Paperback 836: The Jungle Seas / Arthur A. Ageton (Signet S1200)

Paperback 836: Signet Giant S1200 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: The Jungle Seas
Author: Arthur A. Ageton
Cover artist: James Meese

Estimated value: $5-10


Best things about this cover:

• "I think that's … yeah, that's just a freckle, Kathy. You're gonna be fine."
• Navy Vampires of Tonga!
• He likes it when you scratch him here. *Really* likes it.
• James Meese wants you to know that he can sure as hell paint hands. All hands, all day, mother*ckers!

Best things about this back cover:

• Dude's like, "Squirrel!?"
• "… a book to join THE CAINE MUTINY … on that shelf of books I haven't read."
• "full-bodied" [wink!]

Page 123~

"Yes, sir. Was I groaning?"
"Were you groaning? Boy, you let out a scream that scared me right out of a sound sleep. Who's Rogers?"

"Uh … Rogers? … uh … he's this guy … you know … definitely not a former lover, if that's what you're thinking … oh, no wait. I mean 'Ginger'! 'Ginger Rogers!' Forget that other stuff I said. Ginger Rogers. Guys scream for her, right? Right. Ginger."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 756: The Wild Palms and The Old Man / William Faulkner (Signet S1148)

Paperback 756: Signet S1148 (1st ptg, 1954)

Title: The Wild Palms and The Old Man
Author: William Faulkner
Cover artist: James Avati

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• Contemptuous Annette Bening resents your intrusion into her back-porch reveries.
• James Avati is by far the best boring cover artist of all time.
• There are many nice features to this painting—the expression on her face, the color of her shirt, the … let's call it an 'awning,' her bare feet, the grain in the wood … but still, this is pretty dull as covers go. Maybe they dialed it back out of respect for the Nobel Prize?

Best things about this back cover:

• Yawn.
• You can do better than this, Signet Giant!
• The only part of this back cover that I like is the word "drenched."

Page 123~ (from "The Wild Palms")

The yellow eyes were full on him, she released the bitten lip and as he sprang back toward the bed he heard over the chuckling murmur of the wind the two voices at the front door, the porch—the plump-calved doctor's high, almost shrill, almost breaking, that of the gray gorgon wife cold and level, at a baritone pitch a good deal more masculine than the man's voice, the two of them unorientable because of the wind like the voices of two ghosts quarreling about nothing, he (Wilbourne) hearing them and losing them too in the same instant as he bent over the wide yellow stare in the head which had ceased to roll, above the relaxed bleeding lip.

In case you were wondering what "Faulknerian" meant.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]