There are nine books about Sherlock Holmes written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. You can find the contents of all nine collected in sets of any number below nine, but when you come right down to it, there are just nine books. So why is it that I own roughly two hundred Sherlock Holmes books written by Conan Doyle?

A little math will tell you that I own over twenty repeated printings of the same words, the same stories. It seems a little silly until I remember that I have probably read those same stories about twenty times each. Is it because I am an obsessive-compulsive who must read from a brand new book every time I read the same stories? No. Is it because I’m a driven collector who must have one of every printing of every Sherlock Holmes story? Not even close.

My friend Don Hobbs collects those same books in different languages, which some have questioned as he can’t read them all. I would submit that I am even worse  . . . I buy books in English that I never intend to read. Am I completely nuts?

Maybe. But I just think some of them are pretty.

I walked up to the good Carter in our local Border’s bookstore on Saturday night with yet another copy in hand, and told her: “Tell me not to buy this book.”

After some prompting, she complied. “Don’t buy that book.”

So I didn’t. It was only $14.99, but I decided that I had to draw the line somewhere. And it’s good to want things, isn’t it? I mean, if a fellow instantly got to fool around with every beautiful woman he ever met, where would the romance be? The anticipation, the full opportunity for appreciating every nuance . . . okay, maybe that metaphor’s a bit much. I don’t think Sherlock Holmes books are THAT pretty. Don’t report me to the book pervert police just yet. Suffice it to say that I held back on spending another fifteen bucks on something I sort-of already have.

I just have a special fondness for books printed before dustjackets, where colored ink was actually used to dress up the cloth covers. Here’s an example, an A. Wessels Company copy of The Return of Sherlock Holmes from 1907.  Simple, yet lovely, with an actual scene from the first story (though 221 Baker Street porbably never had such a long window). There was a time you could find these beauties in antique malls for a few bucks, but I suspect those happy days are long gone.

The book I admired in Border’s seemed to me a new version of one of those old books. A publisher called Ann Arbor Media Group is apparently publishing a whole line of classic books like The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes  and The Three Musketeers in just such a binding. The Sidney Paget illustrations were nicely reproduced inside, and the book had it’s own little bookmark ribbon. It really was a beautiful little book, at least to me.

What makes one want to buy a new copy of stories one knows so well? Does a new cover make that much difference? I suspect it’s basic Pavlovian conditioning. We associate pleasure so closely with books that somehow a really nice looking book just seems like something even more pleasureable. Of course, that sounds dangerously close to getting back to book pervert land.

In any case, I’m happy to see that a Sherlock Holmes book still has some magic after all these years. And I hope in leaving a copy behind for once, someone else might have the opportunity to discover that same magic.

Your humble correspondent,

Brad Keefauver