I hope that all of you who were Christmassing had a good one, and all of you who are Hannukafying are taking pleasure in these last few hours of the festival. Me, I not only got presents for both holidays, I got Peanuts presents for both. I’ll have pictures of the bit of statuary once I stage it. There are a number of minor matters I should cover here today:

• If you’re looking for discounts on Peanuts books, today is a good day to head to your local Barnes & Noble bookstore, as they are offering 50% off all hardcover books — so it might be a great day to grab any Complete Peanuts or Peanuts Every Sunday that Santa didn’t bring you that they might have in stock… or even a copy of Charles M. Schulz: The Art and Life of the Peanuts Creator in 100 Objects. (The online store is only offering 50% offf a limited selection of titles, and a quick check finds no Peanuts titles among them. However, the website can be used to look up whether your local store has copies of a book in stock, which might help you decide whether it’s worth a trip to the store.)
• According to Billboard, the bestselling album in the nation for the week ending December 24 was the new Taylor Swift album. Number 2? The A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack! Seriously — an over-a-half-century-old jazz album was a breath away from the very top of the charts. Now, I expect sales to plummet now that the holiday has passed, but nonetheless, it says something about the staying power of the bald-headed kid and his sad little tree.
• Speaking of that soundtrack… I did at one point note that the relatively cheap edition was listed as coming with the same liner notes book as the ultra-deluze one. Well, it turns out that whereas the expensive version gives you an actual full-on book, the cheaper version gives you the same material in a little booklet.

Meanwhile, 2023 is barreling its way here, quick as anything. May it be a good one! (Let’s face it, we’re grading years on a curve these days…)

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