You Can't Win Them All, Charlie Brown (Coronet Books)

You Can't Win Them All, Charlie Brown, originally published in 1971, consists of the second half of the book Ha Ha, Herman. The pages aren't numbered, but I would guess there are somewhere around one hundred pages of cartoons here. I picked this book up when I was just a wee little darkgenius starting out in the world. Not only is this collection of Peanuts cartoons funny (but that goes without saying) but it features some pretty historically significant material. For example, here you get to relive Snoopy's first fight with the cat next door. Snoopy and Woodstock have a big fight over Snoopy reading War and Peace just one word at a time, but when Linus comes up screaming that the cat next door has Woodstock, Snoopy leaps into action. Eventually reunited (and, in Snoopy's case, recovered), Snoopy and Woodstock engage in an interesting game of football. Later on, Snoopy joins forces with Lucy in preparation for the big Christmas ice skating show only to get a bad case of stage fright at the last minute. He's much more comfortable hanging around "campus" as Joe Cool, cruising for "chicks" in his turtleneck.There are two significant storylines about Peppermint Patty (whose real name can actually be found in these pages, and that's a bit of trivia I never knew before picking up and rereading this old paperback recently). The weird kid from camp, better known as Marcie, enter Patty's everyday life, thereby introducing the whole "sir" thing to the Peanuts tradition; when the girls invite "Chuck" over for a rousing game of Ha Ha, Herman (which is basically hide and go seek), Patty accidentally hurts a still-hidden Chuck's feelings after Marcie asks if she is in love with him. Peppermint Patty also faces the horrible ordeal of having to wear a dress to school, thanks to a new dress code. When she decides to defy the code, she hires Snoopy as her lawyer. Any Peanuts book is a guaranteed winner, but You Can't Win Them All, Charlie Brown is particularly appealing given its insight into some of the earlier years of Charlie Brown and friends. Just remember that this little book is really just the second half of the larger volume Ha Ha, Herman.