Reviewing the Mail: Week of 6/12

For the first time since I started doing these weekly posts -- which was January of 2008, I'm startled to realize -- the Mail Fairy [1] passed over my house entirely this week. Normally, that would mean that I'd have nothing to write about here.

But, luckily, the fiendish minds at Borders sent me a great coupon early last week, so I took my two sons (Thing 1, now 12 year old, on the verge of surly teenager-dom, and a gigantic 5' 9"; and Thing 2, a 9-year-old with a quirky sense of humor and a current taste for Brandon Mul's Fablehaven books) off to the local store on Wednesday evening. For them, I got four manga volumes, to continue my standard read-a-novel, get-a-manga-free program for the boys. And for myself, I got:

Lost At Sea, Bryan Lee O'Malley's first graphic novel, from the pre-Scott Pilgrim year of 2002. I'm sure it's not as focused or awesome as the Scott Pilgrim books, but It's something to read while waiting for the movie and the final volume. (Which reminds me that I need to figure out someone to see the Scott Pilgrim movie with, since I'm definitely not waiting for video, and I'm also pretty sure The Wife won't be interested. And it's PG-13, so I probably shouldn't take the boys. It is a puzzlement. I'm also trying to decide whether I should give the first book to Thing 1. My life is full of conundrums.) And major kudos to the Borders in Riverdale [2] for having this in stock; I've looked for it in a couple of comics shops without finding it recently.

Another book that I was happily surprised to find in a random Borders store was Aunts Aren't Gentlemen from P.G. Wodehouse, another one of the great-looking Overlook Press "Collector's Wodehouse" series. It's looking like they might actually make it all the way through his books, and keep the same design style throughout -- both of which make me very happy.

And last was the new treasury edition of Darby Conley's Get Fuzzy newspaper strip, Treasury of the Lost Litter Box. It doesn't have annotations (like the treasuries of his friend Stephan Pastis's Pearls Before Swine strip), and that mildly disappointed me -- I may be developing too-high expectations for my contemporary strip-reprint collections. But Get Fuzzy is one of the very few modern strips that I'd actually buy a reprint collection of in the first place, and I suppose it's staying on that list, at least for now.

[1] That's what I call it; I haven't let the USPS and UPS carriers know that I refer to them as "fairies," though. (I do have some instinct towards self-preservation.)

[2] Yes, I live next door to a town named Riverdale. Sadly, they don't have their own high school -- they're tiny, and send their kids to Pompton Lakes High -- which implies that Archie & Co. are not in residence.
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Listening to: Titus Andronicus - No Future Pt. 1
via FoxyTunes