asra

I just finished rereading Jamyang Norbu's Sherlock Holmes: The Missing Years, aka The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes. (I set myself a reading goal of 52 books this year, hence the title of this post; although, considering it's already September, I don't think I'm going to complete the challenge this year.) I read it twenty years ago when it was first published, and reread it now since one of my students is doing her dissertation on it. It's about Holmes's post-Reichenbach time in Tibet from when he's pretending to be dead in the gap between "The Final Problem" and "The Empty House".

Some of it didn't stand up well to a second read, but THE END, THE END! Pretty much every review I've read of Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire says that you ~must read it, if only for the very last page, and I have to say the same of Norbu's Holmes. If you're a Sherlock Holmes fan, whether ACD or Granada or BBC or whichever version, read this book for the last few lines. (It's a bit like the very last scene of An Adventure in Space and Time for Doctor Who fans.)

Re fandom things, I'm pretty disappointed that neither of my recipients for the last two exchanges I participated in responded to their gifts. Oh, well. I did manage an