The Simpsons Forever: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family...Continued Created by Matt Groening Edited by Scott M. Gimple HarperCollins, 2000 You can buy this sucker at Amazon.

Now, I know that not everybody watches The Simpsons...but they damn well should. In addition to providing hours and hours of family viewing pleasure, the show also offers scathing social and political commentary. The writers, animators and producers of The Simpsons have honed their craft over the last 10 years, and it's a testament to their genius and hard work that the show has not lost a step over the course of those years. If anything, it has become better with age.

Ten years and a thousand gags later, the show rolls on, and its legions of devotees clamor to know more about their favorite TV family. At first their prayers were answered with The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family -- the comprehensive guide to all things Simpson. While the first guide was thorough and fact-filled, it wasn't complete -- and obviously, went out of date as more episodes aired. More prayers were offered, and voila: we now have The Simpsons Forever: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family...Continued. Picking up where the first book left off, ...Continued covers every episode in seasons 9 and 10 in painstaking detail. It also contains an index of all the songs ever performed on the show, an archive of the title sequence couch gags and chalkboard inscriptions and a tribute to the comical genius of Phil Hartman and the pivotal role his many characters -- wisely retired after his untimely death -- played in so many episodes. Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz, you are missed.

The book works well on its own or most effectively as a companion to the first edition. In either case, it is a book which no Simpsons fan should be without. If you're one of the legion of Simpsons fans out there, you owe it to yourself to march your butt down (or click your browser through) to your local bookshop and acquire your own a copy of The Simpsons Forever: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family...Continued. If you don't, I'll send Rod and Todd Flanders over to your place for a rousing game of Name that Bible Quote...

-- Jason Jackowiak