kgbooklog

Rene Goscinny (trans. Anthea Bell), Nicholas
Phaidon (1960, 2005(en)) ISBN: 0-7148-4529-9
Score: 0

First collection of short stories about a precocious kid. I read a few then decided I wasn't in the mood. (I picked it up because I really liked Goscinny's writing in the Asterix comics, and I kept meaning to see if any of his other stuff has been translated.)

Next Book: Jane Lindskold, Through Wolf's Eyes
(What I want to read next is naominovik's Throne of Jade, since the copy of Black Powder War I won just arrived. Unfortunately, I messed up my hold at the library, and it isn't eligible for the current sales at Borders and Amazon.)

Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, Asterix and the Class Act
(translated by Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge)
Orion (2003) ISBN: 0-75286-068-2
Score: 1

A collection of short stories (in comic book format), most of them promotional bits. It is subtitled "Fourteen All New Asterix Stories", though as you can see from the contents below, in this case "all new" means "published in the last 50 years" and "fourteen" means "thirteen", unless you count the one page intro which is a slightly modified version of the "Press Conference" used to promote Asterix and the Big Fight. This does seem to be the first English publication of these stories (except for the press conference and "The Birth of an Idea", both of which appear (B&W, with slightly different text) in Kessler's The Complete Guide to Asterix, and "In 50 BC" which was originally published in National Geographic). Not a very good introduction to the series.

Starred entries were written by Rene Goscinny:
* "Asterix and the Class Act" (1966, 2 pages)
"The Birth of Asterix" (1994, 4 pages)
* "In 50 BC" (1977, 3 pages)
"Chanticleerix" (2003, 5 pages)
* "For Gaul Lang Syne" (1967, 2 pages)
* "Mini Midi Maxi" (1971, 2 pages)
"Asterix as you have never seen him before..." (1969, 3 pages)
"The Lutetia Olympics" (1986, 4 pages)
"Springtime in Gaul" (1966, 2 pages)
* "The Mascot" (1968, 4 pages)
* "Latinomania" (1973, 1 page)
* "The Obelix Family Tree" (1963, 4.5 pages)
* "The Birth of an Idea" (1962, 1 page)

Next Book: Kristine Smith, Law of Survival