For those of you who like an academic bent to the way you think about Peanuts, August brings The Comics of Charles Schulz: The Good Grief of Modern Life. This entry in the Critical Approaches to Comics Artists series has been in the works for a while – the call for papers went out in 2013. This is at least the third book from the University Press of Mississippi on Schulz, but when you have a focus on comics, who can blame you? I’ll see if I can get a rundown of the papers included.

(I sometimes wonder whether, if invited to contribute to volume like this, I’d have anything to put forth. I’m not an academic, my writing tends to be very popular-oriented. This doesn’t mean that I don’t have thoughts on Schulz’s work, of course, but could I make a point worth making with the sort of rigor that’s expected? Ahhh, I don’t see the calls for papers, so I guess I’ll never know!)

Anyway, being an academic book, this has a list price of $65, which is a bit of an ouch. (I have a couple of the contributors on my Facebook friends list. Am I gonna try to score a review copy? You betcha!) But you should click through on the link here, take a look… then finish all your Christmas shopping, and let Amazon provide me with the referral fee! (He says, as he decorates his doghouse in hopes of winning the top prize…)

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