6 responses to “Elementary, Dear Reader”

  1. James

    Never enough Sherlock. He’s an evergreen, all right, as endlessly re-inventable as a figure out of myth. Despite the number of different cinematic incarnations, though, he was (and still is in the US, last I checked) a copyrighted character. This NY Times article outlines some of the complexities of the legal history behind it all.

  2. Amanda MacNaughton

    Well, what do you know, James? I just went on what I’d been told and the evidence I saw with so many adaptations.

    1. James

      A very logical assumption to make. What a deluge there would be if he really were in the public domain.

  3. Emily @ Gingham and Steel

    My brother just fell into the Sherlock TV series and is newly obsessed. I’m trying so hard to avoid addictive substances in my life, TV shows and books being the leading culprits of eating up all my time. I have to ask – is working in a bookstore as romantic as it seems? I have a feeling Hollywood has given me unrealistic expectations of quirky staff who get to wear glasses all the time, a blanket of lush silence, and an air of ink and intelligence.

  4. Amanda MacNaughton

    Oh, Emily, your concept of working at a bookstore is the common one. No, it is not nearly as romantic as it seems. We are fairly quirky, and a lot of us wear glasses, but there is quite a lot of hard work here, some of it pretty physical (hauling boxes of books! moving furniture for author events!) and there can be annoying customers, and there’s definitely stress. I guess we still have an air of ink and intelligence, but we certainly don’t get to sit around reading at the front desk. Someday I want to write a column about just this–the romantic perception of working at a bookstore, versus what it is really like. Thanks for asking!

    1. James

      Spot on, Amanda. I await that column eagerly. If I may quote myself from a piece NW Book Lovers picked up some time ago:

      “Booksellers are the envy of many. It’s rare for a receptionist in a doctor’s office, or for the doctor herself, to hear, ‘I’d love to do what you do,’ but it’s a regular occurrence in the book trade. There’s a real romance to the idea of being around ideas all day. Now, we love what we do, don’t get us wrong, but it’s more of deep, complicated parental kind of feeling than it is a dose of puppy love.”

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