Speaking of detective books, I've only got two books (well, sets of books) on my Amazon wish list--the Complete Annotated Short Stories of Sherlock Holmes, and the Complete Annotated Novels of Sherlock Holmes. They're on the list because I can't afford to buy them myself right now--totaled up, they're over $100.

Oh please, snark away. I think I started the book when I was 13. Every once in a while I dig it out and try to read it but it hurts too much and I put it away again. It would be perfect for one of those angst fest things where people read stuff they wrote as teens on stage for the amusement of others.

Has this been posted?

Lucy Maud Montgomery's granddaughter revealed that the author committed suicide:

[link]

In an essay in the Globe and Mail on Saturday, Kate Macdonald Butler said Montgomery committed suicide. She said there was a note, which she's never seen, but she was told it asked for forgiveness.

Macdonald Butler said it seemed appropriate to lift the secrecy on the 100th anniversary of the publishing of Montgomery's first and most famous book. She was inspired to reveal the truth because of a series published in the Globe on mental health, and she hoped it would help get rid of the stigma of mental illness.

I have kind of a meta fandom question, and this seems like the right place for me to ask it. So, the Twilight fans (the actual fans of the series, not those of us who read it for comedy): to me they seem like they're several levels of deeper fan-crazy than other fandoms. Is this because I wasn't paying close attention to the HP and LotR fandoms? Or are the TwiFans really that barking mad? I ask because of news stories like this one. [link]

"Almost everyone has a "Twilight" story: the teen who dropped his library card, only to discover Twilighters had found it and kept it; the cheerleader who has out-of-town mothers stop her on the street offering cash for her uniform; the Quileute native, who heads to LaPush to chop wood and sees giddy teenagers snatching up driftwood as souvenirs."

Is it just because there's a real city mentioned in the books that they can flock to? Am I just naive?

Is it just because there's a real city mentioned in the books that they can flock to? Am I just naive?

I think that's part of it, Jilli. Whenever there's something real they can grasp onto, I think it gives them an even more tangible sense of it belonging to them (or of them belonging to it).

I know there's plenty of deep craxy in the other literary fandoms-- Laurell K. and J.R. Ward and Sherry Kenyon, but really, the only other place I've consistently seen this level of deep fandom and the weird sense of entitlement is in some of the music fandoms.

I'm fairly sure it's no crazier than other fandoms. It's just in ascendancy right now.

Maybe a little. Because Homicide fans liked to drink at the Waterfront but I've never been mugged for my Cafe Hon T-shirt. Maybe if it said "Bodymore, Murderland"

Uh, some Lord of the Rings fans believed that Elijah Wood and Dominic Monaghan were in a relationship, but were forced to hide it, but gave out secret signals in interviews and stuff.

Some Harry Potter fans are convinced they're married to Severus Snape on the astral plane.

I'd go with Dana on that. Also, part of the craxy is its romantic sensibility, something that hits a chord with the teen set (if not only the teen set); so you get a certain kind of response you might not get in a different fandom.

Barb, I've gotten that kind of reader-letter too, and after boggling a bit I just had to ignore it. It's a certain type of reader-entitlement that assumes that the writer is merely there to produce for the reader, and the reader gets to dictate what that is. While not all of your friend's readers may love the direction she's going, thankfully only a few of them also have the gall to tell the writers what to do.

Well, that's a lot of crazy, too. Maybe Twilight-crazy seems crazier cause I can't imagine being into it. That last book seriously grossed me out.