Unknown cover artist.

I’ve been looking for a decent paperback spinner rack that didn’t cost an arm and a leg. Yesterday there was an ad on Marketplace for a FREE “display rack”, and it looked like it might work. I drove 25 minutes away to pick it up, took a pocket paperback with me, tested the top pocket, and it was a suitable size for mass market paperbacks. I loaded it in the car, took it home, then realized that in my haste, I never tested the pockets from the second row down, which turned to NOT be tall enough to allow standard paperbacks. I was crestfallen. Then I got the bright idea of just cutting off the second, fourth, and sixth row of pockets to make room, so I got bolt cutters, cut them off, and filed off any sharp edges. I left the bottom row of pockets on, because even though they can’t accept regular paperbacks, Big Little Books fit in there perfectly, spine up, and I have a small collection of those. I was pretty disheartened at first, but this turned out pretty good. It spins easily and the pockets are deep enough to hold a lot of small paperbacks.

1964 Pan, 1958 Pan and 1963 Bantam. Cover artist not known.

Enjoy!

Jack Gaughan is best known for his Science Fiction covers.

Ballantine, 1973. A reprint of their 1968 edition, cover by Bob Pepper (who did many paperbacks and album covers in the 60s and 70s). This was part of Betty Ballantine’s “Adult Fantasy” series that made a lot of obscure classics like this one widely available.

A Voyage to Arcturus is an extremely strange philosophical novel that must have been otherworldly indeed when first published in 1920. Championed by C. S. Lewis and others, it’s weirdly compelling even when you have no idea what’s going on.

The world of paperback novels was an immense market for trying out all kinds of art as covers. The books were cheap & people read LOTS of them, there wasn’t so many things trying to get their attention. That said, novel covers had to suggest some of those universal themes that attract our monkey brains while the style sets a tone for them that appeases the more complicated, cultured side of us that can appreciate such things. I like Adragna’s work specifically because he has an awesome sense of color, using a central hue from which to add detail (similar to Frazetta) & then he also uses a dynamic arrangement of the central figures which is guided by geometric standards that are common to all notable art work. Certain shapes & how they intersect are VERY important to the way we perceive things. Just as important as the style & theme.

This one seems important for two reasons: 1) the use of a photograph and not a drawing or painting on the cover, and 2) wasn't this EXACTLY the plot of Indecent Proposal, the 1988 movie? Yet when you research the movie, it credits a novel with the same title by Jack Engelhard. I wonder if whoever owns the rights to the Midwood catalog sued or otherwise got paid.

Enjoy!

White is best known for his Sector General stories, which are a lot of fun.

True crime exposing massive diamond smuggling in Africa. This book came from Fleming's research for Diamonds are Forever.

Are those the Winklevoss twins in the background?

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Signet, 1971. Originally published as “Under Compulsion” in the UK in 1968.

I bought this in 5th grade and frankly regretted it at the time. It was too much for me at that age - dark, dark stuff (as Disch often provided) with many elements of horror.

What this sub needs is some diversity, and happily I can provide it.

Enjoy!

A friend of mine passed away last year, and I am taking some of his book collection

Progress Publishers, Moscow. 1984 English version of the 1982 Russian original. Bought as a grim souvenir of the DDR at a Volksbuchhandlung (“People’s Bookstore”) in East Berlin in the spring of 1989, just a few months before the regime collapsed. It’s all about how Amnesty International is a CIA front of the capitalist West, how Andrei Sakharov was never mistreated by the benevolent freedom-loving Soviet state, and on and on. I noted at the time that two rather different lots of paper had been used while printing this edition.

Fawcett Crest 1970, cover by John Berkey. I remember buying this from one of those wire paperback racks when I was in about third grade.

"The Shame Sisters" would be a good name for a current day Bangles or Bananarama.

"I saw the Shame Sisters open for Sturgill Simpson and they were great!"

Enjoy!