Her face - everything about it screams horror hilarity
• She looks like she's about to snap her own neck
• That mouth is So Red that I can only imagine / hope / surmise that this novel involves her drinking blood
• "My hair! O, why did I ever swim in that stupid, over-chlorinated community pool!"
• "My robe! It appears to have fallen open to reveal my impossibly spherical boobs!"
• "My jaw! I can't shut it! How am I even forming this sentence!?"
• Honestly, I love the design on this cover. The jagged backgrounds, the sickly colors. All gold. I believe the word "shocker" is even being struck by something resembling lightning. Fabulous.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Did we mention that Robert Bloch wrote 'Psycho'? 'Cause he did. Write 'Psycho.' It's true. 'Psycho!'"
• "(Remember the author's Psycho)" - um, hey, reviewer from EQMM: the movie adaptation was an international sensation and made a generation of people think twice about getting in the shower. I'm pretty sure folks "remember."
• "Psycho!"

Page 123~

Then he walked in. Opportunity knocks, but Larry walked in. He knew where he was going.

Did I mention that Bloch is a pretty good writer?

~RP

Sultry Sunday #4 - The weekly "Pop Sensation" crossover

Another Sunday, another installment of "Pop Sensation"

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Paperback 147: Beacon Books 143 (PBO, 1957)

Title: Shock Treatment
Author: Wright Williams
Cover artist: Peeping Tom



Best things about this cover:

• I love how she looks - not terrified, but exasperated: "You again!?"
• Wait - I thought she was in her bathroom and the peeping tom was opening the window shade, but it seems just as likely she's in a hospital with mobile curtain dividers, in which case a. whose arm is that?, b. what's it yanking on?, and c. what is that red cloth? What am I looking at!?
• "AT LAST..." - HA ha. I was just asking myself, "Why is there no book that explores the borderland between love and perversity?" Now, at last, that void is filled.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Sure, big Eric was crazy. Crazy about women! And who can blame him? Am I right, guys!? Yeah, you know what I'm talking about ... [amused chuckles from drunk comedy club crowd] ... ah, chicks."
  
• Whimsical drawings of cruel medical experimentation. "It'll cure your pervertedness, but ... you're gonna experience some rubber-arm, I'm not gonna lie."
• Maybe those arms are supposed to represent the gyrations of patients at the "hospital dance" (!?)
• "Not since Snake Pit ..." - I can't stop laughing long enough to comment on that line
• "Frankly!"
• "Passion-wracked!"

Page 123~

Instead of thinking of Katrine as a lovely, attractive girl who had bravely come out of a harrowing experience, I was drawing mental pictures of her in bed with a man married to someone else. It was rotten of me, and I almost welcomed the self-loathing that I began to feel.

Well, we've all been there, right?

~RP

Locusts! Frogs!

Gas crisis in NC! Economic collapse! Funny Sarah Palin videos! These are all reasons I've haven't posted recently. But today I noticed a couple of books sitting side by side that simply had to be pointed out to you, my reader, because I know you have just as dirty a mind as I have. So here's what our New Book shelf looked like today (a little early for Phallic Phriday, I know).

Looks like the buildings approve, no?

Sultry Sunday #3 - The weekly "Pop Sensation" crossover

Another Sunday means: another syndicated episode of Rex Parker's "Pop Sensation" -

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Paperback 144: Ace Double F-111 (PBO / 1st ptg, 1961)

Title: The Girl from Las Vegas / To Have and To Kill
Author: J.M. Flynn / Robert Martin
Cover artist: uncredited / uncredited



Best things about this cover:

• Q: What's the one thing that could upstage a half-naked, armed redhead reclining on your hotel room bed?
• A: Those pants

• This cover makes me feel funny ... I like that she's, uh, packing heat, but does she have to hold it like that. It's making me worried/confused. I think she's ordering me to kneel, but ... I'm scared to ask why.
  

• It's like Ann-Margaret killed "I Dream of Jeannie," stole her hair, and then ran off to Las Vegas to, I don't know ... let's say, join Clown College.

