Plain Brown Wrapper Book Club

I love to find advertising material and ephemera that reveals some of the underground marketing of the sleaze paperback era.
These ink store stamps from “Rudy’s Adult Books, Redondo Beach, CA” advertised an adult book exchange service in which $1 would get a “book just like the one you have just finished” sent to you “in a plain wrapper.”

These stamps were inside a circulating copy of Sex in Prison (which I have to imagine was a disappointing title, most of the recipients being already over familiar with the practice).

The given address: 1505-1511 1/2 Aviation Blvd, Redondo Beach, CA 90278 shows a block of plain wrapper store fronts out of which Rudy might still be operating.

Find this book and more in my Vintage Paperbacks: Lesbian / Lesbiana catalog which has received a lot of recent additions (with more to come).

Standing Desk

My New Year’s resolution for 2013 is to get right with my back, so yesterday I converted my workstation into a standing desk.

It’s tough to see without me for scale (and with the monitor and sunny window blowing the contrast) but I used this cheap Ikea-hacked solution (<$30) which rests atop my previous Ikea Frankendesk.

I’m looking into a gel mat to soften the tile floor a bit but currently I’m just wearing running shoes.

So far I’ve listed a box of books and here I am writing a blog post so it seems like standing is working out so far.

This actually brings me back to my early bookselling days when I stood all day–sporting a name tag and worn out khakis–and fetched gift books for the barely literate. That has mixed appeal obviously but I choose to focus on the memory of being limber, relatively skinny and in my early 20s.

I’m not going to lie, I am 100% looking forward to sitting down with a movie over lunch but the contrast will add some zing to my day.

And because I can’t let anything stay healthy and productive for long, my next project is to pick up a PC arcade stick and turn my desk into a Sinistar emulator.

Two of My Favorite Things

Etsy craftsman James Bit offers custom jackets for videogames that can make your copy of Dead Or Alive Xtreme 2 look like a classy vintage Penguin paperback.

He also offers cool 8-Bit inspired floor decals that can put a Zelda-style hidden staircase underneath your library chair.

Link via The Double-Breasted Dust Jacket.

These–together with A.J. Hately’s work that I blogged previously–give me hope that game and digital media addicts won’t forget the aesthetic and tactile appeal of a well-designed book.

Customer Wall: Stephen R. Bissette

A few days ago I was excited to wake up a to a book order from a Stephen R. Bissette! A bit of cyber-stalking and a fanboyish email confirmed that this was the same Stephen R. Bissette who drew the classic Alan Moore run on Swamp Thing;

and published the ground-breaking horror anthology Taboo!

My favorite project of Bissette’s was Tyrant, which was conceived as the birth to death biography of a tyrannosaurus rex drawn in drippingly, gruesome Cretaceous-era detail.

Sadly Tyrant only ran for four regular issues but Bissette occasionally returns to the character and he offers an excellent print on his website which introduces his baby tyrannosaurus to Winsor McKay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland.

Pick one up for the dinosaur or comics fan on your Christmas list.

God Of Blades

God of Blades is an IOS hack and slash by White Whale Games with a beautiful art style, pounding prog-inspired musical score and an epic fantasy pedigree that includes Michael Moorcock, M.R. James and Roger Dean!
Check out the bookish trailer above and admire the inspired promotion lets you unlock special weapons if you FourSquare check in at a local library.
I don’t have an iDevice bitching enough to play this at the moment but as soon as it comes to PC I’m all over it.
Link via Venus Patrol.