Book News, In Brief

Want to take a trip down memory lane the seedy back alleys of the psychologically scarred? Learning To Share has just posted a big collection of vintage paperback cover art. Even if you don't have the time to check out their entire collection, at least click this post's accompanying image. Why aren't publishers putting teaser lines like this on today's books?
(Original heads-up: Boing Boing)

Jack T. Chick, perhaps the creepiest comics legend ever to put pen to paper, gets profiled in the Tallahassee Democrat. For those of you lucky enough not to have your nightmares haunted by Chick's heavy-handed artwork and ideology, he's the guy who makes those little you're-going-to-hell-if-you-(fill in the blank) comics that your recently 'saved' relatives tried and push on you at holiday dinners.
(Original heads-up: Journalista)

Find a new home for your beer hat, Auto Trader magazines, and that ashtray full of stale Cheesy Puffs. NASCAR has a coffee table book. Portraits of NASCAR by Anita Rich and Robin Dallenbach is a look inside the lives and loves of Wal-Mart circular covermodels Tony Stewart, Dale Earnhardt Jr, Jimmie Johnson, Rusty Wallace and Richard Childress. Oh, and just in time for Black History month!

Seattle PI: "Seattle police are looking for a man who attempted to mail to Paris a box full of books packed with handgun parts and ammunition. An alert clerk at a Wallingford UPS Store was preparing to ship the plastic-wrapped books on Jan. 31 when she noticed that one of the hardbacks rattled, according to police reports. The woman shook the book and spotted a gun part slipping through the pages. The clerk phoned police Monday, after attempting to contact the sender. Searching the books, officers found a disassembled Beretta handgun, three loaded magazines and two boxes of 9mm ammunition hidden in hollowed copies of Richard Tarnas’ Cosmos and Psyche, Isaac Asimov’s Chronology of the World, and a communications text."
(Original heads-up: Quill and Quire)