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The Book Glutton: A New Level of Sherlockiana?
Having been through a couple of different topic ideas for this week’s column, I still managed to let myself be seduced by NBC’s resurrection of Knight Rider and put off this week’s writing until the very last possible moment. Thus, it was not entirely an unwelcome thing when I returned to my computer to hear from somebody I hadn’t seen for a very long time . . . and someone with column material at that. It seems like Sherlockians have been exploring every possible avenue of enjoying our hobby on the web. We’re Sherlockians – we can find Sherlock everywhere. But not many bits of software or new internet technologies seem as natural a fit for us as a new site called BookGlutton.com. It’s a social networking site that actually works within books themselves, And what is one of the books you’ll see immediately on BookGlutton’s front page? The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. With what little exploring I could do after just hearing of the site ten minutes ago, I’m pretty impressed. Even with Les Klinger’s recent upgrade of a published Annotated Sherlock Holmes, I knew that a living annotated Canon on the web was still in our future, and guess what? BookGlutton is set up for that. But that’s just the beginning. While I’ve never been able to commit to a weekly Sherlockian chatroom discussion like some friends of mine have had over the years, BookGlutton also takes that activity to the next level. We’ve discussed books online before, but have we ever discussed books online while reading the same text at the same time? It sounds like a horribly distracting idea for a first read, but most Sherlockians are not first readers. We’re reading short stories for the umpteenth time. Spending a couple hours reading one of our favorite short stories with friends seems exactly like something we’d do. So anyway, take a look over at BookGlutton.com and see what you think. Here are a few informative links: Site: http://www.bookglutton.com And, just so you know, I might just have one little bias where this site is concerned. One of the site’s founders, Travis Alber, used to come to meetings of our local scion society, the Hansoms of John Clayton, with her father when she was a youngster. Seeing something born of a love of reading from somebody in the old club is a very happy thing. Take a look, and see what you think. Your humble correspondent, Brad Keefauver |
