A Curly Correspondence: I Love You, Sherlock Holmes

Guess what everyone?

I SAW "SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS"!

Can y'all say "midnight premiere"? Because I was there. I dragged Hailey and Cherie, two of the greatest sports in the world, along with me, and Cherie dragged her friends Mark and Joe. All in all, it was a fantastic finale to one of the most stressful semesters conceivable.

I had a countdown clock going since last year

{Sorry Folks, the cropping I just did was apparently for naught}

I've been practicing Rachel McAdams' Irene Adler Makeup, which I wore to premiere

Only to find, of course, that Irene is now sporting a slightly more minimalist look.

And I was, thank goodness, given the reward of this touching scene:

{And may I say that I "shipped" them before the movie, RIGHT after I read "A Scandal in Bohemia" for the first time, thank you very much! It was painfully obvious that here was someone he could respect enough to be attracted to and I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO THINKS SO but that's another story for another day.}

I confess, I was a trifle apprehensive when I heard that Jared Harris had been cast as Moriarty. Professor James Moriarty is so sinister, so greedy, arrogant, and evil, but he is also so easy to overplay. And, come on--the son of the original Albus Dumbeldore portraying the most arrogant, sinister, greedy, downright EVIL criminal mastermind in the literary world? I had my doubts.

He quelled them. Let's just say that I will never be able to listen to Schubert's "Fischerweise" the same way ever again. Ever. If I can listen to it at all.

{If you would like to listen to it before you see the film and so have pleasant memories of this melody, here you go. Please know that I went through a hideous case of the willies to put it here for your potential listening pleasure.If you have seen the film, I don't blame you if you can't take it.}

Of course, I was JUST as excited two years ago when the first movie came out. I knew it was coming for a long time; I was watching Regis & Kelly {as I do most summer mornings over breakfast} when Robert Downey Jr. was there promoting Iron Man 2 and announced the new Sherlock Holmes movie.

After this I was a woman possessed, or rather possessed anew.

My fascination with the greatest detective of all time came on when I was about nine years old. I was already a voracious reader, and if library cards were like credit cards my parents could be in debt by now. But when the 5 & 10 near my grandmother's house offered the cheap abridged illustrated classics, my mother was only too happy to oblige. Among the small volumes purchased that day was a small collection of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

{How cover art has evolved since then!}

It only contained three of the most famous cases--that of The Red-Headed League, The Speckled Band, and The Copper Beeches--but I re-read that tiny book again and again, wishing against wish that a new adventure would somehow pop up.

A few years later, I was walking around Barnes & Noble--an activity my parents soon realized could be hazardous for them and their wallets with a girl of my tastes--and spied two enormous hard-backed volumes with the same title as my own little grey book with its cheap paper. Here they were! More of these wonderful adventures, precisely as I had asked!!

But how to get them? My father has a philosophy about books: He doesn't understand why I read them more than once, being able to extract little pleasure from literature himself. And as I looked at the price tag on these exquisite volumes, I already knew his answer: Linds, you don't need those, you can read those at the library!

So when he gave that answer, that's precisely what I did.

It was in the days before I learned to drive, and by then he was accustomed to my request that he drive me to the Ogden Library, which had much more to offer than our own. He was accustomed to seeing me appear on the floor, looking up from CD's containing songs from the 1950's to see my arms straining with a stack of books. The only question was whether he would ask if I were over the limit or if he would prophecy darkly of my mother's reaction when she saw me coming home with so many books.

And one week, one of those "so many books" was a copy of the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I ate up "A Scandal in Bohemia" and then realized that these were too good, I must save them for the end.

The end came and I had not finished the collection. I was very sad but my mother would not allow me to renew them, as it was near the end of the year and she wanted me to concentrate on school.

I meant to go back for the collection, but I have a condition I like to call literary ADD, which explains both the length of my "books to read" list and why all my writing projects sit unfinished.

Less than a year passed, and something arrived in the mail for me from my Father's winter home in Las Vegas. In a fit of generosity, he had given me both a Barnes & Noble membership and $150 dollars to inaugurate it!

I now knew my path. My path could not have been any clearer if Grandmother Willow from Pocahontas was speaking to me.

My mother said yes, once my math homework was done we could go buy something. Once it was, we got in the car, and decided we might stop at our favorite Mexican restaurant for takeout after.

Mom: Do you know what you want?

Me: Well, yeah Mom I do.

Mom: What?

Me: I've had my eye on this nice boxed set of every Sherlock Holmes story ever written for two years.

Mom: {Looks surprised at my patience} Why didn't you just ask for it for Christmas?

Me: It was fifty dollars. Dad said no.

My mother then nodded knowingly, having before {and since} witnessed my father and I ~~arguing over~~ discussing the worth of books over dinner. {Quite candidly, I think she is sick to death of it}

So we went to Barnes & Noble and I headed straight for the Arthur Conan-Doyle section. The fancy edition was sold out BUT I was able to purchase these:

{I couldn't actually find a picture of volume two, but I have it}

I started reading as soon as dinner was over {My Dad instituted a strict no-reading-during-dinner-rule halfway through Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire} and never looked back.

So I was SO happy, when on December 27, 2009, I looked up Guy Ritchie on imdb.com and saw, under his list of projects "UNTITLED SHERLOCK HOLMES SEQUEL (pre-production)"