books

Sleazy books

cool stuff, history, language & literature / /

From sleazy and how!:

I’m a sucker for a sleazy mystery or a trampy romance novel from the 1950’s-60’s. I usually buy these silly books more for the covers than the stories, but sometimes both are equally bizarre.

This is a gallery of some of the better books I’ve come across. Some have book summaries, others I just liked the covers.

Passion Prize Here are some of the ones I liked: Women’s Doctor. Chinese Lover. Come Sin With Me. Studio Apartment. Musk, Hashish and Blood.

Frenchie, with this exciting passage: “He was all ready to go. The easel was under one arm. Suddenly she couldn’t think about what she should have done. There was no right or wrong way to act, there was only one way. She ran to him and pulled him down toward her. Her fingers bit into his arms. ‘No, no,’ she murmured brokenly. ‘You mustn’t go. You can’t. I couldn’t live…'”.

Illicit Desires, which includes this blurb: “Passion’s Slaves! There’s many a sizzling tale about the ‘farmer’s daughter’, but never has the truth been told so revealingly as in this story of Eva, a member of ‘Ja-Ja” Steinhart’s household; of Mazie, her buxom, full bosomed rival, and their spirited fight for their mutual lover, Joe.”

And Call Her Wanton (“She was fair…she was frisky…she was oh, so much fun…A lusty novel of wilderness passion and a wife too naughty to be true!”).

Or The Manatee (“He had a passion for his ship’s figurehead that no living, breathing woman could satisfy.”).

I think the prize for blurb writing goes to Shady Lady: “Some people called Leslie Fentris a shady lady and most people thought that was putting it mildly. She had money and brains, and plenty of lure. Yet she was mixed up in one shameful scandal after another. Actually, she was a fine and honest person who acted the way she did for very good reasons.

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The printed book results in more handwritten mss

commonplace book, history, tech in changing society, technology / /

From “William Caxton“, at The Science Show:

More than 500 years later a copy of Caxton’s first edition of Chaucer became the most expensive book ever sold, knocked down at auction in the 1990s for 4.6 million pounds. But in the 15th Century, the obvious appeal of the newly printed books lay in their value for money. Books became so commonplace indeed, that some snobs employed scribes to copy Caxton’s printed editions back into manuscript, while both church and government became alarmed at the access to new ideas that the printing press offered to a widening public. [Emphasis added]

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The first printed English books

commonplace book, history, technology / /

From “William Caxton“, at The Science Show:

In 1474, his History of Troy, his own book, became the first book to be printed in English and two years later he brought his press to England setting up shop near the Chapter House in the precinct of Westminster Abbey, where parliament met. Caxton had an eye for a good location. Along the route between the palace of Westminster and the Chapter House shuffled lawyers, churchmen, courtiers, MPs – the book buying elite of England. The former cloth trader also had an eye for a best seller. The second book he printed was about chess, the game and play of the chess. Then came in fairly quick succession, a French-English dictionary, a translation of Aesop’s fables, several popular romances, Mallory’s tale of Camelot in Le Mort d’Arthur, some school text books, a history of England, an encyclopaedia entitled The Mirror of the World and Chaucer’s bawdy evergreen collection, The Canterbury Tales.

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SSL in depth

business, security, tech help, technology / /

I host Web sites, but we’ve only recently [2004] had to start implementing SSL, the Secure Sockets Layer, which turns http into https. I’ve been on the lookout for a good overview of SSL that explains why it is implemented as it is, and I think I’ve finally found one: Chris Shiflett: HTTP Developer’s Handbook: 18. Secure Sockets Layer is a chapter from Shiflett’s book posted on his web site, and boy it is good.

SSL has dramatically changed the way people use the Web, and it provides a very good solution to many of the Web’s shortcomings, most importantly:

  • Data integrity – SSL can help ensure that data (HTTP messages) cannot be changed while in transit.
  • Data confidentiality – SSL provides strong cryptographic techniques used to encrypt HTTP messages.
  • Identification – SSL can offer reasonable assurance as to the identity of a Web server. It can also be used to validate the identity of a client, but this is less common.

Shiflett is a clear technical writer, and if this chapter is any indication, the rest of his book may be worth buying.

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