“I Wish I Was Taller”
Friday, December 31, 2004
Using a gift certificate from my sister, I wanted to take advantage of the Chapters and Indigo 30% Boxing Day sale to finally get my hands on The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker (before the sale ended today).
No location had it, and those that did had the mangled, man-handled display copies with ripped dustjackets and covered in fingerprints. But finally today at lunch I found a fresh, shrink-wrapped copy at the wonderful World’s Biggest Bookstore. It’s still owned by Chapters and Indigo, but it somehow feels less evil because there isn’t a Starbucks in it… nor are there any greeting cards, teddybears, scented candles, picture frames, salad dressings, or inspirational wall-hangings bombarding the customers at the entrance, making you question whether you actually stepped into a book store.
With my gift certificate and the discount, I managed to turn the $75 pricetag into a $25 one. And with 68,647 cartoons in the set, that’s $0.000364 per cartoon!
The book itself is gigantic and, with the pair of CD-ROMs that is included, will take me ages to get through. But the search options by artist and keyword are fantastic—I was able to find one of my favourites, the above cartoon from 1928 by Carl Rose, in an instant.
This is going to be fun.
Mekon says:
I just wanted to mention that you work right across the street from a genuinely independent bookstore called Pages, where I work. Our Sale (which runs for one more week) is 20% off ALL the books in the store.
Admitedly we sold out of the New Yorker book pretty early (it is a great book by the way!), but we have a lot of other stuff I am guessing you would like including design and typography books, graphic novels and Mcsweeneys.
I am bias, but hey, I think we’re a cooler bookstore than World’s Biggest…
-----
Kat says:
My mom bought that for my dad for Christmas… He almost pulled a muscle carrying it upstairs.
patricia says:
Hey Johnny! That is also one of my all-time favourite NYker cartoons!
I didn’t have to pay a dime for my ‘Complete Cartoons’ ‘cuz I got it as a luverly Christmas gift. Nyah.
And yeah, Pages is pretty cool.
Robot Johnny says:
Mekon, I love your store! Believe me, I checked Pages first for a copy, but like you said—you sold out first. I try to stay away from the “big guys” whenever possible. (In fact it was Pages where I first saw this book!)
james says:
Call me bad but I’ll wait for this to be deleted and end up in the bins at Edward Mirvish Books on Markham street.
Matt says:
Nice! Dumb question—are those CD-ROMs Mac compatible?
Robot Johnny says:
Totally Mac compatible. The cartoons are in a PDF file (that most likely requires the latest version of Acrobat Reader, which in turn means that mac-compatible means OS X-compatible only).
But we’re all on OS X by now, right kids?
Al aka El Negro Magnifico says:
I got that for Christmas, and I love it. I read the whole thing in about a week.