The Calvin and Hobbes Collection: Something Under The Bed Is Drooling by Bill Watterson

Wow – was this book a reality-check.

Sure, this collection of the popular newspaper cartoon strips is an apathetic muddle (they really should have grouped the snow strips together, and put the haircut storyline last), but Calvin’s diversely-conceived world still shines through as a place where you want to be.

In a nutshell, Calvin and Hobbes transports you back to childhood. When days were long, everything could be made to become an adventure, and it was your business to entertain whoever else was around at the time. (Well, that was my childhood anyway)

Yet that was also my attitude in my early 20s, when I would quickly flick through to read these strips in the Daily Express before heading out to work as a boring old purchase ledger.

Today these strips still remind me of the simple, logical fun that I always wanted daily life to be, and still want my daily life to be, if only I could exorcise this awfully pretentious demon called adulthood.

Ironically, it’s not so much Calvin who realises this, but his tiger Hobbes. On page 24 there’s a simple, yet deeply true, exchange that sums-up one of my most fundamental inner convictions about life. If you know me and you don’t get this, you don’t get me.





Okay, so life’s not all fun, but it can sure be a heck of a lot more fun than we let it be.