Charles Schulz Museum
Good morning,
I am still reading Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis. I have spent over a week reading it. The text is very dense and gives a lot of details about Schulz's life. It seems that Schulz's cartoons changed with how his life was happening. I've gotten to one of the more juicy parts as they say, Schulz is divorcing his wife at fifty and marrying a younger woman to make himself happy. The book depicts Schulz as a straight arrow, a teetotaler, a religious man with a weakness for strong women. Joyce, his first wife, seems to be his model for Lucy who always pushes around Charlie Brown. There are two sets of black and white photographs of Schulz's life. The photographs look like an idealized all American family like the Waltons which is kind of disconcerting. They seem to fit an every man image. Every other page seems to have a strip of Peanuts in it once you get past the first third of the book. The strips often match word for word what is happening in Schulz's life at some point. I am really enjoying this book. It is extremely well written, with very thick prose. The biography feels a lot closer to the truth than most biographies that I have read. It even has 59 pages of source notes to document the authors research, and a very extensive index. If you like biographies, this is something well worth reading.
Another book which I chose to pass up putting in this blog initially which I read several weeks ago is Counting Heads by David Marusek. It is his first novel. The science fiction reads like a novel of contemporary life even though it is set in the future. The descriptions are so well written that they come to life and make the setting very believable. It is almost too believable, sometimes the writing loses the sense of wonder ordinarily occurring in science fiction. It follows the life of Samsamson Harger, a man who lives in the future. He starts off as an artist producing packaging design. Then it describes his marriage, life, and death. The book is broken into stages. There are a lot of plot devices. Halfway through the book, SamSamson gets seared so he cannot have his age rejuvenated and stinks terribly. This ensures no sequels. The future being described has a lot of ideas. There is a spaceship being built to colonize the stars, but the backers keep on fighting on whether to colonize the far stars or just the inner solar system. This book has a lot more depth than most science fiction I have read recently. If you want to read a very literary work of science fiction, this book is for you. If you'd rather read space opera, or fast paced military science fiction don't read this book.
I am thinking about what to say next. I'll probably go back through this site and recheck the keywords. I got maybe three or four people coming in from the newsgroups which I posted to. I am going to do the next stetp today. I am going to go through Yahoo Groups and see which groups I can post a link to to get this going some more.
I am still reading Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis. I have spent over a week reading it. The text is very dense and gives a lot of details about Schulz's life. It seems that Schulz's cartoons changed with how his life was happening. I've gotten to one of the more juicy parts as they say, Schulz is divorcing his wife at fifty and marrying a younger woman to make himself happy. The book depicts Schulz as a straight arrow, a teetotaler, a religious man with a weakness for strong women. Joyce, his first wife, seems to be his model for Lucy who always pushes around Charlie Brown. There are two sets of black and white photographs of Schulz's life. The photographs look like an idealized all American family like the Waltons which is kind of disconcerting. They seem to fit an every man image. Every other page seems to have a strip of Peanuts in it once you get past the first third of the book. The strips often match word for word what is happening in Schulz's life at some point. I am really enjoying this book. It is extremely well written, with very thick prose. The biography feels a lot closer to the truth than most biographies that I have read. It even has 59 pages of source notes to document the authors research, and a very extensive index. If you like biographies, this is something well worth reading.
Another book which I chose to pass up putting in this blog initially which I read several weeks ago is Counting Heads by David Marusek. It is his first novel. The science fiction reads like a novel of contemporary life even though it is set in the future. The descriptions are so well written that they come to life and make the setting very believable. It is almost too believable, sometimes the writing loses the sense of wonder ordinarily occurring in science fiction. It follows the life of Samsamson Harger, a man who lives in the future. He starts off as an artist producing packaging design. Then it describes his marriage, life, and death. The book is broken into stages. There are a lot of plot devices. Halfway through the book, SamSamson gets seared so he cannot have his age rejuvenated and stinks terribly. This ensures no sequels. The future being described has a lot of ideas. There is a spaceship being built to colonize the stars, but the backers keep on fighting on whether to colonize the far stars or just the inner solar system. This book has a lot more depth than most science fiction I have read recently. If you want to read a very literary work of science fiction, this book is for you. If you'd rather read space opera, or fast paced military science fiction don't read this book.
I am thinking about what to say next. I'll probably go back through this site and recheck the keywords. I got maybe three or four people coming in from the newsgroups which I posted to. I am going to do the next stetp today. I am going to go through Yahoo Groups and see which groups I can post a link to to get this going some more.
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