For my birthday Ted got for me this great vintage Pocket Book, Peabody’s Mermaid, by Guy and Constance Jones–and it came today in the mail.  The book, this version of which was published in 1948 (it was also serialized in Cosmopolitan Magazine in 1945!), is a movie tie-in. I think I’ve mentioned it before but [...]

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I really shouldn’t have, but I bought this pulp novel on Ebay a week ago and just got it in the mail.–it was just a $1.99. I’m a sucker for these pulps from the 50s/60s–but especially if they’re film tie-ins, like this one: The Best of Everything written by Rona Jaffe. The movie starred Hope [...]

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No, i’m not dead–but you wouldn’t know it based on my lack of posting lately. It’s been a hectic and challenging last few weeks. Some highlights: A couple of weeks ago, as you may know, I took Tom Spanbauer‘s Dangerous Writing workshop– three intense days of talking, writing, analyzing about what we are afraid of [...]

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I’m so in love with William Saroyan‘s memoir The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills. It was given to me by a fellow teacher, a Saroyan scholar, at one of the schools where I teach. I haven’t read it all, but I visit the book every so often–it sits on the nightstand next to my bed, [...]

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Van Johnson has died (this has been a bad week for classic movie stars!). He was 92. Van Johnson was often described as having “affable charm and boyish good looks.” He was especially good in the MGM musicals of the 1940s, though as a dramatic actor he was often underrated. Here’s Van (and June Allyson–a [...]

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I love vintage books. I’m starting to collect vintage pulp books– mostly those that have been made into movies, like these: The Bad Seed, Revolt (or Day of) The Triffids, and The Left Hand of God (that’s Humphrey Bogart on the cover–he was in the film version). I believe I got all of these from [...]

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I’m a bit swamped this week, what with working on my book/chapters and grading and preparing for this Literary Arts Festival at one of the colleges where I teach Creative Writing (i’m giving a talk for their “Writer as Activist” Festival Theme–but more on that another time). In the meantime, here is one of my [...]

Posted in books, cary elwes, fiction, shopping, vintage books 1 Comment »