So I’ve been reading all the Sherlock Holmes stories and novels since January now, and I’ve been having a great time with the audiobooks narrated by Stephen Fry (especially since my version also has these little personal essays written by Fry at the beginning of each novel or collection). But I think I might have done myself a little disservice by listening to this one in audio. I’ve read it before, when I was in grade school I think, but the only part I remembered […]
“Excellent!” I cried. “Elementary,” said he. #CBRBingo
Project: Catch Up On Review Backlog, review #4 out of 11 Of the four Holmes books I’ve read so far, this one has been my favorite. Even my least favorite stories are solid, and there are several that are excellent. For context, these stories were all published between 1892-1893, at the height of both Conan Doyle’s and his famous hero’s popularity. Conan Doyle was growing extremely tired of his creation, and he wanted to write other, newer and more challenging things (he did, almost none […]
“Crime is common. Logic is rare.”
“Draw your chair up, and hand me my violin, for the only problem which we have still to solve is how to while away these bleak autumnal evenings.” This was a fun book to dip in and out of all month. I’m glad I did it the way I did. I think otherwise it might have been easy to grow tired of Holmes and his Watson. The stories are short and a bit slight, so they make excellent little auditory treats every couple of days […]
Would have liked a lot more Holmes in this one.
Honestly, a teensy bit disappointed in this one. It was more fun in bits and pieces than it was as a whole. This is the novel that famously originated at a dinner between an American publisher, Conan Doyle, and Oscar Wilde. Out of that meeting came The Sign of the Four (which is often shortened to just ‘The Sign of Four‘) and The Picture of Dorian Gray, which I think most people would agree is the superior output (ACD thought it might be good fun […]