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.