The New York Times Book Review gave books featuring comics attention in two areas on Sunday, in the holiday books section, and in a two page spread on books featuring comic strip reprints.  As usual, it's worth paying attention to the titles featured because of the influence the Book Review has on purchases. 

 

The holiday books feature focused on books about comics history, starting off with the catalogue for the Masters of American Comics exhibits that opened this month at the Hammer Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.  Masters of American Comics, $45 from Yale University Press, like the exhibits (see 'Comic Artists Feted at Two LA Museums'), includes both strip and comic book artists from Caniff to Crumb.  Winsor McCay:  His Life and Art ($45 from Abrams) focuses on the creator of Little Nemo in Slumberland.  And the article also covers Graphic Novels:  Everything You Need to Know, an overview of the medium from HarperCollins by Paul Gravett.

 

Later in the same issue, two pages are devoted to strip reprints, including the usual suspects (The Complete Peanuts, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, Walt & Skeezix 1921 & 1922), books collecting strips from alternative weeklies (Red Meat Gold:  The Third Collection of Red Meat Cartoons and Tony Millioinaire's Der Struwwelmaakies), and two Pantheon graphic novels inspired by strips (Daniel Clowes' Ice Haven, and Charles Burns' Black Hole).