Yesterday I received the best type of mail: BOOKS!
But not just any books, Sherlockian Scholarship. Hard to find and out of print volumes that have been on my TBR list for years.
I'm an inveterate reader, but not a book collector. I want to read as much as I can, but don't particularly care what condition a cover is or what printing it is. And I'm very much a cheapskate. Because of these things, getting some of the more obscure Sherlockian scholarship is a inner struggle for me.
But when Denny Dobry posted on Facebook last week about his open house and BSI Trust books sale, I knew I'd find some good stuff. Little did I know just how good it would be!
As you can see from the pictures from Denny's post, there is a LOT of stuff for sale here. And since I won't be able to go to his open house on August 21, I just sent him a quick email to see if he had a list of the books available. Denny said it would actually be able for me to just send him my list and he would compare the two. A few days later, I got an email back with titles and prices, and it was time for me to prioritize (remember: cheapskate).
Some of these titles I'd put on my TBR list years ago, so I didn't really remember what they were. Turns out, I wasn't interested in a few of them anymore. Others, Denny had multiple copies of, so I was happy to take the cheaper one and leave pristine copies for someone who would really appreciate its condition.
Once it was all said and done, a check was mailed, and somehow Denny's Medial Mail package to me arrived before my first class envelope to him. (The check's in the mail, I promise!)
So on a Saturday afternoon, I came home to an innocent looking cardboard box on my porch, but what was inside was a treasure:
The Oxford Sherlock Holmes
The Valley of Fear
The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Return
The Adventures
His Last Bow
So Painful a Scandal – John Berquist
Sherlock Alive – Vincent Starrett
Irregular Records of the Early Forties – Jon Lellenberg
Irregular Crises of the Late Forties – Jon Lellenberg
France in the Blood – Catherine Cooke
Holmes’ Range – Walter Armstrong
The View-Halloa – Dana Richards
The Before Breakfast Pipe – David Hammer
The Illustrious Client’s Casebook
The Illustrious Client's Third Casebook
As someone who is always on the lookout for Sherlockiana to read, I like to keep a healthy backlog of things to read as shown in my Sherlockian TBR shelf below. These 15 new titles will get added to my bookcases of things to read and I feel very content knowing I'm not going to run out of reading material any time soon!
For those of you who can make it to Denny's house in Pennsylvania on August 21, here's the information on his open house:
Book Fair and Open House – Mark your calendar for August 21,2021 and plan to attend a Book Fair and Open House at Denny Dobry’s 221b Baker Street sitting room re-Creation in Reading, Pennsylvania. The re-creation has been described as the most detailed and accurate of all the existing re-creations. Thousands of books will be available for purchase at rock-bottom prices. These books have been donated to support the Baker Street Irregulars Trust Historical Archives. The selection includes many editions of the Canon, rare Sherlockian Scholarship titles, hundreds of pastiches & parodies, a variety of non-Sherlockian Doyle’s works, titles from other mystery writers (Sayers, Christie, Queen, Starrett etc.), an extensive Christopher Morley & P. G. Wodehouse selection and crime & British reference works. In addition, many items such as statues, glassware, mugs, games, jigsaw puzzles and posters will also be available. Publications by the Baker Street Irregular Press will also be available for sale. This sale likely provides the widest selection of Sherlockian items available anywhere.
The hours of the Open House/Book Fair will be from 10:00am until everyone is gone. The address is 5003 Stony Run Drive, Reading, PA. Lunch will be available. Reading is 100 miles from Manhattan, 80 miles from Baltimore and 40 miles from Philadelphia. Start planning your car pool.
If some out of towners stay over Friday and/or Saturday night, I would be happy to arrange for getting together for dinner.
You may contact Denny at dendobry@ptd.net.
Wow!
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