Best things about this cover:

• "Aaargh, Krull angry. Who paint words on Krull's back? Krull make someone pay for cleaning bill..."
• "Abridged" - HA ha. "Long story short, he married her, killed her, and then carried her half-shod corpse over the threshold. Cue the music, fade to black, roll credits."
• I should be keeping track of all the low-rent outfits that provide blurbs for my books. The Charleston News & Courier!? When did anyone ever take reading advice from South Carolina? (No offense, guys ... Go Gamecocks!)

Page 123~

He had shaved and changed into a light blue short-sleeved shirt and gray cord slacks. His attire surprised me a little, perhaps because I had subconsciously expected him to wear a dark mourning suit and somber tie. He still looked tired; eyes sunken, dark half moons beneath them. I leaned back in the chair and said, "Hi."

-from To Have and To Kill

~RP

Sultry Sunday #2 - The weekly "Pop Sensation" crossover

Hey, "Judge a Book" readers. Rex Parker here. It's Sunday, so that means it's time for another syndicated episode of my vintage paperback blog, "Pop Sensation"

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Paperback 141: Berkley Books BG-149 (1st ptg, 1958)

Title: Ah King and other famous stories of love and hate in the tropics (!)
Author: W. Somerset Maugham
Cover artist: Robert Maguire



Best things about this cover:

• Sometimes, when I've been at the computer for too long, I sit like this. The topless native girls never seem to show up.
• Could this dude be more oafish? He's literally belly-scratching.
• I wish we had a better close-up on the women, as Bob Maguire does women, especially faces, better than anyone. The kneeling woman is especially sexy and not just because she's, you know, kneeling. God I wanna photoshop this guy out of the picture so bad.
• You'd never know from this cover that Maugham is one of the most popular and esteemed writers in British history.

Best things about this back cover:

• OK, for once, these blurbs all sound awesome. I may actually read stories from this book today. That's a first.
• Is it just me, or does the type-setting look ever-so-slightly off? Like the black and blue inks were set separately, and aren't quite square to one another. It's making me a bit queasy.
• If I read just one story in this collection, it will be "The Book-Bag"

Page 123~

"When you left them, after a couple of days at the bungalow, you felt that you'd absorbed some of their peace and their sober gaiety. It was as though your soul had been sluiced with cool clear water. You felt strangely purified."

-from, that's right, you guessed it, "The Book-Bag"; I'm dying to see how a book-bag figures into a story about incest on a rubber plantation. I'll let you know.

~RP

Virile Horses and Luscious Man Boobies

Wow. I'm back from enjoying my windfalls. I simultaneously won the British Lottery, the Irish Lottery, and the Canadian Lottery! It's amazing because I've never actually been to any of these places (well, I've been to Canada, but it's not nearly as exotic), nor have I enrolled in any lotteries. Isn't the internet great?! At the same time, my friend Mrs. Sese-Seko from Nigeria must have heard of my good luck and wanted to invest some money with me. Wow, I know everyone's talking about the economic downturn, but it's looking up for me!



Also appearing in my inbox these days are the following gems from the Ludovician (I wonder if they have lotteries in Ludovicia?).




When I was a little maughta my best friend and I used to spend hours drawing horses. Yes, like other little girls we were obsessed with cloven-hooved hunks of horseflesh. We also drew fashion models and our own fashions (this was the '80s, keep in mind, so big shoulder pads and pastel makeup was all the rage). I think our pictures looked a lot like this:

Someone is a little too used to drawing giant pecs on romance heroes and got a little carried away on Sir Neigh, here. Is that a six pack?!?

So, what happens when you combine Mucha paintings with digital clocks? No, not steampunk. Rather, what we have here. At least the horse parts look a little more logical than the previous cover!

I'm not sure the following cover could be in any way improved, although it might help if it had a horse on it. Or, y'know, didn't look like it was drawn by a methed-out skaterpunk in the eighth grade on his math homework.

And finally, this lovely find from one of my favorite blogs, Cake Wrecks, sent in by Edmund S. The sad part is I would have loved this cake when I was 14! Heck, my birthday is coming up soon (soon being a relative term and meaning <6>

Save me the pecs, Tracy!!

UPDATE: Horses don't have cloven hooves. I'm confusing them with satyrs. It's a natural mistake!

Crossover! or, Maughta finds a way to cover for her blogging inactivity...

