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This was a tag from Bella back in the beginning of January, which I'm not finally getting to. (Congratulate me, friend! Two blog posts in March!) It was supposed to be a New Year's Tag, but since I'm so late, it's going to be a "2015: A Summary" tag. So whatever.


1. What was the single best thing that happened last year?

2. What was the single most challenging thing that happened?


4. What did you get really, really excited about?

5. What song/album will always remind you of 2015?
Josh Groban's STAGES CD. Especially "What I Did For Love" and "Dulcinea."


6. How did you spend your Christmas?
Epicly! (Epically?) We had Midnight Mass privately up near where we live, and we got some pretty awesome snow Christmas Eve, so we had these huge soft drifts everywhere, and there was a full moon that night, so I wished on it.
Christmas is always glorious in our house. We light the Christ Candle first thing and sing Joy to the World, and put Baby Jesus in the manger. My dad always gets a fire going and makes sausage rolls and puts down a pot of coffee, and we open stockings and eat food and drink mimosa and/or orange juice and coffee and pass out gifts and get really, really loud. We had a lot of people over that day, too. We have a friend who moved to Tahoe from Wyoming, and her brothers came for dinner, which was our traditional gnocchi and ham. We also had a snowball fight later that night, and it was pretty freakishly cold out there, which probably wasn't good for all of us with our wicked chest colds. We were all:


8. What were the best movies you saw in 2015?


9.What were the best books you read in 2015?
What Came From The Stars by Gary Schmidt; The Winner's Curse by Marie Rutkoski.

I was briefly hooked on Person Of Interest, then a female character was introduced who sort of usurped my boys, Reese and Finch, and I later discovered she was having a relationship with another female and I lost interest. I restarted 24, though. (Still adore Jack.)

11. Did you discover any new musicals?

12. Did you write any new books?
I am mostly revising books I've already written - namely, DragonFire and Fulcrum. I had been kicking around an idea concerning nightmares, and that one has really taken off this month. I've been actively writing it a few hours each night. I'm pretty excited about it. :-)

13. Did you make any new friends?

14. What was your biggest personal change from January to December of this past year?

15. Is there some change you will have to go through in 2016?
Gosh, I hope not. Well, I'd like to move. But otherwise... Gosh, I hope not.

16. What was your single biggest time waster in your life this past year?

17. What was biggest thing you learned this past year?
Life is hard, but trust in God. Worry gives you insomnia.


18. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
"He will always hate me / No matter what I say / And there is no mistaking the love is gone."
(This is actually a man's song, so I had to change the "she" in the original lyrics to "he".)


19. What are five things you want to do in 2016?
a.) Land an agent. (That makes me sound like I'm hooking a fish. Sorry, agents!)
b.) Buy a piano and start composing music again.
c.) Go to one of the two SCBWI Annual Conferences in either LA or New York (though since I didn't get tax returns this year, that's probably not going to happen this year).
d.) Get a better job.
e.) Move.

20. Describe 2015 in your own words.


Truly, not the best year I've ever had. It had it's ups and downs, and I was mostly very worried and stressed during it. I concentrated on trying to be a bit more trusting and take it one day at a time. I sometimes felt like I was doing good with that, but then someone would say, "Are you okay? You seem sad," and I so I guess I wasn't being as brave as I'd thought I was being.

2015 did have some epic moments - Carmel and WordWave and Christmas were three incredible highlights to the year and I want to go back to check out more of the missions in the very near future. That's a definite To-Do. I also got myself submitting to agents, which is an A+ for me in regards to my courage. (Submitting to agents is scary!)

However, I seem to have grown more antisocial. The best thing in my life is going to my little home and being alone, with no people other than my sisters. And Netflix. (Seriously, guys. NETFLIX.)

And this was my relationship with last year

HERE'S TO A BETTER THIS YEAR!!! :-) 

God bless. 

The Cat

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I didn't write anything about the fall TV season this (last) year, because frankly, it was too dismal and boring to write anything about, and anything I could have said would have just joined the chorus of thinkpieces lamenting the networks' inability to produce anything resembling worthwhile new shows.  But here we are in winter, with the network shows on break or just coming out of it, and

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Test your knowledge of Sherlock Holmes with this quiz, based on the novels and short stories, the canon's history and its place in modern day life.

