I have a looooong Sherlockian scholarship To Be Read list, and when I came across a fellow Sherlockian that was looking to part with some books, I was happy to pick three of them up and cross those titles off of my TBR list.
So, when I unwrapped the package that day, I took the obligatory pic to post on Twitter and then I carried them downstairs to add to my collection of Sherlockian books that I haven't yet read.
There's quite a bit to read.
These three shelves of books, journals and articles are JUST Sherlockiana. I've got a whole other shelf and a half of other things to read. (Yes, I have twice as much Sherlockiana as other reading material. Hi, my name is Rob and I'm an addict.) Even if I stopped buying books right now, I'd have at least a year's worth of reading material to keep me busy.
So why do I keep buying more books?
Have you seen the great scholarship out there? BSI Publishing and Wessex Press alone could keep a Sherlockian well up in books for a long, long time. And then there are those other smaller or defunct publishers of scholarship: MX's scholarship arm, The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, Magico, the millions of journals that seemed to flow out of Peoria, Illinois...
A common lament among the avid reader is that we will never be able to read even a fraction of all of the good books in the world. The same could be said for Sherlockian scholarship. I may never get to own every item on The Shaw 100 (too expensive) or read everything written about Holmes and religion (too numerous), but I'm not going down without a fight.
We can but try.
Haining's collection is OK and interesting, but a far better compilation, in my view, is "Sherlock Holmes in America," put together by Bill Blackbeard (Harry Abrams, 1981). I recommend it to you; also a hodgepodge, but great fun.
ReplyDeleteYou are so right, reading everything Sherlockian is probably impossible anymore. Shaw was the last to come close to that, I would think. And to try would cheat yourself of so much other worthwhile literature and subject matter in various fields for a well-rounded reader/human being. We all have to pick and choose, and as I have grown older, with a realization that there is only so much that can be read (or viewed) because there are only so many hours available in my leisure time in the 25 to 30 years I have left, I have become more choosy (if that's a word).
Even so, there are some classics that Sherlockians should try and read (in addition to fairly frequent re-readings of the Canon). You have three excellent volumes pictured. Shaw's 100, which you mentioned, has some very good items. But it is, of course, dated in some ways. I suppose there are 250 to 500 works worthy of inclusion in an ideal/basic Sherlockian library, many of which would earn a consensus, and the rest of which would be the subject of debate as far as inclusion or not is concerned.
As I said in a previous note about your reading Nero Wolfe for the first time, I envy anyone being able to read the great Sherlockian scholarship for the first time.
25-30? If we get anything less than another 40 years out of you, the world has been cheated.
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