2006 Edgar nominees announced

Mystery Writers of America has announced the nominees for the 2006 Edgar Awards. The awards will be presented April 27, 2006 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City.

The relative longevity of science frauds

From TCS Daily, an overview of famous science hoaxes, including one involving Sir Doyle.
Nearly 90 years after the announcement of Piltdown Man, culprit and motives rest in anonymity, disturbed only by an industry of speculation. Of the many suspects, Jesuit priest and paleontologist Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was favored in heavy speculation by [...]

Jeremy Brett in ‘The Merry Widow’

EMI’s Classics for Pleasure label is reissuing some of its theatrical gems, including a 1968 revival of “The Merry Widow,” featuring our beloved Jeremy Brett.
In 1968, Bronhill made a second recording of The Merry Widow for EMI, again in the Hassall translation, and it is this second Bronhill Widow that Classics for Pleasure has now [...]

When a sidekick takes center stage

Interesting thoughts on the role of the beloved sidekick, in this examination of the popular Inspecter Morse mysteries.
In the field of fictional detecting, the double act is also a long-established tradition. Their existence is generally hidden: we talk about Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, and Morse. But the pernickety Belgian would be nothing without Captain Hastings doing [...]

A.V. Club loves ‘Arthur & George’

The Onion’s literary section A.V. Club just published this glowing review of “Arthur & George,” giving it an A.
Arthur & George sorts through half a dozen recurring themes, from spiritual quests to the way people make their desires known when rigorous codes of behavior get in their way. But mostly, the book is about presumption. [...]

Doyle not just ‘a mere crime writer’

From Seattle Weekly’s new review of Arthur & George by Julian Barnes:
Dead some six decades, the creator of Sherlock Holmes still ranks as one of the most read and influential authors of our time. In part, that’s because his detective mysteries, filled with relentless reasoning, forensic technique, and evil archvillains, serve as the template for [...]

Stanford’s Strand reprints, examined in detail

We told you before about the excellent reprints of The Strand stories – here’s a worthy read about the program behind the scenes, and what they are trying to accomplish.
“This project is a unique opportunity to show today’s readers how works originally appeared and to provide them with the same experience [as] a person reading [...]

Deepak Chopra on connectedness

From a 1-23-06 blog post from Mr. Chopra:
Some concept of a “subtle body” is accepted widely throughout the East, but it hasn’t made major headway in the West for one obvious reason:
Whatever is invisible has little standing in a materialistic culture where reality is defined by science. Therefore, an understanding about subtler levels of reality [...]