The post How well do you know Sherlock Holmes? [quiz] appeared first on OUPblog.

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In celebration of The BBC Proms 120th anniversary we have created a comprehensive reading list of books, journals, and online resources that celebrate the eight- week British summer season of orchestral music, live performances, and late-night music and poetry.

The post Happy 120th birthday BBC Proms appeared first on OUPblog.

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Here at Oxford University Press we occasionally get the chance to discover a new and exciting piece of literary history. We’re excited to share the newest short story addition to the Sherlock Holmes mysteries in Sherlock Holmes: Selected Stories. Never before published, our editorial team has acquired The Mystery of the Green Garden, now believed to be Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s first use of the Sherlock Holmes’ character in his writing. Written during Doyle’s time at Stonyhurst College before entering medical school, the short story displays an early, amateur style of writing not seen in his later published works.

The Mystery of the Green Garden is set during Sherlock Holmes’ childhood – a rarely discussed part of Holmes’ life. Holmes’ is only sixteen years old when he is called to his first case. Unlike many of the stories in the Holmes series which are narrated by the loyal Dr. Watson, Holmes himself tells the short, endearing tale of his mother’s beloved garden. Getting our first look at his parents, Holmes briefly describes his mother as a “lively but often brooding woman.” We catch only a glimpse of his father who he calls a tireless civil serviceman with, “rarely enough time to fix even a long ago missing board in the kitchen’s creaking floor.”

Before attending university where he first acquired his detective skills, and moving to 221S Baker Street to practice his craft, Holmes lived at 45 Tilly Lane overlooking “a lush, never ignored garden.” Described as his mother’s favorite pastime, she gardened tirelessly day in and day out. As a young boy he recalls “spending countless hours playing in the dirt as mother tended to her beloved flowers and ferns.”

One morning, Holmes wakes to discover the garden destroyed. Flower beds are overturned, and shrubbery and plants are ripped apart. His mother is beside herself upon seeing her hard work demolished, and Holmes vows to discover the foolish culprit behind the dastardly act. A neighbor provides the first clue that sets the wheels in motion. His elderly neighbor who often wakes “before the sun has met the sky,” describes to Holmes a “tall, lean man with a crooked gray cap” that he saw running down the pathway between their two houses in the early hours of the morning while everyone in town still slept. Without any experience at solving cases, Doyle displays the first use of Holmes’ abductive reasoning skills later developed in the stories. As Holmes gathers clues as to what seems to be a random act, a story bigger than anyone can imagine slowly unravels.

April Fools! We hope we haven’t disappointed you too much. Although The Mystery in the Green Garden is just the work of a fool’s mind, there are seven Sherlock Holmes novels in the Oxford World’s Classics series. Sherlock Holmes: Selected Stories includes over a dozen stories truly written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford’s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. You can follow Oxford World’s Classics on Twitter, Facebook, or here on the OUPblog. Subscribe to only Oxford World’s Classics articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

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The post Sherlock Holmes’ beginnings appeared first on OUPblog.

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By James O’Brien

Between Edgar Allan Poe’s invention of the detective story with The Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841 and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes story A Study in Scarlet in 1887, chance and coincidence played a large part in crime fiction. Nevertheless, Conan Doyle resolved that his detective would solve his cases using reason. He modeled Holmes on Poe’s Dupin and made Sherlock Holmes a man of science and an innovator of forensic methods. Holmes is so much at the forefront of detection that he has authored several monographs on crime-solving techniques. In most cases the well-read Conan Doyle has Holmes use methods years before the official police forces in both Britain and America get around to them. The result was 60 stories in which logic, deduction, and science dominate the scene.

FINGERPRINTS

Sherlock Holmes was quick to realize the value of fingerprint evidence. The first case in which fingerprints are mentioned is The Sign of Four, published in 1890, and he’s still using them 36 years later in the 55th story, The Three Gables (1926). Scotland Yard did not begin to use fingerprints until 1901.

