I found this amazing and inspiring article on the Yahoo!News Book/Publishing News page, which lately is about as full of good news as the Dow Jones industrial average. A young man in Albuquerque raised over $6000.00 to help build a library in Ethiopia as part of a nonprofit charity’s efforts to improve literacy in that country. Ethiopia Reads has built 30 libraries and aims for 100 by 2010.
Tobyn Pulice raised the money by selling “Shout Outs” for .25c during morning announcements at school, which brought in $1800, and then helped organize a community golf tournament.
Ethiopia Reads was founded by Yohannes Gebregeorgis, who grew up with a complete lack of books to the point that “he can remember each one he read until he was 19 years old.”
Pretty awesome, right? Ok, now for the fun section. This is the part that nearly knocked me out with the giggles:
He recalled a British teacher delivering textbooks to his school in her Volkswagen, a Peace Corps volunteer introducing him to American literature and reading his first fiction book, called “Love Kitten,” cover to cover.
“It was the first book I read outside school. I was also young at that time, 19, and I was in love and it was a romance book and that was the magic,” he said. “That was what did it.”
Aw, I thought to myself, a romance. He thought it was magic.
Until I Googled the title – holy shit. Get a load of the cover blurb! “Can a Young Woman’s Body Restore a Husband’s Fading Youth? He hated her guts because she was his Father’s wife.”
AWWRIIIIGHT! Let’s hear it for the Peace Corps and their pulp novel tour!
Googling Arthur Adlon’s other titles gets you a look at more of his writing, or at least some of his titles.
Tramp Nurse – 1962
The Lusting Three – 1968
Peep Show – 1973
The Female Animal – 1975
Cold Wife – 1981
And 1964’s—- I hope my USB has a copy because I have to see the cover—- Experiment in Love: The Extraordinary Story of an Experimental Affair Involving Sex Without Love and Love Without Sex…
And who ever said romance novels couldn’t better the world? That’s awesome.
What’s even more amazing are the prices these books command.
I was struck in particular by the subtitle for ‘The Odd Kind’:
“The remarkable novel that unveils the sleek and expensive world of the lesbians who model the newest fashions in public – and perform ancient rituals in private!”
Really? Ancient rituals? And he knew all this already in 1964!
I know we had that same discussion recently, but this isn’t exactly looking like romance to me.
We do what we can.
No, mostly it’s not romance, it’s pulp. But gloriously trashy, you’ve gotta admit!
Some of these pulp novels do provide HEA endings, too.
Not the lesbian ones though. Lesbians in the 50’s almost never got a ending that didn’t involve death or desertion. By the way, from
From: http://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=685
LOL! In the interest of continuing education, more titles:
By Love Depraved – ‘61
She Who Strays – ‘63
Private Nurse – ‘64
Strange Seduction – ‘62
Bedroom Windows – ‘65 – “A community incensed by an anonymous peeper – who made use of what he saw.”
Blue Denim Doll – ‘60
Lesbos Is For Lonnie
All Girl Office
Adam’s Women
Flesh
For Sin’s Sake
The Great Husband Swap – “The quiet community turned into a sex carnival the night the wives too over.”
Neglected Wives
AND
The Hot Kiss of Youth – “Sophisticated, 42-year-old Sylvia Meredith did not ask for… she demanded.”
ROFLMAO!!! Something tell me this guy spent a lot of time in his room with his mother yelling on the other side of the door “You’re going to go blind!!!” OMG – my keyboard! You know you want to pick some up:
http://www.amazon.com/s/qid=1227921123/ref=sr_pg_1?ie=UTF8&rs=1000&rh=i:stripbooks,p_27:Arthur Adlon&page=1
Oh sh—t! Link screwed up! Sorry!
Gee, for some reason I always thought they handed out “real” literature. snigger.
Someone either wasn’t checking the contents too well, or had a really warped sense of humor. (Can you imagine if this went to a 9 year old instead of a 19 year old?)
I vote for the warped sense of humor.
See, these would make excellent Presents titles ;-).
(parts53. which part?)
To be fair, though, some of those pulps weren’t bad, and the blurbs tended to be as reliable as some romance ones. And the plot of La Vyrle Spencer’s The Fulfillment is similar to the Love Kitten blurb – guy falling for and discovering love with his brother’s wife rather than his father’s, but still, if Spencer’s book could rise above a brutal plot summary (which a lot of people thought it did), so could this one, I reckon.
hahahahahahahahahah! and cheeechee. LOVE THAT .