Paperback 912: Coming of Age in Samoa / Margaret Mead (Mentor M44)

Paperback 912: Mentor M44 (1st ptg, 1949)

Title: Coming of Age in Samoa
Author: Margaret Mead
Cover artist: jonas

Estimated value: $10-15

Best things about this cover:

• Striking design. Love the stylized monochrome foliage against the stark white backdrop.
• They seem like they're having fun.
• This probably shouldn't remind me of John Travolta and Uma Thurman dancing in "Pulp Fiction," but it does.
• The most important difference between Samoan society and our own is No Nipples ... For Anyone!

Best things about this back cover:

• I enjoy mentally changing "earnestly" (in Dorsey's review) to "salaciously," "lustily," "hornily," and the like.
• Freud!?
• "The domain of erotics." I want to go to there.
• I read "primitive heart-stirrings" as "primitive heart-strings," because it's nicer.

Page 123~

People forgave her violence and her quarrelsomeness for sheer mirth over her propitiatory antics.

She got away with shit 'cause she was fun to be around and sometimes bought the drinks. (You're welcome)

~RP

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Paperback 520: Tales of the South Pacific / James A. Michener (Pocket Books 516)

Paperback 520: Pocket Books 516 (16th-18th ptg, 1950)

Title: Tales of the South Pacific
Author: James A. Michener
Cover artist: Harvey Kidder

Yours for: $5


Best things about this cover:

• "I ... uh ... I forget why I came in here."
• "My eyes are up here" doesn't really work when you're topless.
• I liked the Kangaroo better when it had a joey in its pouch. This "book boner" incarnation is disturbing.

Best things about this back cover:

• Whoa, someone's got a military fetish. I'm looking at you, K.C. Clapp.
• "Balinese lasses" is not the kind of phrase you are likely to see ... ever. Unless there are Balinese in Ireland.
• "Bali laughs" is so terrible I literally laughed.

Page 123~

As in a trance, Cable sucked in his breath audibly. The girl smiled, and at that moment Cable heard a hissing noise. He turned around, frightened. But it was only bloody Mary. She had her peach-basket hat in her left hand. Stains of betel juice were drenching the ravines of her mouth, which was grinning, broadly. Her broken teeth showed through, black, black as night. She winked her right eye heavily and asked, "You like?" Then she turned and fled down the path.

Ah, natives. So droll. So quaint. So exotic. Just a moment of local color before our hero has sex with an underage prostitute ... who is a virgin ... who will cry immediately after. You know, the way men do. "The regrets and moral questionings would come later."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 141: Ah King / W. Somerset Maugham (Berkley Books BG-149)

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

Yours for: SOLD 9/18/10


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