The Maniac Collector's Inbox
No. 433, September 19, 2010

How I Spent My Summer Vacation
By Don Hobbs

I spent my summer vacation the same way I spend most days of the year, adding books to my collection and visiting Sherlockians around the country. This summer was about average in total additions and it was far above average in the number of Sherlockian encounters. I added seventy-eight new items to my collection. This breaks down to adding one new item every 1.16 days for the entire summer or roughly 91.25 days.  I saw more than one-hundred and twenty Sherlockians. This works out to seeing 1.3 different Sherlockians every day of summer.

There are twenty-eight new items listed under the heading of Journals and Newsletters. Printed issues of SherlockPeoria, Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press, The Baker Street Journal, The Camden House Journal, The Illustrious Clients News, The Passenger’s Log, and The Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections made up the majority of this section. About a hundred Sherlockians I met are under the heading The Spirits of Sherlock Holmes. This was the conference held in Minneapolis back in August. Another twenty or so Sherlockians can be accounted for when Les Klinger visited my house in June.

This summer allowed me to add fourteen new Japanese editions of the Canon. I do not recall meeting any Japanese Sherlockians during the summer. I added four books on Higher Criticism and four Italian editions. I met no Sherlockians who were critical or high for that matter and only emailed Italian Sherlockians. There were two new pastiches and two new Canonical editions and I did visit Les Klinger, who annotated the Canon and another Sherlockian that published a pastiche. I have four new Dutch books and went Dutch treat in Minneapolis with four Sherlockians.

Four Spanish editions matched the three new Ottoman Turk editions. The Spanish are still beating the Moors and I have spent the summer planning a meeting with the Spanish Sherlockians in Barcelona. I subscribed to a publishing service so I could download five Canonical stories translated in Assamese. They compliment the one Marathi translation that I added. I met a Sherlockian in Memphis at an Indian restaurant. I added a single Georgian and a single German book but I met no Sherlockians from “G” places.

I hope that autumn will fall into another collecting mania and be as much fun as the summer has been.

Happy Collecting!!

Archives for
2002 to 2008

Archives for 2009

Past 2009 Columns

January 3, 2010
Happy New Year! A Sherlockian Potpourri