Today's blog post is a little bit of a whinge, a moan and a complaint about this year's absense of one of my favourite Christmas gifts.
No, it's not novelty socks or the Beano annual, but an annual publishing occasion we've enjoyed for the past few years in the form of Ben Schott's Almanac, featuring a year of facts, news, figures and general trivia that really satisfies the fact hunter inside of me, following on from his excellent miscellany series.
Not only that but the almanacs make a great Christmas present for other people and, most importantly, are collectible. I imagined when they began coming out that they would be an annual occurrence until I was old and grey when I would have the space and the money to be able to afford some old antique bookshelves for all my books with fifty years of them all appearing in chronological order.
Sadly it looks like now it'll be copies of the Private Eye annual instead, though that's equally good to appear, but not as intellectual looking as, say, the nicely put together and serious looking almanacs.
Why they have stopped is unknown at the moment: Has Ben Schott tired of doing them? Are they not selling well and Bloomsbury have pulled the plug? Are they seen as too dry for people to read?
I've tweeted the author to ask and await the response, but I think it's a real missed opportunity why ever they have stopped. Maybe compared to the Top Gear annual (containing a handy public-service-worker-shoot-guide) or something written by a random author but branded as by Katie Price are what more people want in their stockings?
But they are not the only collection that have stopped. I'm a big fan of the series QI - surely the televisual form of Schott's book - and they stopped releasing DVDs after series three when we're now on series nine. It's a really popular series; the shows can be watched again and again (yes, I know you can on Dave but, like, not when you want!) and they're both funny and useful. Why have they stopped releasing those? You don't find a magazine company stopping their 100-part 'build the Titanic' magazine collection part-way so you're missing the funnels, lifeboats and iceberg!
Though the absense of the almanac won't keep me up or night or get me into a flood of tears over the brussel sprouts come Christmas Day I will miss it this year and miss having a record of the time for when I'm older, like a more interesting and accurate Wikipedia that you can dip in and out of.
Instead I'll have to go and by my grandad Frankie Boyle's new book. I'm sure he would love that.
RIP Ben Schott's almanac
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