Billy & Betty Blackberries

 Friend and local author Steve Grogan sent me this about on-line booksellers. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to mention it during the Tuesday night session of Bookstore 101, but here's a link to an extremely interesting article.

http://www.slate.com/id/2268000/

Parlez Vous French ?

We derive many literary terms from the French equivalent - it's just to add a large degree of snootiness to book-speak - but, unfortunately, these terms also provide an excellent shorthand to convey somewhat complicated ideas, dammit !  Here are a few for your delectation, minus their diacritical marks:

Super Mario

How trite. How hackneyed. An offer you can’t refuse unless you want a horse’s head in your bed, your knee caps shot off, a cement overcoat or boots, or a final ride in the trunk of a Cadillac.  Mario Puzo’s  first two novels,  Dark Arena, 1955, and The Fortunate Pilgrim, 1965, had good reviews, but were not financial successes.

No Half-Nelsons Here !

Many authors have one book in their souls, but continue to write. Nelson Algren was not one of them  Our Full Nelson won the very first National Book Award in 1950 for TMWTGA.  Perhaps the award should have been shared with Simone de Beauvoir, the French writer and philosopher, with whom Algren enjoyed a torrid love affair in South America throughout 1949.  His two big ‘uns were made into movies - not so unusual during the 1950s - with big stars: Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak in "The Man With The Golden Arm," and Laurence Harvey, Jane Fonda, Anne Baxter and Barbara Stanwyck in "A Walk On the Wild Side."  He also wrote a now rather scarce book of interest to fans of Hemingway: Notes From A Sea Diary  subtitled  Hemingway All the Way, an excellent collection of essays and hilarious anecdotes about his experiences at sea and his meeting with, and support of,  Ernest Hemingway. These books are highly collectible, but, as usual, condition is everything:

- The Man With the Golden Arm.   Doubleday, 1949  1st Edition.
A near fine condition book in a near fine dust jacket:  $125.00 - $150.00

 - The Man With the Golden Arm.   Doubleday, 1949  1st Edition. A fine condition book in a near fine   condition dust jacket. Inscribed by the author:  $1700.00   Vive la differance !

- A Walk on the Wild Side. Farrar, Straus and Cudahy,  1956  1st Edition. A fine condition book in a near fine condition dust jacket:  $100.00 - $150.00
- A Walk on the Wild Side. Farrar, Straus and Cudahy,  1956  1st Edition. A fine condition book in a near fine condition dust jacket. Signed: $200.00 - $250.00
- A Walk on the Wild Side. Farrar, Straus and Cudahy,  1956  1st Edition. A fine condition book in a near fine condition dust jacket. Inscribed, and accompanied by his  usual drawing of a cat:  $300.00 and up

-Notes From A Sea Diary: Hemingway All the Way. G.P. Putnam’s, 1965   1st Edition. A fine condition book in a fine condition dust jacket.  $ 25.00 - $65.00

Algren’s first novel, Somebody In Boots, was published in 1935 by Vanguard Press. It will cost you between $500.00 in barely collectible condition to over $12,000 for a signed, cat-drawing-enhanced copy. If you find or buy one, please let me touch it. Just once. Please !

Long Live The King - of Smut !

Harold Robbins was a joy to your mother and father, or maybe even to your grandmother and -father, because he brought dirty books out of the closet and onto their nightstands in the late 1940s and throughout the 50s and 60s. He styled himself as a Jewish orphan raised in a Catholic boys’ home, when in fact he was a nice Jewish boy, ne Harold Rubin, raised by his pharmacist father and stepmother in Brooklyn. It is true that he was a supreme hedonist, a skirt chaser and catcher, a coke head, and a gambler. It’s even true that he gambled with Aristotle Onassis. But, what can you expect from an individual who sold over 750 million books ? And liked the finer things of life ?  Although it’s been said that he - like so many others - squandered his talent by writing what he did, the orgies at his mansions in Beverly Hills, Acapulco, and France, added to his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame must have been a small compensation for the criticism.

Mark Your Calendars. NOW !

