Ginger, the woman I did the reading with this past Saturday - Lora Roberts - writes Holmes pastiches. She does a quite decent job, too.

The thing about The Five Red Herrings is, when you get to the end and realize what the question was, it really is a completely obvious thing that any 12 year old might have asked. I find that FRH is not my favorite Sayers by any means, but the recreation of the crime/coverup is hilarious.

One student gasped and said, "A Scandal in Bohemia. I thought that was a made-up country."

Hee! OK, sad, but still. Heh.

My love for Sherlock Holmes goes beyond the platonic, that's for sure. I got a leather-bound complete Holmes collection as a high school graduation gift and read through it several times the summer after graduation. It's probably the only HS grad. gift I still have, lo these 20 years later.

I have a friend who went trick-or-treating, our senior year of high school, as Sherlock Holmes. She looked really cool, I have to admit.

Oh, my. Remember our nice long heated debate on Amazon.com reviews?

From today's L.A. Times.

Why yes, Virginia, your career can depend entirely on whether or not four people who didn't like you in high school want to get bitchy.

BTW, Caroline Leavitt, who's mentioned in the article, is out there spreading the Wonderfalls gospel. She's a damned good writer, too.

Now that I've seen Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, I can't even take my opinions on the web seriously.

It's also an argument for anonymity.

For the reviewer, sure. For the author, who may spot personal attacks and have no defense, not so much.

Being the author, I'm in the second camp. But really, what's exercising my brain about the article is the fact that enough reviews by nineteen-year-old virgins who want "more romance!" or "more sex!" in a book can influence an editor.

Which makes me want to vomit, and kill people.

Being the author, and all.

Being a sometime professional reviewer, the one thing that this does bring is the decline of the profession. I think there will always be big-time reviewers, don't get me wrong, but the little ones (like me) will soon find themselves out of jobs/hobbies.

I actually think it's a good thing for two reasons: 1) Now the people reading the books actually get to tell the author they think the book is fabulous even if the NY Times said it's worthless, and 2) It adds checks and balances to a system that has created famous crap authors (Danielle Steele, anyone?) and ruined fantastic authors with just a couple of reviews. There is still a lot of bugs that need to be worked out before it's close to flawless, but I say it's much better than the system we have in place now.

Now that I've seen Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, I can't even take my opinions on the web seriously.

What else is the internet for, if not for slandering other peole anonymously?

"Do you post at MoviePoopShute.com?"

I'd give up parts for that Jay and Silent Bob power. There are some twits at certain (VN) boards that would be getting such a beatin'.

But the author taunting the reading with information like that is just annoying. Once is fine. By the time it had happened 20 times, I'd figured out most of what it was, and the "big reveal" wasn't terribly interesting at all.

I like Dan Brown, but I find some things very annoying. Like the fact that every book begins with the protaganist being "summoned" to a place to see a "thing" and it takes 100 pages to find out what that "thing" is. It's tedious and sloppy.

I also read The Da Vinci Code right after finishing Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. Needless to say, it was a little confusing.