I read this book recently, borrowed from Monifieth Library. It was published earlier this year, and is a manga version of the first Sherlock Holmes story A Study in Scarlet.

Generally I enjoyed it. The art is clear and distinctive, and full colour, with the characters well delineated. It's a fair retelling of a story which isn't one of my favourite Sherlock stories by a long way, though I really like the opening portion where Holmes and Watson meet and then move in together. But in many respects I find this a rather muddled Conan Doyle story, and the manga version reflects that. It was a very good idea for BBC's Sherlock to rework things quite a bit. I was a bit surprised to see the Mormon section included in the manga, which is good for faithfulness even if I'd personally rather see it excised as the BBC did! But, yes, a good read, and well done in manga form. The paper stock is also high quality. The book is noted as "volume 1" in the Sherlock Holmes stories, so hopefully they have more stories in development.

Recently rejoined the public library (Angus Libraries). I struggle with print due to progressive neurological illness - indeed have done for 25+ years - so borrowed a mass of illustrated/painting/photography books. Latest catalogue request from elsewhere in Angus is a new manga Sherlock Holmes. Fab!

It is encouraging I can still find physical books I want to borrow, even if I can't read print or even large print now. And it's marvellous how the online library catalogue lets me call books in from all over Angus. There's a particularly good Scottish cultural/history collection in store at Forfar.

Meanwhile I continue to read masses on my Kindle. I have a huge pile of ebooks on my virtual to read pile. I often snap them up when they're on reduced sale price. I buy far more ebooks than I ever get read! But at least it lets me keep reading extended fiction and non fiction. With gargantuan font.

Onto another one, and this is a relisten for me. As I wrote on Gallifrey Base back in June 2010:

"Timeless Passages is indeed wonderful. I've only heard Benny on audio in some of season 3, Timeless Passages, the Diogenes Damsel, and the Companion Chronicle story. Of these Timeless Passages is easily my favourite, and requires no prior knowledge. And it's *so* timey-wimey :) I just love it."

And my feelings haven't changed, though I've now heard way way more Benny audios than I had back then. Timeless Passages is a quite superb Benny audio, and a brilliant piece of scifi storytelling. Totally standalone, so you don't need to have listened to any of the other Benny audios. As is often the case this one has a very small cast, but they are used superbly, very well acted and written, and the story keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout. A tightly plotted mystery box of a timey wimey puzzle set inside a giant library. What's not to love about that?

It's a rare Benny audio from this era still available to buy from Big Finish on CD, but also in DRM-free download. £5.99 plus shipping if ordering by post. If you hear just one Benny audio, this is the one I'd recommend by far.

Ordering my belated festive batch of magazines from my favourite postal newsagent in Whitstable. And just realised that the latest issue of British Archaeology Magazine from the Council for British Archaeology has articles about both The Detectorists TV series and Innerpeffray Library in Perthshire. Ok, got to buy that one!

This afternoon I was photocopying a small number of pages from a borrowed library book using a rather old DSLR camera. That Panasonic LUMIX camera still has double the number of megapixels of my final generation iPod touch, and more than most mobile phones today. And given that this was a pretty dense text book it was easier to just use this camera. Which was already charged and available and ready to hand. I can copy over the pictures quickly using my laptop which has a SD card slot, and have tweaked them and turned them into a PDF to add to my research folder for the relevant academic journal paper I'm working on. If I was photographing in an archive extremely dense old handwriting I would also use my old DSLR.