Lots of books

On my shelves there are a large number of books. So many that it took a very very long time to make a list of them all. As time goes by I'm building a virtual listing on LibraryThing, which I'm beginning to rather like. Go, LibraryThing!

I've been thinking a lot about Sherlock Holmes. It seems like the very best performances as Sherlock Holmes have been by people who fit both a performance and an image to the role. Well, that's always true, isn't it? Arguably the best Sherlock Holmes for me was on radio, in the BBC Radio 4 dramatisations where Clive Merrison nailed his performance on every single one of the fifty six Conan Doyle stories. They adapted, and faithfully, the whole canon and even made Watson interesting via the awesome performance of Michael Williams. Great. The other most notable performance for me is from Benedict Cumberbatch, who excels despite occasionally shoddy scripts (I'm looking at you, Gatiss). It seems as if the quest to make a good Sherlock Holmes movie is an ongoing one, and with it there's the quest to find someone to fit the visual on the big screen. Honourable mentions go to Nicol Williamson in 'The Seven-Per-Cent Solution' and Christopher Plummer in 'Murder By Decree' but they're both only ninety-per-cent right, and limited by the movies they're appearing in. Basil Rathbone did well but never seemed to inhabit the role and I won't even mention Robert Downey junior. Robert Stephens gave a very creditable performance in an ironic movie. It's a topic I'll return to many times, I believe, as I love Sherlock Holmes. Oh, and for the record, I didn't like Jeremy Brett on television much if at all. Throw your fruit through the screen now.

Looking ahead, and in response to all the media I've been getting through, it looks as if I'll be writing about the following things in the near future: 'Master and Commander' (film), 'Safety Not Guaranteed' (film), 'Timeline' (book), 'Ringworld' (book) and maybe even writing some stories. It should be fun!

Wrapping up, I can report that the next Film Bin Commentary, see FilmBin, will be for 'The Core'. This epic of questionable quality has long been one of my popcorn favourites and hopefully we'll give it a good examination. Yes the science may be dodgy, and yes some of the dialogue is corny beyond belief but we will be recording tomorrow for fairly prompt publishing. It shall be fun. It was kind of nice to have a corny science fiction movie that wasn't from the 1980's.

'propinquity: the fact of being near to someone or something, or closely related to or very much like someone'

Probably I like 'The Core' for its propinquity with who I am. That's why I liked 'The Last Starfighter', 'Explorers' but not 'The Goonies', 'Independence Day' and of course 'The West Wing'. Oh, the 'West Wing'! Can it really have been so many entries without even a mention of 'The West Wing'! Who's my totem character? Toby of course! I love 'The West Wing'! Right, that's it, the next post will be on Toby.

O.