About

Paperback Picnic is a newsletter about weird old books.

More specifically, it’s about strange, obscure sci-fi and fantasy novels from the heyday of pulp fiction. It’s about cheap paperbacks with lurid covers dug from the back corner of a second-hand bookstore. It's about the antiquarian thrill of uncovering a hidden gem, and also the simple joy of laughing at some weird shit that probably should never have been written.

Each Picnic post contains a writeup of a forgotten book, with highlights of the best or worst passages from within. Most of the books covered are from the 60s, 70s and 80s, though we may sometimes wander further afield.

Although I may refer to these posts as 'reviews', their main purpose is to entertain, not to evaluate. Saying whether something's good or not seems less important to me than saying what's interesting about it. As a side effect of this, my reviews often contain spoilers for the book in question.

If you've got a suggestion for a book to be reviewed, feel free to leave a comment on one of the posts, or send an email to paperbackpicnic@gmail.com.

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Paperback Picnic is written on the traditional lands of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to their elders past and present and acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded.