A mystery mystery
If you've been paying attention to my Book du jour feature to the right, you'll have noticed that I've been reading some Sherlock Holmes mysteries lately. This is because I received The Complete Sherlock Holmes from my online book club, PaperBackSwap. Again, I encourage all of you to join! (And if you do, don't forget to say I referred you (using my Davis email address)!) Since this tome is about 1200 pages long, and since it would surely be tedious to read some 60 Sherlock Holmes adventures (most are short stories) back to back, I'm interspersing them with the other novels in my book queue.
The irony is that I just received 8 Sherlock Holmes adventures in the mail from Stanford. Apparently Stanford has created a serial reading series in the past few years, and this year they are reissuing a selection of Sherlock Holmes stories. How very exciting! I wish I knew about this sooner! I love serial (not cereal) fiction! One of my favorite magazines when I was a kid was the literature magazine Cricket. The very best stories in a given issue were always the ones that were so long they spanned several issues. My favorite lasted for at least 9 months! I also really enjoy reading novels that were originally published as serials. Novels by authors such as Fyodor Dostoesky or Thomas Hardy. They're so deliciously melodramatic; definitely the soap operas of the pre-radio, pre-tv era. This new Stanford serial reading series (kind of a redundant name, no?) is just another great reason to love Stanford!
When I first flipped through these adventures, I was originally struck by the exhortation for the mailman to deliver them by a specific date, all of them 2 weeks to 2 months ago. They've arrived so promptly! But after sleuthing around on the internet, like any good modern Sherlock, I learned that you have to sign up to receive them. I wonder how I became signed up all of a sudden. Has the Alumni Association automatically signed everyone up? They might be keeping mum about it so that it remains slightly mysterious; after all, it is Sherlock Holmes! Have the rest of you alumni received these? (Although, come to think of it, I'm not a member of the Stanford Alumni Association. Hmmm....)
Might my dad have signed me up? I told him that I was reading Sherlock Holmeses on Sunday, which fits well in the time frame of receiving a lot of them today. But how would he have known about it? Perhaps it was advertised in the Stanford Alumni Magazine (which you don't apparently have to be a member of the alumni association to receive). He's also a Stanford Alumni (Ph.D. in 1976) and I think he also receives the alumni magazine. I never read the alumni magazine, it's a matter of principle, so I wouldn't have learned about this program through that channel. (Though lately I have actually been checking out the book review section to discover novels written by Stanford alumni. Stanford boasts quite a few great contemporary authors. Shrek guy, for those of you who know that story, is not yet one of them ;D.)
Or maybe one of you discovered it, decided I would love it (because you know I would!), and enlisted me. It's another possibility.
Anyone want to help me clear up this little matter? I'm no Sherlock; I don't take cocaine during off-times, only coca-cola.
The irony is that I just received 8 Sherlock Holmes adventures in the mail from Stanford. Apparently Stanford has created a serial reading series in the past few years, and this year they are reissuing a selection of Sherlock Holmes stories. How very exciting! I wish I knew about this sooner! I love serial (not cereal) fiction! One of my favorite magazines when I was a kid was the literature magazine Cricket. The very best stories in a given issue were always the ones that were so long they spanned several issues. My favorite lasted for at least 9 months! I also really enjoy reading novels that were originally published as serials. Novels by authors such as Fyodor Dostoesky or Thomas Hardy. They're so deliciously melodramatic; definitely the soap operas of the pre-radio, pre-tv era. This new Stanford serial reading series (kind of a redundant name, no?) is just another great reason to love Stanford!
When I first flipped through these adventures, I was originally struck by the exhortation for the mailman to deliver them by a specific date, all of them 2 weeks to 2 months ago. They've arrived so promptly! But after sleuthing around on the internet, like any good modern Sherlock, I learned that you have to sign up to receive them. I wonder how I became signed up all of a sudden. Has the Alumni Association automatically signed everyone up? They might be keeping mum about it so that it remains slightly mysterious; after all, it is Sherlock Holmes! Have the rest of you alumni received these? (Although, come to think of it, I'm not a member of the Stanford Alumni Association. Hmmm....)
Might my dad have signed me up? I told him that I was reading Sherlock Holmeses on Sunday, which fits well in the time frame of receiving a lot of them today. But how would he have known about it? Perhaps it was advertised in the Stanford Alumni Magazine (which you don't apparently have to be a member of the alumni association to receive). He's also a Stanford Alumni (Ph.D. in 1976) and I think he also receives the alumni magazine. I never read the alumni magazine, it's a matter of principle, so I wouldn't have learned about this program through that channel. (Though lately I have actually been checking out the book review section to discover novels written by Stanford alumni. Stanford boasts quite a few great contemporary authors. Shrek guy, for those of you who know that story, is not yet one of them ;D.)
Or maybe one of you discovered it, decided I would love it (because you know I would!), and enlisted me. It's another possibility.
Anyone want to help me clear up this little matter? I'm no Sherlock; I don't take cocaine during off-times, only coca-cola.
posted by Meg at
6:06 PM
1 Comments:
Yay, mysteries! I went through a mystery kick just a while ago. And I see you're reading a Wilkie Collins book, have you read The Moonstone? Oh, and I think you would probably like Dorothy Sayer's Lord Peter Wimsey stuff. I prefer the novel-length ones, but the short stories are good, too. And Ernest Bramah is good as well; his Max Carrados is kind of like a blind Sherlock Holmes. Crap, this is making me want to go read some more mysteries!
-Lois
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Anonymous, at April 14, 2006 7:15 AM
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