Welcome

Welcome! Like the book of the same name, this blog is an eclectic collection of Sherlockian scribblings based on more than a half-century of reading Sherlock Holmes. Please add your own thoughts. You can also follow me on Twitter @DanAndriacco and on my Facebook fan page at Dan Andriacco Mysteries. You might also be interested in my Amazon Author Page. My books are also available at Barnes & Noble and in all main electronic formats including Kindle, Nook, Kobo and iBooks for the iPad.

Monday, August 26, 2013

Welcome to My Library


This blog began on May 28, 2011. I've written 408 blog posts since then, and accumulated quite a few readers through my DanAndriaccoMysteries Facebook Fan Page and my Twitter account, @Dan Andriacco. So a lot of you weren't there at the start. Here's a reprise of that first blog post, also repeating the same photo of me in my library.   

Welcome to my library. Just don’t call it a collection.

I’ve been acquiring books about or related to Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ever since my first copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes in 1964.

By now I have several hundred – various editions of the Sacred Writings, pastiches, critical works, biographies, works of fact and fiction peripherally related to Holmes, books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and juvenile books. There are even a couple of cookbooks. They all sit on shelves spanning an entire wall of a room in our home appropriately known as the Sherlock Holmes library.

It was only a couple of years ago that it dawned on me that this truly is a library that we have, not a collection.

First of all, I don’t have the drive, the tenacity, the vision, or the insanity to be a collector. I also don’t have a plan unlike, for example, collectors who set out to own every edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles. I simply pick up books that I like and ones that I think I might find useful. It's very haphazard. I also have very generous friends who have bolstered the shelves over many years.

Secondly, I use these volumes like a library – that is, for reference. It was an immense help to have my own copy of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, for example, when I wrote the book version of Baker Street Beat.

Nevertheless, I have picked up some interesting books along the way. I’ll be telling you about some of them in future posts on this new blog. I’ll also be posting photos from our Sherlockian adventures, reviewing new books, and sharing some Quintessential Quotes by and about Sherlock Holmes. I know it’s going to be fun for me, and I hope it will be for you as well.

Please check in often. The game is afoot!

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