Sherlock Who?

I haven't seen Sherlock Holmes, director Guy Ritchie's big-screen "reimagination" of literature's most famous detective and, frankly, I have had no interest in seeing it. I was so appalled by the early trailers—the movie looked like it should have been titled Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Calabash Pipes—that I planned on boycotting the enterprise, despite my admiration for Robert Downey, Jr., whom Ritchie recruited to play Holmes, and Jude Law, who I thought was terrific in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Don't we have enough cinematic action heroes without turning Arthur Conan Doyle's "calculating machine" into a late Victorian James Bond?

That said, Matt Yglesias reminds us that Holmes could be a physically imposing dude when he chose to throw down (to use a term Guy Ritchie would approve):

Some people feel that this action-oriented version of Holmes is untrue to the original. I think this is wrong...The print Holmes is clearly described as an expert singlestick fighter and accomplished barenuckle boxer. He gets into fisticuffs and always wins...But bringing more emphasis to this kind of thing is exactly what a screen adaptation of a well-known print character should be for—elements of the character that are de-emphasized by the print medium are rightly brought into sharper focus for a movie.

So far, the critics have been all over the map on this flick. I'm not going to review a film I haven't seen, but if I do make it to the multiplex to see Holmes eventually, I'll certainly throw in my two shillings.

Books Under My Christmas Tree

Every Christmas people give me books—sometimes many books, sometimes not so many. This year, through some fluke of miscommunication, I received only three: Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, stories by Wells Tower; George Magoon and the Down East Game War: History, Folklore, and the Law by Edward D. Ives; and Talking about Detective Fiction by P.D. James. Kind of an odd assortment, but somehow representative of my interests and tastes at the moment. It's a little disconcerting to see your personality distilled down to a few books that way.

Viva, Nuevo Laredo

Having noted that the last bookstore in Laredo, Texas, will soon be closing, leaving Laredo the largest city in the U.S. without a brick-and-mortar book shop, I was pleased to stumble across this post from a reader of Andrew Sullivan's blog:

I live very near Laredo and it is no more appropriate to talk about book stores in Laredo without mentioning Nuevo Laredo than it would be to talk about Brooklyn and fail to mention Queens. They are right on top of each other and most Laredoans routinely cross the border for groceries, tools and, yes, books.

Crossing the U.S. border isn't the same free and easy process it once was, but still this clarification comes as heartening news. I bet Jeff Bezos, of Amazon.com, is already salivating at all the money he will make selling books and e-books to Laredoans once B.Dalton vamooses, though.

Books on Writing

Because my agent's incredibly smart and useful book is endorsed in this blog post, I am duty bound to recommend it to your attention. In the publishing world, the ground is shifting daily (the industry lives on the San Andreas fault), but Ann and Laura's advice about how to make a career for yourself as an author remains as timely as ever.

Seeing the Forest for the Trees

In the aftermath of the Copenhagen climate change summit, Maine writer Bernd Heinrich has a provocative op-ed in Saturday's New York Times attacking the concept of carbon-trading. As the author of The Trees in My Forest, Heinrich is an unapologetic tree-hugger, but he thinks the push towards "reforesting" the planet (the idea would be to create more carbon sinks to soak up our increasing outputs of carbon dioxide) is essentially a corporate-backed ruse:

The world’s forests are a key to our survival, and that of millions of other species. Not only are they critical to providing us with building material, paper, food, recreation and oxygen, they also ground us spiritually and connect us to our primal past. Never before in earth’s history have our forests been under such attack. And the global-warming folks at Copenhagen seem oblivious, buying into the corporate view of forests as an exploitable resource.

Heinrich distinguishes between true forests, which are self-sustaining eco-systems, and managed industrial timberlands, and he criticizes his fellow environmentalists who don't appreciate this distinction or the enormous downside to carbon trades.

In the end, what was originally intended as a mechanism for slowing global warming has created huge economic pressure for ecocide. And there will be no objections from easily duped bleeding- heart “environmentalists,” who absolutely love tree planting because it sounds so “green.”

To preserve something it first has to be valued, and the most effective means of valuing it is to have a practical use for it. If the discussions in Copenhagen were any indication, mankind sees little value in forests, but much in tree plantations. (On the other hand, I admit that those of us who really do care about forests have not exactly been helpful. We have not encouraged selective harvesting from naturally occurring stands, which may be necessary.)

Like Heinrich I care a lot about forests and agree that environmentalists who oppose selective harvesting from biologically diverse stands are naifs. We don't need more trees; we need more forests. But first, we should get serious about energy conservation and fighting overpopulation.