Dear "Judge a Book" readers,

Maughta has asked me to do some crossover publishing on her blog, since we have overlapping interests. So from now until whenever it stops, I'll be posting my Sunday write-ups from "Pop Sensation" here for your readerly pleasure / scorn. I own 2000+ vintage paperbacks, and one day I just started pulling them off the shelf, scanning them, and commenting on their fabulous / horrible / fabulously horrible covers (the covers being the main reason I started collecting them - I haven't read 99% of my collection, truth be told). All my books are for sale, by the way, though selling them is not the reason I have the blog. I just want to spread love for the bad and the good of paperback cover art, circa 1940-1970.

My format is straightforward and self-explanatory. The feature at the end, "Page 123," is just an arbitrary way for me to be able to give readers a taste of the kind of writing these books have to offer. My little nod to the importance of what's between the covers.

Enjoy - Rex Parker

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Paperback 138: Perma Book M-3100 (1st ptg, 1957)
Title: One-Way Ticket
Author: Bert and Dolores Hitchens
Cover artist: James Meese



Best things about this cover:

• "Railroad detective" - my favorite kind!
• The swirling green vortex of nausea and despair
• The distractingly child-like drawing of the upper half of a candle
• Cool stenciled font on the title
• That furniture - the proportions seem off and there are legs that appear to come from / go to nowhere, but in general, it's cool; spare, stark, mid-century modern in the very best way
• If only she hadn't cut her hair by herself in the dark with a bread knife, she would easily be one of the hottest women in my collection - understated yet stunning black dress (that's a dress, right, not a negligee?), fierce black shoes,* and a perversely casual way with money. What's not to love?
  

Best things about this back cover:

• I love when back covers function like movie teasers: " ... MURDER! Featuring ... Boots! David Bryant! Some other B movie character actors whose names you don't know. And starring Jerry Mathers, as The Beav"
• Which of these names doesn't belong? A: "David Bryant" - what a dud. That last name really ruins the whole vibe of the back cover. Everyone else gets one colorful name, and he gets the full name of some guy from middle management.
• Wait, Rock dies? Uh, SPOILER ALERT!
• This all makes sense except for Boots. I mean, I could write the plot of this book, but I would have no idea what to do with Boots. David Bryant already has two women. Is Boots a cat?

Page 123~

This was a joke on Boots by Boots. They were all expected to enjoy it. They chuckled in chorus and Vic felt a fool.

I'm guessing it was a familiar feeling.

~RP

*I had written "fierce black pumps," but apparently those are "mules," and I can't call such great shoes something as ugly-sounding as "mules," so now it's generic "shoes."

I accept!

Dear Sarah (of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books),

As Maughta indicated in a comment on your begauntleted blog post, she once had me read one of Betina Krahn's Victorian affairs, "The Last Bachelor." The heroine was a wealthy widow who took in destitute young women and married them off to unsuspecting bachelors, little knowing that her own turn was soon to come.

I recall that though the book was well-written, it simply wasn't my cup of tea. It didn't hold my interest. My feeling is much like my take on Mozart and B.B. King: though I've never much cared for either of them, I certainly appreciate their extraordinary talents.

In any case, never one to shrink from a challenge, I accept and await the title you select. Will you draw from the Blaze basket? The Presents pile? Or, quel horreur!, the NASCAR nook? Please be gentle.

Please send us your chosen title forthwith, we're on tenterhooks.

Best,
DocTurtle

P.S. -- Incidentally, in the interest of historical accuracy, I would like humbly to admit that the Random Mammal Generator (as funny as I find it) is the brainchild and Meisterwerk of my friend Eric Schneider. The Random Romance Novel Title Generator is all my own, however. Mea culpa.

Sun, Sand, Circle Jerks?

Ahhhh, back from the beach with a weird misapplied-sunscreen-burn and no jellyfish welts (DocTurtle got those!) and what should cross my desk but this lovely little children's book.






Now we all know I have the brain of a 15 year-old boy so guess where mine went. Yup. Daisy chain. Everyone looks so HAPPY! I especially appreciate the little drop of sweat on the pig's brow. One Two Three Pull is what she said!

On a side note, DocTurtle has been challenged! Will he accept it? Only time will tell...

