Films

Hawk the Slayer (1980)

Fiction

The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
5 The Adventure of the Priory School

Jumping back to the third volume of Holmes short stories for this interesting instance: it's on my "to read" list as not being very good, because that's based on the Pocket Essentials guide and the author only rated it 2 out of 5; but when Conan Doyle listed his favourite-ever Holmes tales he placed it 10th, and the poll-of-polls I keep referring to saw readers rank it =13th. That means the wider fanbase consider it to be in the top quarter of all stories quality-wise vs Pocket Essentials dumping it in the bottom 20% — quite a disparity.

Personally, I'm inclined to agree with the lower score, though I don't think for the same reasons. They assert the story is "dull and goes on too long", whereas I found the bulk of it to be quite engaging, with a reasonable mystery and some decent investigating. It's the solution and ending that sits uneasily. Without giving it away, some characters' actions stretch plausibility, in my view, and the case has been more-or-less resolved before Holmes presents his solution. It's true that his presence brings someone to justice who would probably have otherwise escaped it, but all the other aspects of the resolution would have unfolded the same way without his input. It's not necessarily a 2-star story, then, but I also don't feel it's a great one.

Comics

2000 AD
Prog 2414
Prog 2415

Day 15! Reading multiple issues to make up for taking four days over the Christmas one — though as it's (roughly) triple-length, that's not so bad. I've read 15 issues in those 15 days, so you could argue I'm caught up in that respect. Still 37 to go...

Games

Balatro
I'm not sure if this is the kind of game I should log every time I play it; equally, one only-half-successful run takes about 40 minutes, so it's hardly a totally-casual couple-of-minutes-now-and-then kind of game.

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week.

Except, for the third week in a row, I have nothing to report here. What is happening?! Did I forget to add some stuff?! (I'm genuinely wondering that at this point, because it doesn't feel like that long since I had a new delivery. But time flies nowadays, so I guess it has been.)

Number of titles in collection: 3,608 [no change]
Of which DVDs: 986 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 2,622 [no change]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 461 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 8,672 [no change]
Number of films: 4,597 [no change]
Number of additional cuts: 466 [no change]
Number of TV episodes: 10,172 [no change]
Number of short films: 1,267 [no change]

I have been preordering stuff, though — I just spent hundreds of pounds on a handful of titles from Australia, which won't turn up until December (or January, if Christmas post is a bugger). And there are a couple of titles due to arrive later this month, so maybe there'll be something to report next week. If not, the monthly running time update will hold steady. I'm not sure that's ever happened.

See you next week to find out, faithful reader.