Thursday 28 October 2010

And so to bed…

Well, home, anyway, before I get locked in the building for the second time this week.

I'm dragging home my latest book purchase: a massive volume called 40: A Doonesbury Retrospective, containing 13% of Doonesbury strips going back to 1970. An acquired taste, admittedly, but one I acquired a long time ago.

It's been a bit of an excessive week for books - I put together a couple of reading lists, and couldn't stop myself buying copies of everything. Then there's the Geoffrey Hill Selected Poems (I couldn't justify spending £100 on a copy of Mercian Hymns) and his new one, Oracles/Oraclau. And the two new Anne of Green Gables books: the restored edition of Rilla of Ingleside and the lost The Blythes Are Quoted. Plus Ackroyd's The Death of King Arthur, some Shakespeare criticism, a book on typefaces (I recently took to using Palatino for presentations), a lovely illustrated Pullman compendium, a history of moral panics involving comic books and, well, you get the picture.

It's a damn good job I've lost my bank card. I won't be able to buy anything for a week. Hurrah! Boo! New Posies album out too…

3 comments:

Artog said...

I don't think Doonesbury really takes that much getting used to? It's just very funny. It certainly puts Steve Bell's moronic efforts to shame.

Sinéad said...

Thanks for the inspiration for my Christmas book shopping list!

Incidentally, here's a really dull tale of comic book inspired synchronicity: while in Iowa City recently, I stopped into Prairie Lights - the oft-featured bookstore in Berkeley Breathed's Bloom County - where I bought Volumes 1 and 2 of Bloom County, before being nerd-herded (by my equally nerdy U of Iowa student guide) over to the Bloom County house for a photo opportunity. Nerd-tastic!

The Plashing Vole said...

Bloom County - wonderful.

Artog: loads of people I know are totally resistant to Doonesbury: too many characters, too many storylines - the things I love about it.

That said, I'm a huge Steve Bell fan too - I collect the anthologies. You can't not like the penguins!

One of my favourite moments of cartoon history was when the penguins kidnapped Doonesbury. Crossover heaven…