Hot Links

Goin' to the beach with lots of urban fantasy (I'm a sucker for a strong feminist chick with big boobs on the cover), but wanted to leave you something to do (besides the excellent Romance Novel Title Generator that TurtleBoy made up for us and which can be found in the last post). Here are some links I've been meaning to post for, like, ever. Thanks to the readers who directed me to them. Enjoy!

Pistil Books' Museum of Weird Books
Rex Parker's Pop Sensation
Punk Rock Penguin's Bad Book Covers
FlapArt (for reading romance novels in public)
Reusable Cover Art in Historical Novels
Spooky Moon's Cover of the Week
Suburban Beatnik's Toga Porn
and finally A Guide to Writing your own Michael Crichton Book (and a book using the formula)

Titter-worthy Titling Automaton

Hey, All! DocTurtle here, spotting for Maughta on this cool and quiet eve. We're getting ready to head to the beach tomorrow for a much-deserved (and long-delayed) three-and-a-half-day weekend. But we couldn't leave you without one more post to tide you over until Monday. (If you're nice, maybe Maughta'll post again tomorrow, too!)

I'll make my contribution now.

I've posted twice before (here and here) about the utter inanity that is the romance novel title. They're really formulaic: if you've seen one, you've seen 'em all. I decided to crack the code and create my own Random Romance Novel Title Generator™, available for your use free of charge on my own website, located here.

I hope it's good for a few chuckles and the odd guffaw. I encourage you to provide your feedback (favorites? any words you think we missed?) in the comments section.

Happy hunting!

Phallic Phriday of the Phuture!

I'm not really sure what to say here besides, "Look! Penis!!" Also "Half man/half stereo receiver." And "Hah hah hah look at the computer!" I also like the juxtaposition of "bang-up job" right below the launch explosion (hey little commando-guys, you're supposed to run AWAY from the flames!!!). Yeah, it's the weekend, I'm losing it...

What I did over my summer vacation

Some of you out there might have been wondering just where the hell I've been the last few months. Well, in addition to fighting off sexbots, recovering from said sexbots, and enduring a double ear infection, I've been reading these books. I trust you'll understand why I had to stay locked up in my cave, away from the discerning public, while reading them once you've seen the covers. Wow, that corpse is sure looking good (good being relative to a corpse, not to a normal human being with any fashion sense whatsoever), even with half her face missing. She's not laughing, though. TRUTH IN ADVERTISING!! Where's her ear? Did it go where the rest of her face went? To a better place than this book cover, I hope!

Who told this artist that half-a-face was intriguing? Was it the same person who taught the artist of the Longarm books? For some reason that idea pleases me.

Oh gods, it gets worse!! The '80s were not a good time for ANYONE'S hair!!

Leather-clad vampire babes with automatic weapons? I'd read that.

Phallic Phriday: Republican Tools Edition

"Okay, Sven, for this pose I want you to reach down, grab your ankles, and think about Austria."


"Oh, Chad! Your pole is so long and hard, I don't think I can contain it with just two hands!"

Judge a Book: You be the Judge!

So occasionally I get masochist authors who want me to snark on their books. Now, we all know I'm too nice to make fun of my readers, right? That's why I leave it to you! Here are a couple of submissions (thanks, Julia and Lee!). Snark away!



Okay, I can't resist snarking on this one. Looks like Blossom got a double mastectomy and is four months pregnant. But my favorite part is the shadowed lettering. Doesn't look like bad photoshop at all!

Fairy Dust

Whew! Just escaped from the sexbots.

While I replenish my fluids and take some vitamin E, here's a video for your enjoyment. It features a fruitcake who draws bookcovers. Someone's been dipping in the fairy dust!!

Does this man inspire confidence?

Would you watch a movie this man recommended?   I happen to agree with Richard Crouse on some of his selections (at least a few of selections, actually, a lot of these movies are ob-scure):  Happy Texas is charmingly silly, Jason and the Argonauts made my childhood endurable, I was one of 5 people who liked Hedwig and the Angry Inch.  But there's no getting around the fact that Killer Klowns from Outer Space is terrible.

But why am I writing about what's in the book when I should be focusing on the cover of The 100 Best Movies You've Never Seen.  Hip thrusts do not inspire my confidence on the dance floor and they certainly don't on a movie recommendation book cover.  But it gets worse.  Here's the back cover.  

It's going to be a while before I want to eat popcorn again.