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Post by dem bones on Jun 27, 2018 11:24:58 GMT
Hi Earl. In case you are unaware, Crom's excellent article - with additional illustrative material - has since been published in Paperback Fanatic #38.
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Post by earldumarest on Jun 27, 2018 14:43:50 GMT
thanks! I've just started collecting Man's Books.
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Post by earldumarest on Jun 27, 2018 17:54:30 GMT
Ordered a copy
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Post by earldumarest on Jun 27, 2018 18:27:30 GMT
Can I make a suggestion that you and everyone will hate? If you post new scans, post the entire dust jacket so we can print our our own dj's. There are Odhams out there without djs and it would be nice if you could post these. If you think this idea has merit, I'll be glad to scan the few djs I have to contribute.
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Post by earldumarest on Jun 27, 2018 18:29:09 GMT
I'm supposed to get in 4 Man's book in the next week. I'll do some scans.
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Post by earldumarest on Jun 27, 2018 22:34:33 GMT
Just got in 4 Companion Book club books.
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Post by cromagnonman on Jun 28, 2018 10:51:06 GMT
Can I make a suggestion that you and everyone will hate? If you post new scans, post the entire dust jacket so we can print our our own dj's. There are Odhams out there without djs and it would be nice if you could post these. If you think this idea has merit, I'll be glad to scan the few djs I have to contribute. I think that might well contravene some fair usage protocol, to be honest with you. Its not as if original jacketed copies are particularly difficult or expensive to come by. I found quite a number on A**z*n m*r*e*tplace being sold for a penny plus postage. At those sorts of prices its always worth taking a flyer on them just to get hold of the wrapper which you can then swap onto a better condition book if you have to. Anyway, I've now reloaded most of the lost images. Have taken the opportunity to upgrade several of the scans and have posted a few new ones. Hope these prove of interest to you. The Companion Book Club was the more cosmopolitan elder sibling of the MB series, also issued by Odhams. Its books are far too numerous in number and wide ranging in scope to interest me overmuch in collecting. The exception being the titles issued between the mid 60s and early 70s when they came with terrific monochromatic illustrated wrappers like this: Prior to this the club had favoured a more subdued decorative design featuring repeated monogrammatic motifs. Some of these retain a striking effect like this Sherlock Holmes: But, believe it or not, someone at the club thought it a wheeze to do the same with Hitler's face on Alan Bullock's A STUDY IN TYRANNY. Der Fuhrer's face as wallpaper?!? Can't imagine we'll be seeing rolls of that at Homebase anytime soon.
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Post by helrunar on Jun 28, 2018 12:12:26 GMT
That Deighton cover is literally a scream. Thanks!
cheers, Steve
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Post by earldumarest on Jun 28, 2018 18:38:26 GMT
Great information!!!! Thanks!
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Post by helrunar on Oct 1, 2019 17:45:45 GMT
I am posting here purely for the author's photograph (which is a link to his page on a popular online retail shopping site). You may or may not find this amusing--you may or may not find it helpful. I have to admit I chuckled a few times (I was going to write that I "giggled," but that just doesn't sound very manly, now does it?) legendsofmen.com/2019/10/how-to-build-a-masculine-library/Saluting, Helrunar
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Post by dfrancois69 on Dec 8, 2019 16:12:50 GMT
Hi I have 16 of these books with the original covers plus two without covers . Just wondered if there were any interest in taking them off our hands??
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Post by dfrancois69 on Dec 8, 2019 16:35:06 GMT
Sorry meant to say they are the odhams mans books 3 in one all but 2 have the original colour covers A twist of sand,my shadow death, appointment in Bahrain
Troika, thunder at noon, so thin is the line
From the city From the plough, black flamingos, prison feud The raising of the queen,the careful man, the day they hijacked death
Brazen chariots, the big still,the midnight sea
Company of cowards,ten thousand eyes, alien virus Wind along the waste,Phyllis,death of a Tom Road block,faith has no country,the man who owned the world Hangmans song,the highbright sun,death of a bogey Extraordinaryseamen,stranger in galaxy, the hollow square Flight of the bat,dark side of the island the dangerous lady Journey for Betsy, the killing Chase, tar white The Achilles affair,blood and judgement, two hours to doom Barbouze,the zebra striped hearse, the Cincinnati kid Flight of the Phoenix, hammerhead, double exposure Glory thrown in,the bright road to fear,the drowning stone Strike from the sky,McCabe,steady boys ready Game force, count 5 and die,the big bite
Without colour covers Devil in the moonlight,trail of gunfighter,require for a schoolgirl The oppress file,the body snatchers, a true of ice
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Post by dfrancois69 on Dec 8, 2019 16:46:56 GMT
Recently I've developed an interest in collecting the Man's Book series of omnibus volumes published by Odhams between the late 1950s and early 1970s. Available only by subscription originally they were marketed as an economical means to the end of book buying at a time when a new book could retail for as much as twenty one shillings or more. This is a sum which I'm sure vaulters of a pre decimal vintage will confirm constituted an immeasurably higher percentage of a weekly wage than a new book would today. Even so, at eleven shillings plus postage these books would still have been the preserve of the reasonably affluent of the time. Most working people wouldn't have dreamed of investing that sort of sum in a book and would have accessed all their new fiction through their local public library. Odhams billed the series in amusingly virile language: "Action, suspense and thrills are the essential qualities of all the stories which are selected, from the pick of all the publishers' lists, by an all male editorial board who know the kind of tough, hard hitting reading that men prefer."
Its interesting to speculate whether any publisher today would get away with not only owning up to having "an all male editiorial board" but in actively revelling in the fact.
Generally the books collected consisted of thrillers of various types: espionage stories, crime novels, science-fiction, westerns etc etc but there were excursions also into humour and wartime memoirs. Up until 1966 each book came jacketed with glorious tripartite colour wrappers with specially drawn illustrations (some of which look to me to be the work of the great Jim Holdaway). From that point onwards, presumably in an attempt at cost cutting, these were replaced with a drabber format with monochrome reproductions of the featured books' original covers.
Nevertheless the quality of book production otherwise remained high and the calibre of the selected titles impressive. In its time the Man's Book series published a lot of highly collectable books and having done so remain as economic a means of collecting those books now as they were originally intended to. Perhaps even more so. Books published include PSYCHO, several titles in the Modesty Blaise sequence, the early work of Harry Patterson (aka Jack Higgins aka Martin Fallon) and Travis McGee novels of John D MacDonald.
In some volumes also the three novels were supplemented by additional short stories. The two stories by Robert Bloch advertised above are "Sock Finish" and "Where the Buffalo Roam" for instance: publishings which I believe escaped even Flanagan's gimlet eye in his Bloch bio-bibliography.
Probably the most satisfying aspect of collecting these books stems from how cheaply they can be picked up. Sometimes they can be found for as little as £2 or so and rarely more than a tenner; although the Travis McGees do attract a premium on account of the original novels being so hard and expensive to obtain. And its true that its easier to find them without the sumptuous jackets than with them.
But then, hey, who wants one's book collecting hobby to be easy.
please see my recent post
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Post by dfrancois69 on Dec 8, 2019 16:49:40 GMT
Please see my recent posting regarding the mans books
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Dec 8, 2019 17:38:55 GMT
Please see my recent posting regarding the mans books Please take a deep breath.
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