Pizza Platter Model Airplane

I recently bought a large collection of model airplane magazines dating back to the 1950s. In the process of listing and detailing their contents, I came across some really cool plans that I am–sadly–not mechanically savvy enough to put together. This was one of my favorites. It’s remote control plane / flying saucer made out of a disposable pizza tray!

This plan was created by Don Mowrer and published in Model Airplane News (June 1966, Vol. LXXIII #6). Here’s links to the full plans: Page1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4.

You’re on your own for the radio hand set but I’m sure that info is readily available.

Man, what Ed Wood could have done with this kind of technology.

Happy flying!

On the Bum: You Can’t Win by Jack Black

I just finished the perfect book for my Memorial Day road trip, You Can’t Win by Jack Black.

The book is the memoir of a hobo/vagabond and career criminal whose life on the road spanned 30+ years from the post Civil War-era (some of his traveling companions were veterans) to the early decades of the 20th century. History with a capital “H” though is peripheral as the author was single-mindedly focused on casing hotels, cracking payroll safes, and avoiding murderous railroad Bulls.

With its complicated, hermetic underworld, and surreal street jargon, You Can’t Win was a heavy influence on William Burroughs and the Beats and is a fascinating read. You’ll meet fine Americans like “Foot-and-a-Half George”, “Salt Chunk Mary”, “The Sanctimonious Kid”; methodically learn how to find a mark, rob a house when the occupants are sleeping inside, and dispose of your loot so you can hit the Faro table and score a hypo of opium.

The author was widely read (he was a big user of the prison library) and the book is lucid and engrossingly written. You don’t need a historical preamble explaining why the book is important (unlike Asbury’s Gangs of New York, which I wanted to love but is much better when excerpted in Luc Sante’s Low Life), rather Black will step forward and tell you himself. Sadly we don’t know much about the author’s life that isn’t in the book. The best corroborating evidence to this memoir would be his arrest record but as he never gave the same name twice (and this was the pre- fingerprint era) that information is likely gone forever.

The first edition of You Can’t Win commands several hundred dollars but it’s still in print and a new or used copy can be purchased from Amazon. Sadly they’ve changed the cover from the gruesome (and somewhat inaccurate) Joe Coleman painting on the Amok Press Edition (pictured above).

I love historical crime memoirs and exposes of particular, extinct “rackets”. They remind me that we’re all in a racket or one kind or another (particularly bookdealers….yuck). Hobos definitely had it rough but reading this book made me lament the fact that modern trains are too damn fast and they barely go anywhere besides urban centers which are all more or less the same anyway.

Paperback Pr0n

Just received the last part of a large SF collection I purchased a while back. A lot of great paperbacks in this lot: some mapbacks, early Ace Philip Dick, Avon Lovecraft, lots of Kuttner, Sturgeon, Avram Davidson and more.

Some of these need a little touching up but they will be making their way into my store soon (the ones that make it past MY bookshelf that is).

Check the new arrivals link at right over the next few days. Photos will follow.

Zine Review: Ghosts of Ready Reference

I received a packet of ‘zines from Love Bunni Press. They were all smart and charming but the ones that really grabbed me were two issues of a librarian produced ‘zine called Ghosts of Ready Reference.


The ‘zine details everyday life at the reference desk of a public library and describes the recurring characters (and they are Characters) who float in and out. “Mad Margaret” (a cranky autodidact), “Walker, Texas Ranger” (who lost his mother and needs the proper reference work to find her), and “Babyface” (a middle-aged infant, seething with anger) are just a few of the characters you’ll meet.

I’ve never worked in a library, but I’ve paid my dues in bookstores and the unnamed librarian in this ‘zine has a real knack for capturing the feeling that you’ve been unwillingly stuffed in the middle of a Samuel Beckett play that runs for 8 hours every week day. Libraries and bookstores are magnets for lonely people who can’t get attention anywhere else. You’re trapped behind a counter and they will be satisfied.

