While the days of new books popping up at Costco at any time are soon coming to an end, they have not ended yet. The latest is Peanuts: Coloring for Fun and Relaxation, which as you may get is a coloring book — and “adult coloring book”, as such things go. And while I’ve said plenty of times that I do not seek to collect coloring books, this is more than just a coloring book – it’s a strip reprint book. Among its 160 pages are more than 30 that reprint Peanuts Sunday strips (doing so in the vertical format, and so missing a panel, but a panel that was designed to go missing.) The book has no cover price (a sign that it’s not meant for the general market), but my Costco had a short pile of them for $9.99 a pop. They are not selling it through their website, and I suggest that if you want a copy (and are a Costco member), you stop by the store soon; the last Peanuts book I got there was available at my local store for less than a week.

Hey, as long as I have your attention, I’m going to put out an utterly non-Peanuts book that I just published. Just a Book with About 410 Drawings of Bicycles from Newspapers of the 1890s is just a book with about four hundred and ten drawings of bicycles from newspapers of the 1890s. There are illustrations, comics strips, editorial and gag cartoons, diagrams, advertisments, and more. There’s some strange and surprising stuff in here – bicycles were the hot technology of the time, and people were inventing new ways to use them (some practical, some not.) They were setting fashion and integrated into culture, and these drawings are varied and interesting. If you think you’ll like it, you will. And for the first week, I’ve discounted the price to $15 (after that, I raise it to $20.) It’s never too early to buy a present for the bike fan, history buff, or art lover in your life.

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