Tijuana Bibles: Betty Boop

I just picked up a rare lot of 6 “Tijuana Bibles“. These were cheaply produced, 8-page stapled booklets from the 1930s-40s featuring the pornographic adventures of cartoon characters, politicians, mobsters and anyone vaguely sexy who stumbled into the public eye.

TBs were the Depression-era equivalent of the celebrity sex-tape, so turn your monitor towards the wall and enjoy “Betty Steps Out” (WARNING: Not even slightly worksafe…feeelthy in fact.)


This one is pretty well-drawn for the form. Since all of the characters (besides Betty) look line-for-line like their overground counterparts, I’m betting some tracing was involved. If your browser isn’t showing it large enough to–ahem–read use the magnify function or download to your desktop.

This one and five others (including: Harold Teen, Fred “Killer” Burke, Moon Mullins) are available from my store here.

Three Bookplates

Some new bookplate acquisitions.

This first one is my favorite to date. A stylized Art Nouveau / Deco ship on a stormy sea. If I’m reading the lettering correctly it was designed for (or by) “AMO Peet”, “From My Mother’s Library”.


The next two are less stylized (and probably off-the-rack) but still nice.

An arboreal scene with a bookcase frame, belonging to “Sylvia Kraunz.”


Lastly an astrologically-themed “Leo” bookplate with some nice Roman columns, belonging to “Helen M. Brown” an editor at Doubleday until the 1990s.

"World’s Largest Garage Sale" Report

So it started with a comedy of errors–I rented a smaller car than planned, the campsite wouldn’t budge on check-in time so we had to take two vehicles, AND I managed to get lost only a mile from the house where I grew up–but the WLGS in Warrensburg NY was fun and relatively successful. I won’t make a profit on the books I purchased anytime soon but they’ll take the edge off the road trip costs.

Here are some highlights:

Warrensburg is full of these beautiful, weathered Victorians. The town was built up around the paper and logging industies and when they mostly died out–during the Depression–these houses were left untouched.


If I didn’t already have a name for my business “Cheap, Trashy Books” has a great ring to it.

I would’ve killed for this mid-century modern card table and chair set but it would take up a whole room. It’s hard to make out in the picture but the chairs are actually the table legs and they rotate outward on casters. The dealer said this came from a lodge that had a set of eight. This was the last one. Anyone recognize the designer?

And more furniture I couldn’t fit, afford, or carry:

A sorting station from an 1800s post office….Man would this class up my shipping department.

14 feet of oak drawers that would fit decades of crap that I don’t need to look at again.

more garage sale photos on my Flickr page.

I’ll be posting some of my finds from the sale over the next few days.

HFB Short Fiction Reading Guide: "Memorare" by Gene Wolfe

During my stint as an editorial assistant for Tor Books, I started a word doc of memorable short fiction. I’ve maintained the doc ever since and now I’m (slowly) transferring it to LibraryThing.

If you enjoy slipstream/dark/offbeat fantasy, horror and sf you might want to take a look and compare notes. WARNING: My quick summaries contain absurdly reductive spoilers.

Here’s the link – Hang Fire Books Short Fiction Reading Guide

I’ll eventually finish the transfer and mention new additions here.

Which brings me to:

“Memorare” by Gene Wolfe (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 2007)

I’m well behind on this one. April was a special Wolfe issue containing the novella-length story and appreciations by Neil Gaiman and Michael Swanwick. I wanted to savor this but it was buried under an avalanche of magazines which I’ve only just dug through.

Anyway, the story is concerned with a documentary “film”-maker (or the far future media equivalent) who’s traveling through space, making a record of mausoleums that have been built directly into asteroids. The early days of space colonization were quite deadly and due to the difficulty of going home–and the presumable lack of real estate–the survivors entombed their beloved dead in space. These memorials are unique relics of diverse religions that became more… diverse…through the distance and isolation of space. Many of the long-departed builders had regressed to the more blood-thirsty origins of their faiths and their mausoleums are actually carefully crafted death traps designed to add the souls/essences/blood (methods vary) of unwary visitors to the memorializing effort.

A domestic dispute and two new crew-members follow the film-maker through his explorations and the drama plays to its conclusion in this unique and memorable setting.

Much to love. I hope some obsessive Wolfe fan is coding these tombs for a space-based Mmorpg (perhaps the rumored Joss Whedon-inspired Firefly game where they would fit in perfectly).

PHILISTINE ALERT: Gene Wolfe is a devout Catholic and his stories are thickly layered with religious symbolism and complex allegories (not to mention untrustworthy narrators, doubles, ciphers and every other trick you can imagine). I can sense and appreciate the richness but–having been an atheist for two and a half decades now–I’m just not going to worry over a puzzle that requires me to look up obscure saints and the Lord’s prayer. I read Wolfe for the atmosphere and originality and there’s plenty of both in this story.

Poor Fool

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Poor Fool (Novel Selections #52) 1953 AUTHOR: Erskine Caldwell ARTIST: (unknown), originally uploaded by Hang Fire Books.

The second in my series of really ugly books. Stiff, poorly- preportioned figures, no sense of perspective, an ugly palette, and about the most effeminate looking brawler I’ve ever seen. I’m pretty sure the dame behind him could tear his head off (and his manager looks like he knows it).