Hi Everyone-

Well, we're all getting ready for (and looking forward to!) the holidays here at Olsson's. Our Holiday Gift Guide will be hitting the stores soon, and we're sure you'll like it—it's chock full of great gifts for the season that we selected with our customers in mind.

As for myself, I've finally discovered Sherlock Holmes. I'd read The Hound of the Baskervilles many years ago and remember liking it, but I had never pursued the Holmes novels and stories any further. What finally turned me on to the work now was reading Julian Barnes' forthcoming (in January) novel Arthur and George, an amazing retelling of Arthur Conan Doyle's involvement in trying to right a terrible miscarriage of justice around the turn of the (twentieth) century. I'll tell you more about this book when it hits the stores, but suffice it to say, it's brilliant, and it got me very interested in the actual Holmes stories.

So I dug out my copy of a title we featured in last year's Holiday Gift Guide, The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Volume 2. It's a beautiful slipcased edition of two volumes, featuring every Holmes short story, along with extensive illustrations and amazing annotations.

I say amazing because the annotations, by Leslie S. Klinger, really do add a whole extra dimension to the Holmes "canon." Besides providing valuable historical information, the annotations also serve to document the incredibly loving detail with which Holmes fans and scholars (there's hardly a difference) view the work. Here's what I learned, and all you Holmes fans out there, forgive my previous ignorance: the Holmes stories are essentially viewed as historical documents recorded by John Watson and transcribed by Doyle. Therefore, any indiscrepencies in the texts (and there are more than a few) regarding historical and scientific accuracy, chronology, or even character names, must therefore be reconciled. So what would appear to the layman to be simple lapses in fictional continuity are to Holmes fans lapses in the historical record which must be explaned. I'd say explained rationally, but you should read some of the explanations of why, say, Dr. Watson's wife once addresses him as James rather than John, or a goose that has a diamond in its gullet (don't ask) doesn't have the right type of gullet (a "crop") for that to occur. The annotations, which cover all such theories, as well as fascinating insight into Victorian and Edwardian London, publication information, details comparing information between the stories and novels, and more, truly transform the entire reading experience. I've found myself (pleasurably) lost in the world of Holmes (and yes, the stories alone are well worth the price of the book) and his devoted following ever since picking the book up.

...And the set is completed this fall with the publication of the third volume of The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, featuring all the Holmes novels, including The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Sign of Four, A Study in Scarlet, and The Valley of Fear. The novels are every bit as beloved as the stories, and I can't wait to plunge into this new volume as well. It's featured in this year's Holiday Gift Guide, and it's just as beautiful as the original set: it features its own slip case, has its own great illustrations, and of course, those fascinating, quirky, revealing annotations. I highly recommend both great sets!

I'm signing off now, before I give in to making some sort of "the game is afoot" reference.

See you in the stores,

-Joe Murphy, Head Book Buyer