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I ❤️ the Golden Age of Mysteries
I love the artwork on these old paperbacks. I’m cheating on the Library with an analog book today. Ellery Queen is quite anodyne anyway; there wouldn’t be much to annotate. I’m just being my Boo Radley self, hiding away with my vintage paperbacks and coffee, trying to pretend like I’m not living some hellish remake…
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Pagan Passions – R. Garrett, L. Harris (1959)
This was one of those pulp novels that has a great concept but mediocre execution, in my opinion, but it was entertaining, nevertheless. In an undisclosed future, the Greek/Roman pantheon of gods have returned to rule over modern man. Their agenda seems very confused, in my admittedly mortal opinion: they take steps to protect humanity…
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The White Queen of the Cannibals – J. Bueltmann (~1920)
Although I typically try to adhere to the old adage about not judging books by their covers, occasionally I run across a book whose title alone makes it a shoe-in for the Library of Amazonia; White Queen of the Cannibals, by the reverend A.J. Bueltmann, was just such a book. This young adult biography tells…
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“Captain Blood” – Rafael Sabatini (1922)
YES!!! I loved this book – it was so much fun to read! Buckles were being swashed left and right, booty was plundered, mizzen masts were hoisted, high seas were sailed, brigands were run through with rapiers, and love was in the air!! Captain Blood is pure, escapist, privateering fun on par with Robert Louis…
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“The Aab” – Edward Ludwig (1955)
This is a very short short story that was almost certainly first published in some pulp science fiction magazine, I just can’t figure out precisely which one. “The Aab” is a classic “bad guy gets what’s coming to him” tale that would perhaps be particularly exciting for claustrophobes and people with a fear of insects.…
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“The Clansman,” by Thomas Dixon (1905)
Wow, this is far and away the most offensive book I’ve ever read – and that is really saying something, because I kind of read offensive literature for a hobby (i.e. this blog). The venomous and unrelenting racism is bad enough, but one of my privileges as a white person is being able to close…
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Welcome to the Library!
Perhaps it would be more accurate to welcome you to the anti-library, as this is an inclusive place that celebrates interrupting, talking back, making noise, and disrupting social order. I’m a nerd who loves to read dime novels and pulp fiction, two forms of “lowbrow” literature that were popular in America from the time of…
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Malaeska: Indian Wife of the White Hunter
Although Malaeska was initially published serially in 1839 by “Ladies Companion” magazine, its republication by the Beadle brothers as the first of their “Beadle’s Dime Novels” series in 1860 made Ann Stephens literary history’s first dime novel author. Much of Ann Stephens’s biography unfortunately seems lost to history. She was born in Derby, Connecticut on…
Library of Amazonia
Dime & pulp novels, deconstructed.
Library of Amazonia 