It is interesting to note that Conan Doyle chose to have Holmes use fingerprints but not bertillonage (also called anthropometry), the system of identification by measuring twelve characteristics of the body. That system was originated by Alphonse Bertillon in Paris. The two methods competed for forensic ascendancy for many years. The astute Conan Doyle picked the eventual winner.

TYPEWRITTEN DOCUMENTS

As the author of a monograph entitled “The Typewriter and its Relation to Crime,” Holmes was of course an innovator in the analysis of typewritten documents. In the one case involving a typewriter, A Case of Identity (1891), only Holmes realized the importance of the fact that all the letters received by Mary Sutherland from Hosmer Angel were typewritten — even his name is typed and no signature is applied. This observation leads Holmes to the culprit. By obtaining a typewritten note from his suspect, Holmes brilliantly analyses the idiosyncrasies of the man’s typewriter. In the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) started a Document Section soon after its crime lab opened in 1932. Holmes’s work preceded this by forty years.

HANDWRITING

Conan Doyle, a true believer in handwriting analysis, exaggerates Holmes’s abilities to interpret documents. Holmes is able to tell gender, make deductions about the character of the writer, and even compare two samples of writing and deduce whether the persons are related. This is another area where Holmes has written a monograph (on the dating of documents). Handwritten documents figure in nine stories. In The Reigate Squires, Holmes observes that two related people wrote the incriminating note jointly. This allows him to quickly deduce that the Cunninghams, father and son, are the guilty parties. In The Norwood Builder, Holmes can tell that Jonas Oldacre has written his will while riding on a train. Reasoning that no one would write such an important document on a train, Holmes is persuaded that the will is fraudulent. So immediately at the beginning of the case he is hot on the trail of the culprit.

FOOTPRINTS

Holmes also uses footprint analysis to identify culprits throughout his fictional career, from the very first story to the 57^th story (The Lion’s Mane published in 1926). Fully 29 of the 60 stories include footprint evidence. The Boscombe Valley Mystery is solved almost entirely by footprint analysis. Holmes analyses footprints on quite a variety of surfaces: clay soil, snow, carpet, dust, mud, blood, ashes, and even a curtain. Yet another one of Sherlock Holmes’s monographs is on the topic (“The tracing of footsteps, with some remarks upon the uses of Plaster of Paris as a preserver of impresses”).

CIPHERS

Sherlock Holmes solves a variety of ciphers. In The “Gloria Scott” he deduces that in the message that frightens Old Trevor every third word is to be read. A similar system was used in the American Civil War. It was also how young listeners of the Captain Midnight radio show in the 1940s used their decoder rings to get information about upcoming programs. In The Valley of Fear Holmes has a man planted inside Professor Moriarty’s organization. When he receives an encoded message Holmes must first realize that the cipher uses a book. After deducing which book he is able to retrieve the message. This is exactly how Benedict Arnold sent information to the British about General George Washington’s troop movements. Holmes’s most successful use of cryptology occurs in The Dancing Men. His analysis of the stick figure men left as messages is done by frequency analysis, starting with “e” as the most common letter. Conan Doyle is again following Poe who earlier used the same idea in The Gold Bug (1843). Holmes’s monograph on cryptology analyses 160 separate ciphers.

DOGS

Conan Doyle provides us with an interesting array of dog stories and analyses. The most famous line in all the sixty stories, spoken by Inspector Gregory in Silver Blaze, is “The dog did nothing in the night-time.” When Holmes directs Gregory’s attention to “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time,” Gregory is puzzled by this enigmatic clue. Only Holmes seems to realize that the dog should have done something. Why did the dog make no noise when the horse, Silver Blaze, was led out of the stable in the dead of night? Inspector Gregory may be slow to catch on, but Sherlock Holmes is immediately suspicious of the horse’s trainer, John Straker. In Shoscombe Old Place we find exactly the opposite behavior by a dog. Lady Beatrice Falder’s dog snarled when he should not have. This time the dog doing something was the key to the solution. When Holmes took the dog near his mistress’s carriage, the dog knew that someone was impersonating his mistress. In two other cases Holmes employs dogs to follow the movements of people. In The Sign of Four, Toby initially fails to follow the odor of creosote to find Tonga, the pygmy from the Andaman Islands. In The Missing Three Quarter the dog Pompey successfully tracks Godfrey Staunton by the smell of aniseed. And of course, Holmes mentions yet another monograph on the use of dogs in detective work.

