In this issue:
* A LITTLE BOOK OF LINUSES
* WHY PEANUTS BOOK COLLECTORS GO BROKE
* PEANUTS, BUT NOT SCHULZ
* THE AAUGH.com DEAL
A LITTLE BOOK OF LINUSES
This was the fourth year of the city of St Paul being
decorated with Peanuts statues. In 2000, the city was
full of custom-painted Snoopy statues, and following
that came Charlie Brown, Lucy, and this year, Linus.
Following up on that is a book – well, a booklet,
really – of pictures of the statues, just as last year
there was a booklet of the Lucy statues and one the
year before covering the first two years of statues.
The LINUS BLANKETS SAINT PAUL booklet has photos of
all but one of the statues, and there’s a design
drawing for that one. Some of the statues are quite
impressive in their imagination and bringing it to
life. I’ll admit to a fondness for the Linus-as-Elvis
and Linus-as-the-Green-Giant statues. Any concept of
linusness is lost in a lot of them.
This is a nice little booklet, and will only be
available for a limited time. Part of its function is
to serve as an auction catalog for the sale of some of
the statues, although less than half of them will be
auctioned off.
The statue effort is on the wane in some ways. There
are 92 Linus statues, while previous characters had
more than 100.
The booklet is a mere 16 pages, on slick paper. The
price is $6.95, which is a bit steep for the page
count. . . but it gets worse. This is only available
from Camp Snoopy (sighs the man who runs AAUGH.com
and cannot offer it), and they’ll charge you about
$7 for shipping. Yipes.
They also have a poster of the statues:
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WHY PEANUTS BOOK COLLECTORS GO BROKE
Easton Press has been offering Peanuts fans the chance to get really fancy editions of recent Peanuts books lately. Leather-bound, gilt-edged editions with built in bookmark ribbons, printed on acid-neutral paper. While Easton does limited editions, some of their earlier books are still available. For $90, you can get a fancy edition of A PEANUTS CHRISTMAS, last year’s frankly lackluster strip collection:
http://eastonpresscatalog.com/013.asp
For 50 cents less, you can still get A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS: THE MAKING OF A TRADITION, a good behind-the-scenes book about the making of the first Peanuts TV special:
http://eastonpresscatalog.com/017.asp
But just in case you have too much money, or were looking for a special gift for the holidays, Easton has added some additional Peanuts books for your bucks. For $80, you can get IT’S A DOG’S LIFE, SNOOPY, the full color collection of strips from 1998:
http://eastonpresscatalog.com/021.asp
And for those of you of a religious bent, there’s a double-feature of THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO PEANUTS and THE PARABLES OF PEANUTS, Robert Short’s first two books about Christianity and Peanuts. You get both books for $98:
http://eastonpresscatalog.com/008.asp
And, with all Easton Press books, these aren’t available through AAUGH.com.
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PEANUTS, BUT NOT SCHULZ
Years ago, the syndicate that distributes and owns Peanuts had a cartoonist named Al Plastino draw some Peanuts strips, samples in
case Schulz needed to be replaced on the strip. It was this action
that brought about an agreement between Schulz and the syndicate
that no one would ever replace him on the strip.
Over the years, I’ve heard about these strips repeatedly. Even
heard that they were destroyed. But now two of them have been
placed in print.
LEGION COMPANION is a book of interviews with folks who have
written or drawn the comic book series Legion Of Superheroes.
Al Plastino was one of those folks, and the book includes two
sample Peanuts strips, a daily and a Sunday, on page 16. Not
that I’m recommending that anyone buy this book for those two
strips, but if you want to, you can order it here:
http://AAUGH.com/to.htm?1893905225
(Besides, I had to have something in this issue that you can actually order via AAUGH.com!)
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THE AAUGH.com DEAL
’round about this time of year, I always like to answer a question
I’ve gotten in the past, about how AAUGH.com works as a business.
Basically, we make money when you click a link on our site that
takes you to Amazon, and then go on to order something from them.
We make money if you order a Peanuts book, we make money if you
end up ordering something that’s not a Peanuts book. Amazon does
not charge you any more for having come through AAUGH.com.
So if you’re planning on shopping anyway, if you come to
http://AAUGH.com first, it will help AAUGH.com at no
additional expense to you.
Don’t get me wrong. If all the business disappeared tomorrow,
there would still be an AAUGH.com. My booklist was online for
years before I was providing links to Amazon, and before I
bought the AAUGH.com name 4 years ago. But the money does
help me pay for the domain name and the webspace, does help
me afford to expand the reference library, and perhaps
most importantly of all, gives me an excuse to work on these
newsletters and on the website when there are so many other
projects at hand.
And if you don’t order through the site, that’s okay too.
I take pride in providing Peanuts book fans with the information,
and am glad it’s of use to you.
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And thus ends the latest newsletter. I’m off for jury duty, so if
any of you have recently committed crimes in Ventura County,
California, then maybe I’ll see you tomorrow!
Otherwise, keep sending me those questions, suggestions,
surprises, surmises, and recipes for recycled pizza.
–Nat
proprietor
http://AAUGH.com
