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Knee deep in Sherlockia

I read my first Sherlock Holmes story in seventh grade. It was the Blue Carbuncle. We read it as a class right around Christmas. It was a mystery involving a Christmas goose and my hippie English teacher was a Holmes fan.

I remember going to the public library over the break and checking out the Complete Sherlock Holmes, all 56 short stories and four novels. I remember it was snowing and I walked home from the library in sneakers because I didn't have the forethought to wear boots or the cash to ride the bus. Yep, I was gifted in that way.

Over the years, I acquired my own copy of the book and spent hours reading and rereading the stories. And writing a complete alphabet based on the Dancing Men, but having no one with whom I could exchange coded messages. And trying to put together a time line because the stories weren't in chronological order and Watson was a bit of an unreliable biographer with some of his personal details (i.e. Was he shot in the shoulder or the leg in the Afghan campaign? How many wives did he have?) let alone with dates. I also had a complete ranking system for the stories which ranged from the excellent (The Speckled Band) to the 'orrible (The Creeping Man).

Ah, to have been in middle school in the age of the internet. I could have made one of those fan sites and made tens of dollars advertising deerstalker caps. As it was, my geekery was confined to spiral bound notebooks long since lost.

Anyway, I got to thinking about this when the new Robert Downey Jr. movie came out. I'll probably see it on dvd, because it is probably not going to be worth the ticket $ and sitter $$$ to see it in the theater. I've heard mixed reviews (supernatural wtf-ery etc.) but I am cautiously optimistic that it will at least be entertaining. I'd like to see what RDJ does with the character. It's not like he doesn't know how cocaine might affect a guy . . . .

*sigh* I miss Jeremy Brett.

I'll probably put aside the books I am currently reading to settle in with an old friend for a few weeks.

?There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion,? said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. ?It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.? ? The Adventure of the Naval Treaty

Full post as published by Butterflyfish on December 29, 2009 (boomark / email).