Peanutsudoku and more

Looking over the latest Peanuts books on hand:

  • The biggest note is that the first printing of The Complete Peanuts volume 9 has a flaw; on page 53, they run the May 1st, 1967 strip twice, leaving out May 3rd. This will be fixed with the second printing, and volume 10 will also include the missing strip. It hasn’t shipped yet, so there’s still time to order and get the additional 5% pre-order discount.
  • Peanuts Sudoku Comic Digest is what it sounds like… 200 sudoku puzzles (a fun little number puzzle for anyone who hasn’t run into them), interspersed with 50 apparently fairly random Peanuts dailies from the 1990s. I see this more as a “bonus” thing for those who want a book of sudoku puzzles anyway, rather than something for someone who wants a book of strip reprints. They integrated the Peanuts feel into the pages, including the difficulty ratings. The easiest puzzles are marked with one Linus head, with more difficult ones marked with two Marcie heads, three Snoopy heads, four Lucy heads, and five Charlie Brown heads. I gotta say that that’s not the order I’d put them in; I’d think that Linus would be the best sudoku puzzle master of that group. The cover is pretty much like the pre-release cover you see here, except for three points: the background is red, Snoopy is filled in white, and Snoopy is smiling. One change they didn’t make: Schulz’s name is still without his traditional middle initial.
  • The Peanuts Grand Piano Book is a kiddie book in the shape of a grand piano. No other special features than that; it doesn’t have flaps, doesn’t play music. It basically takes pieces from strips and retells them in a way that loses their impact (gags that depend on the merging of text and pictures lose their effect when most of the pictures disappear), but at least it does a fairly nice job of displaying Schulz-based art.

Current Schulz bargains (note: discounts may change without notice):

Non-Schulz cartooning books at steep discounts, while I’m at it:

New releases
A pop-up shows up

Here Comes Charlie Brown!: A Peanuts Pop-up, Gene Kannenberg, Jr.’s adaptation of the very first Peanuts strip, is not the first Peanuts book to reprint only a single strip. There was at least one board book that did much the same thing. However, that board book was, at heart, a …

Classic finds
English Phrases to Comfort Your Heart

The next book in my Amazon Japan shipment falls into the adorable category of “Peanuts used to explain American culture”. English Phrases to Comfort Your Heart with Snoopy by Nobu Yamada falls into that category. It also falls into the category of “books which are meant to be destroyed”, as each …

New releases
Look! A mook!

Mooks – that is, items with magazine-like content but sold more like a book – are popular in Japan. Many of them come bundled with extra items, and there have been a fair number with Peanuts items. Most often these are bags – a handbag or a tote of some …