The MAD Reader, Redux

Today’s book is The MAD Reader [Book 1], by Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Davis, Bill Elder, and Wallace Wood.  Softcover published 2002 by Ibooks, NY.   This is the 50th Anniversary Facsimile Edition, a reprint of the first MAD paperback anthology that debuted in 1952.  Not only was it the first MAD treasury, it was the first-ever paperback collection of a comic book.

For the uninitiated, MAD began life in October 1952 as a 10-cent, full-color comic, and was one of the books published by William M. Gaines’s E.C. comic book line (including such titles as Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and Weird Science.) — from the Introduction by Grant Geissman.

Here are hilarious classic parodies of Sunday comics, comic books, TV, movies, and advertising.  Superduperman! touches on the years-long lawsuit between DC Comics and Fawcett over the similarity of Captain Marvel to Superman.  Other satires include Dragged Net! [Dragnet]; Flesh Garden [Flash Gordon]; and the Lone Stranger [Lone Ranger].

As a former badge-wearing member of the Archie Comics Fan Club circa 1965, I found the Starchie entry especially funny.  The square teenagers of Riverdale High are remade as juvenile delinquents.  Their spree of vice and vandalism ends when they are apprehended by Dick Tracy.

The influence of MAD‘s brand of subversive, irreverent, anti-Establishment humor continues today, in a line of descent from Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, National Lampoon, Saturday Night Live, SCTV, et al.

Also currently in stock at BrainiacBooks.com:

MAD Magazine No. 111, June 1967: Special Racial Issue

Mad Magazine No. 61, March 1961

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If you are interested in more particulars about the Book of the Day or any of our other featured books, search our store at BrainiacBooks.com for the title.  If the book is still in our stock, you’ll be taken to the page for that title.

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Diggin’ the Beatles

Today’s book is The Beetless’ Gardening Book: An Organic Gardening Songbook/Guidebook, edited by Chris Roth.  Softcover published 1997 by Carrotseed Press.

What’s not to love about a book of organic farming songs set to Beatles tunes?  Here are some samples:

To the tune of “Love Me Do”:

Bug, bug me do
You know I love you
You’ll pollinate too
So please – bug me do.

Or, to the tune of “A Hard Day’s Night”:

I’ve got a hard, clay soil
And I’ve been working like a dog
To add humus so that when it rains
I’ve got a garden, not a bog.

And to the tune of “I Want to Hold Your Hand”:

Well I’ll tell you something
I hope you’ll understand
I don’t want no rototiller
I want to dig by hand
I want to dig by hand
I want to dig by hand.

Well tractors make me queasy
Their noise I cannot stand
Their fumes, they sure are stinky
I want to dig by hand.

Not singing along as you scan the tunes in this songbook/guidebook is the only challenge that you will be taking on in reading The Beetless’ Gardening Book. The lyrics in every song are amusing, educational and dripping with compost, while the music is compliments of John, Paul, George and Ringo. Various gardening tasks are explained to the tunes of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (Loosely Firm the Edges of Seedflats), Maxwell’s Silver Hammer (Maxwell’s Plastic Bucket) or you can dance in your garden singing out Mulch! to the music of Help! If you know any Beatles songs, you can probably find an organic cover of it in this guidebook. — Michelle Urso, Healing Currents Journal, 1997.

Also currently in stock at BrainiacBooks.com:

The Walrus Was Paul: The Great Beatle Death Clues

Liverpool Fantasy: A Novel

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If you are interested in more particulars about the Book of the Day or any of our other featured books, search our store at BrainiacBooks.com for the title. If the book is still in our stock, you’ll be taken to the page for that title.

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Flora Foolery in a Garden of Nonexistent Delights

Today’s book is Parallel Botany, by Leo Lionni.  Translated from the Italian by Patrick Creagh.  Softcover published 1977 by Knopf.

Described by Peter Staler in Time Magazine as “one of the funniest and most brilliant parodies of scientific jargon and scholarship ever published”, Parallel Botany creates a seamless world of imaginary plants, bogus taxonomy, invented science, made-up scientists, and faked  footnotes.

It is a botany alive with wonders, from the Tirillus silvador of the high Andes (whose habit it is to emit shrill whistles on clear nights in January and February) to the Woodland Tweezers (it was the Japanese parallel botanist Uchigaki who first noticed the unsettling relationship between the growth pattern of a group of Tweezers and a winning layout in a game of Go) to the Artisia (whose various forms anticipate the work of such artists as Arp and Calder — and, some believe, the work of all artists, including those not yet born). — from back cover

The protean Lionni, whose meticulous black-and-white “botanical” drawings are integral to this book, was impressively versatile and accomplished.  He held a doctorate degree in economics from the University of Genoa, was an influential advertising artist and art director, and is most known as a beloved author and illustrator of many children’s picture books.  Parallel Botany‘s combination of whimsy and erudition reminds me of Lewis Carroll; others see a similarity to Jorge Luis Borges.

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If you are interested in more particulars about the Book of the Day, search our store at BrainiacBooks.com for the title.  If the book is still in our stock, you’ll be taken to the page for that title.

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