Highly recommended. Try the Love Bunni website or send a SASE and a dollar or two here:


Book Arts

I just started a section for Book Arts & Bookbinding in my blog rolls. The first link is to Nancy Loeber’s blog The Good Fight. It displays a selection of her works in progress. Really beautiful, whimsical stuff.




Nancy was my instructor for Bookbinding I at the Center for Book Arts. It’s a week long intensive course in which you make several books and a few boxes/structures. Definitely worth it.

Bookselling Tools: Book Cradle and Page Weight

Taking attractive, professional photos can be a chore when you have a stack of 50 books to get through. Especially as a one man (only two-handed) operation. Here are a couple of tools that make it a little easier.


The book cradle display is from Gaylord Library Supply. They are often used to show-off illustrated volumes at book shows. The concave shape hold the book in a natural open position, without stressing the binding, and the gap at the bottom middle prevents pressure on the foot of the spine. If you have a decorative/antique lectern this would work (and make a more attractive photo prop) but they aren’t as gentle on book bindings.

The page weight I found at a stoop sale but they also have them at Gaylord (a different variety). It’s just two flat lead weights covered in suede (to prevent marring). You could probably make something similar with a nice length of finished hardwood or an antique wooden ruler (which would serve the double purpose of showing the books dimensions).

Here’s how you use them:


Much easier (and nicer) than trying to hold the book open with your hand and ending up with a blurry photo, or a potential bidder fixating on your hang-nail.

I use three clip-on lamps (arrayed at 10, 12 and 2 o’clock) with 150 Watt bulbs. Then align, crop and tweak in photoshop.

Found in a Book

A few new items for the ephemera wall.

Found this in Volume 12 of the Collected Marx and Engels:

Who knew Uncle Joe had such healthy and happy daughters? RRRRRrrrrrrr

And this one in an old diary:

Nice spats! Wish I could pull those off. What kind of deal do you think they’re sealing? Either the car was just sold, or they whacked a guy in the back seat.

Health Insurance Alternatives

If you’re like many used booksellers, you probably work for a small shop or are self-employed and “health insurance” consists of looking both ways before you cross the street, and not touching the handle on the men’s room door. If so, I have just the book for you–

Treatment, or Healing by True Prayer by F. L. Rawson (Society for Spreading the knowledge of True Prayer, London 1922)

In it the author recommends using modern diagnostic methods together with the “rifled barrel” of targeted prayer to treat your ills… to deny them existence actually.

Reproduced here are a few prayers for ailments common to the bookseller:

HAY FEVER: There is no hay fever, for man is spiritual and perfect. There are no irritating substances, for each idea of God, from the infinite to the infinitesimal, benefits and ministers to man. There is no “running at the nose,” for God controls and directs all activity in accordance with His omnipresent law.

HERNIA: There is no rupture, man is spiritual, complete and perfect. There are no weakened muscles. There is no weakness in the abdominal wall. Man’s muscles were never separated. Man’s bowels are never out of place, man’s bowels are the knowledge of God as soul, working perfectly and divinely.

NEAR-SIGHTEDNESS: There are no flattened eyeballs, man’s eyeballs are spiritual and perfect. There are no weakened muscles. There is no hardening of the eyeballs, man’s eyeballs are spiritual, perfect, pure and holy.

IMPURE THOUGHTS: There are no impure thoughts, man is spiritual, always doing what is right. Man has no desires, man has everything he needs.

INCOME TAX REPORTS: There is no difficulty in preparing reports. There are no mistakes, man reflects divine wisdom, intelligence and knowledge, grouping together God’s ideas into perfect combinations, which he presents to his fellow man.

CONSTIPATION: There is no constipation, man’s food is the ideas of God which continually unfold to man, with perfect ease and perfect regularity. Man’s bowels are channels in consciousness through which God’s ideas, when grouped together, pass. Man’s muscles are God’s thought forces, having absolute power and strength, working perfectly, working divinely.

There. feeling better? Pardon me, I have some ideas to channel.