I just bought a new load of cartoon books from Amazon. A new Cullum, some Gahan Wilson, and a new Ziegler that I'm very excited about.

Part of my deal with myself was that before I ordered them I would have reviewed The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker.

Ahem.

So my new books are arriving tomorrow and I've amended my deal thusly - I will review it before they arrive.

And it's a fairly daunting task. The book weighs almost ten pounds and boasts 68,647 brilliant cartoons from men and women I've admired for years.

OK, the book actually only boasts 2004 cartoons, but the accompanying 2 CDs carry every cartoon The New Yorker had published up its release.

Let's talk about the book. Like I said, sure it's big and heavy, but it's hard to explain just how imposing the whole vibe of the book is. I mean, there it is, right on the cover. THE COMPLETE CARTOONS OF THE NEW YORKER. It's like the cartoon library of congress on my bookshelf.

I can't seem to get past the feel that it's a weird sort of reference book, to be placed next to dictionaries, atlases and the like at my local public library. But it's also a history text. No matter what "it" was, you can probably see what was going on and how we felt about "it" for the last 80 or so years. And then again it's just this great big cartoon collection to be browsed and shown to my incredibly patient wife who's trying to read her magazine thank you very much.

If you've been collecting New Yorker books all along, many if not most of the cartoons will be familiar to you. But the fun is reading along and recognizing old favorites and then discovering something new hidden amongst them.

The book is organized chronologically by decade and includes lovely introductions by the likes of Ian Frazier and John Updike. Also included are more in-depth looks at New Yorker cartoonists including Arno, Addams & Booth, as well as forays into popular topics like nudity and the space program.