The Simpsons Forever: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family …Continued

Having bought The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family, it was a natural that I would buy The Simpsons Forever: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family…Continued when it came out. The first volume covered the first eight seasons of the yellow-haired residents of Springfield, offering up detailed plot synopses, classic quotes and character bios. The second volume in the series tackles seasons nine and ten.

Thinner than its predecessor, The Simpsons Forever: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family…Continued doesn't offer as much information, but as a guide to seasons nine and ten it picks up right where the original left off. The bulk of the book is once again devoted to offering up the kind of information found in the first volume.

Each episode gets at least a page, filled with terrific animation, a thorough episode synopsis, bunches of quotes and a little box that lists the kind of jokes that require multiple viewings and freeze-framing in order to get. In addition, as with the first volume, The Simpsons Forever: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family…Continued continues to provide character profiles on each the most obscure of characters.

As with The Simpson: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family, the Forever sequel also contains some additional goodies that make it worth the investment. For instance, you get the complete lyrics-and man is it a long song-to Do The Bartman. There's also a box containing Stuff You May Have Missed for the video on the song. A lot of people forget that Do the Bartman was followed-up by another successful song from the album Simpsons Sings the Blues called Deep, Deep Trouble. You get the lyrics to that song as well as a box on the stuff you may not have noticed in the video.

Is there any fan of The Simpson who hasn't been there since the beginning who doesn't miss Phil Hartman? There has been something missing in the show since his unfortunate murder and I'm not just talking about Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz. He also provided various other voices in minor roles in addition to those two fan favorites.

The book features a tribute to Hartman by listing extensive videography of Mr. McClure. (My favorite education film title: Alice's Adventures Through the Windshield Glass. My favorite movie title: Today We Kill, Tomorrow We Die.)

As with the first book, there is a page that lists the situations in which Homer says "D'oh" and the things to which he precedes with a "Mmmm…". There is also a two page spread that offers detailed explanations of what happens in each of the couch gags over the course of those two seasons, and an extended list of the characters voiced by each of the actors.

Wouldn't that be enough to warrant the price of buying The Simpsons Forever: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family…Continued? But wait, there's more. You not only get the lyrics to the two singles that came off Simpsons Sing the Blues, but you also get the lyrics to such classic songs featured on the show as "Checkin' In", and "Bagged me a Homer."

The Simpsons Forever: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family…Continued makes a perfect companion piece to the original The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family. Although it only covers two season-admittedly, not the best seasons of the show-it remains a must-have for Simpsons fans, if only because your bookshelf is going to look strangely lacking if you buy the first volume and then go on to buy Beyond Forever and One Step Beyond Forever.