And join Greyhound's Books on November 7. We too will be showing a sample from our selection of cookbooks, probably right beside Amber Unicorn's offerings
 
http://vegasvalleybookfestival.org/feasting-on-words/

Captains Courageous

Military fiction series is a genre that drives collectors absolutely mad. There are so many great series, so many mediocre series, and, alas, some really crappy ones. Two of the very best involve Captains - one naval, one ground forces - both  set during the Napoleonic Wars, both written by British authors, and both  having a reverse character development.

Bang Bang. Chitty Chitty

Is Ian Fleming Sean Connery ? Is Sean Connery Ian Fleming ? Is Sean Fleming Julie Andrews, or Dick Van Dyke ?  It doesn’t really matter, because Jack Kennedy read the James Bond books and made Fleming millions of dollars in the United Kingdom, the United States, and worldwide.

Every bookseller in the world loves completeists  - collectors who seek out every edition, printing and variation of every book that their favorite author ever wrote. For Fleming collectors, this is not an insuperable task, but it is a costly one. The first three James Bond books are the killers:

Catalogs are Dandy, but the Internet is quicker !

My apologies to Ogden Nash for the paraphrase !

Here are some interesting internet sites to do research on, and to learn from:

Science Fiction Artists III

Chesley Bonestell (1888-1986) inspired an entire generation of astronomers, artists, writers, engineers and visionaries with his remarkable paintings. Living to the age of 98, he saw the entire scope of manned flight, and himself influenced mankind's push into outer space.Trained as an architect, Bonestell (pronounced BONN-i-stell) lost his first painting of Saturn in the San Francisco earthquake in 1906. Later, as Hollywood's highest paid special effects artist, he worked on such classics as the original “Hunchback of Notre Dame” and “Citizen Kane” through the 1950's “Destination Moon” and “War of the Worlds.”

Science Fiction Artists II

Frank Frazetta   (1928 - 2010) was a versatile and prolific comic book artist who, in the 1940s and ’50s, drew for comic strips like Al Capp’s “Lil’ Abner” and comic books like “Famous Funnies,” for which he contributed a series of covers depicting the futuristic adventurer Buck Rogers.
A satirical advertisement Mr. Frazetta drew for Mad magazine earned him his first Hollywood job, the movie poster for “What’s New Pussycat?” (1965), a sex farce written by Woody Allen that starred Peter Sellers. In 1983 he collaborated with the director Ralph Bakshi to produce the animated film “Fire and Ice.”

Science Fiction Artists I

Recognized as the most prolific and popular Science Fiction artist worldwide, (Frank) Kelly Freas illustrated stories by some of Science Fiction's greatest writers: Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, A. E. Van Vogt, Poul Anderson, and Frederik Pohl, to name just a few. Nominated an unprecedented twenty times, Freas was the first to receive ten Hugo Awards (World Science Fiction "Oscars) for achievement in the field as Best Professional Artist.

Notes from last night's Bookstore 101 Session 2

We discussed book identification, with an emphasis on differentiating between publisher's and book club editions of hardbound books. As usual, I cautioned the participants that "book club" does not necessarily mean "bad book to buy." Bookthink.com sends out a monthly electronic newsletter, and the article below comes from one of their editors. This copyright article re-published by permission:

Exceptions to the Rule:  The Science Fiction Book Club

Was Dexter Sinister ?

Timothy Dexter, born in Malden Massachusetts, was a rather strange, but strangely successful individual. His autobiography, A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, or Plain Truths in a Homespun Dress was one sentence long, and that sentence contained no punctuation marks. A 4th edition of the pamphlet (1848) currently sells for $ 75.00 - $ 350.00, but  you could read this masterwork in a new edition for $15.00 - $ 20.00. Not the first book we would recommend you buy. Or read.

Dead Wood ?

Believe it or not, Ed Wood, known for his movies Plan 9 From Outer Space, Glen or Glenda, and Monster of the Wood, wrote  books that were every bit as bad as his movies. Killer in Drag, is the story of a transvestite assassin who tries to find a sugar daddy to pay for his sex-change operation. Just think, trees died for this!