James O’Brien is the author of The Scientific Sherlock Holmes. He will be signing books at the OUP booth 524 at the American Chemical Society conference in Indiana on 9 September 2013 at 2:00 p.m. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Missouri State University. A lifelong fan of Holmes, O’Brien presented his paper “What Kind of Chemist Was Sherlock Holmes” at the 1992 national American Chemical Society meeting, which resulted in an invitation to write a chapter on Holmes the chemist in the book Chemistry and Science Fiction. He has since given over 120 lectures on Holmes and science. Read his previous blog post “Sherlock Holmes knew chemistry.”

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Image credit: (1) From “The Adventure of the Dancing Men” Sherlock Holmes story. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. (2) Sherlock Holmes in “The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter.” Illustration by Sidney Paget. Strand Magazine, 1904. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Six methods of detection in Sherlock Holmes appeared first on OUPblog.

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New Three-Book Deal For Young Sherlock Author

from The Bookseller:

Macmillan Children's Books has acquired three titles from its Young Sherlock Holmes author Andrew Lane, which focus on the hunt for valuable endangered creatures. MCB associate publishing director Polly Nolan bought world rights from Robert Kirby at United Agents to the three novels in The Lost World series. MCB will publish a title a year from May 2013 as £5.99 paperback originals and as e-books. It is planning a "major marketing and publicity campaign".

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The BBC recently launched an updated version of the Sherlock Holmes stories–Sherlock features a text messaging detective named Holmes and a blogging  doctor named Watson. The show debuts in the U.S. at the end of the month. From October 25 until December 7, 2010 you can watch episodes for free at PBS.org.

The trailer for the updated series is embedded above. What do you think? Actor Benedict Cumberbatch (Atonement) plays Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s famous detective and Martin Freeman (The Office UK) plays his sidekick, Doctor John Watson.

Here’s more about the show from io9: “The writing is so good and acting so convincing that it immediately makes sense that the war-haunted, gruff-and-ready Watson would write a blog at the advice of his therapist, that the technology-forward, cryptic Holmes would take to texting — he ‘prefers’ it — and run a website.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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Lauren, Publicity Assistant

Kathryn Kalinak is Professor of English and Film Studies at Rhode Island College. Her extensive writing on film music includes numerous articles and several books, the most recent of which is Film Music: A Very Short Introduction. Below, she has made predictions for the Oscar Music (Original Score) category, and picked her favorites.

We want to know your thoughts as well! Who do you think will win the Oscar for Original Score? Original Song? Send your predictions to [email protected] by tomorrow, March 6, with the subject line “Oscars” and we’ll send a free copy of Film Music: A Very Short Introduction to the first 5 people who guessed correctly.

We also welcome you to tune in to WNYC at 2pm ET today to hear Kathryn discuss Oscar-nominated music on Soundcheck.

This Sunday’s Oscars will recognize an exceptionally fine slate of film scores, and it’s nice to see such a deserving group of composers. The nominees represent a range of films and scores including the lush and symphonic (Avatar), whimsical (Fantastic Mr. Fox), edgy and tension-producing (The Hurt Locker), eclectic and genre-bending (Sherlock Holmes), and beautifully melodic (Up). While there are always surprises, I’ve considered each composer and score, coming to the following conclusions and predictions.

On Avatar:
James Horner has been around a long time, having been nominated ten times in the last 32 years, and receiving Best Score and Best Song Oscars for Titanic. He’s a pro at what he does best: big, symphonic scores that hearken back to the classical Hollywood studio years. Horner’s music gives Avatar exactly what it needs—warmth and emotional resonance—and connects the audience to a series of images and characters that might be difficult to relate to otherwise. If Horner wins Sunday night, look for the evening to go Avatar’s way.

On Fantastic Mr. Fox

0 Comments on Settling the Scores: 2010 Oscar Music Predictions as of 3/5/2010 9:50:00 AM

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