Author: katenepveu

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Conan Doyle, Arthur: (06) The Return of Sherlock Holmes

The other short stories I read were those in The Return of Sherlock Holmes, which were collectively somewhat disappointing. Also, the Strand put frontspiece illustrations with these, frequently spoiling the entire story.

The first is “The Adventure of the Empty House,” in which Holmes is revealed to be Not Dead after all. This one has a mystery that is unfortunately no mystery at all from a modern perspective; it actually took me a minute to realize why the killing was perplexing to the characters. The other stories of note are “The Adventure of the Priory School,” in which Holmes does something extremely out of character regarding money; “The Adventure of Black Peter,” in which Holmes, harpoon in hand, tries to transfix a dead pig in a single blow; “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton,” in which Holmes and Watson go a-burgling; and “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange,” which is the first time I remember Holmes telling Watson that the game is afoot. Many of the other stories are unremarkable, either predictable or somewhat repetitive.

Two other things I noticed. First, Lestrade hardly appears, and the police officer role is largely filled by young Hopkins; cynically, I think that’s because Lestrade’s been around long enough that Holmes can’t show him up as easily. Second, Watson (or Doyle, really) takes an inconsistent approach to confidential or embarrassing client information: sometimes making a big deal about changing names, sometimes ignoring the problem completely, sometimes writing stories that, if they were really true, couldn’t be written no matter how many details were obscured. This happens in the occasional Wolfe story, as well, and it always ruins whatever suspension of disbelief I’ve managed to build up. These stories worked well enough as bedtime distractions, but they are definitely not the best of the lot.

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Macdonald, James D., and Debra Doyle: (03) “Sleeping Kings”

In the past few weeks, I also read a bunch of short stories, standard fare for weeks with insufficient time. One of those was the most recent Peter Crossman story, “Sleeping Kings” by Debra Doyle and James Macdonald, which is in Crusade of Fire, edited by Katherine Kurtz. (There’s another Kurtz Templar anthology out there, but I’ve yet to lay eyes on it.) I didn’t like this as much as the prior Crossman stories, primarily because the villain was rather unimpressive. However, Macdonald is working on another Crossman novel, which is excellent news.

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Howe, Deborah and James: Bunnicula

Christmas day actually turned out to be a little quieter than I thought, so I needed another book to read at bedtime. I used to love Bunnicula, by Deborah and James Howe, and hadn’t read it for years, so when I saw it in Chad’s parents’ basement, I grabbed it. I was pleased to discover that this tale of a vampire bunny held up really well. The concept is just brilliant, and while this dog’s narration isn’t as low-key as that of A Night in the Lonesome October, it’s still pretty funny. Recommended for fairly youngish readers and up. (There are a couple of sequels, which I don’t recall at all, but Chad’s father tells me they didn’t suck.)

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Pratchett, Terry: (08) Guards! Guards!

I brought Terry Pratchett’s Guards! Guards! with me over Christmas because I knew family holidays tend to be somewhat hectic, and re-reading in those circumstances works better than reading. Besides, I’d been meaning to re-read the Watch books after reading Night Watch.

Guards! Guards! is the first book about the Watch of Ankh-Morpork, which was once a police force but, at the start of the book, is down to a few ineffective misfits. Then a new recruit arrives, and someone puts the city under threat by summoning a dragon, and the Watch begins to change . . .

I can now report that while we don’t meet Vetinari’s aunt in the first Watch book, she does get mentioned; Vetinari lacks a daughter whose hand he could offer in marriage as a reward for dragon-slaying, and wonders if an aunt is an acceptable substitute . . . No indication of Vetinari’s age that I saw, which was the other thing I was wondering about.

It’s interesting to see how far Vimes has come, as a character, and also how far he fell from his past-rookie-self of Night Watch. The Patrician’s deliberate weakening of the Watch, prior to Guards! Guards!, also appear in a different light in that context; it will be interesting to re-read the expansion of the Watch and the dynamics of the Patrician’s interactions with Vimes and Carrot. Also, this is just a fun book; not the best Discworld book, but solid and entertaining.

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Conan Doyle, Arthur: (05) The Hound of the Baskervilles

I finished a complete draft of the 60 page Memorandum of Law that’s due Monday in my case from hell, and also went over the proofs for my Note (coincidentally, the prior thing I wrote that was 60 pages long, only I had a semester to do it, not a month). So, since I was so productive today, I am going to book log.

On the way back from Vegas, I read The Hound of the Baskervilles. I can hear you saying it now—”weren’t you just complaining about not having time to read the new books you really wanted to? Why didn’t you read one of those on the plane?” Well, yes, I did have time in the hours when my laptop battery ran out, but I wasn’t really in any state to concentrate fully on fiction, and didn’t think I could do justice to the long-awaited books. So, Sherlock Holmes: far less demanding while still being entertaining.

This was the best of the lot so far, I think. Doyle cheats much less in this story than in some of the others, and it’s fun watching Watson sleuthing off on the moors. Mostly he does quite a creditable job, though I was amused to spot the Number One Suspect based on one of the assumptions he makes—character development indeed. It’s still not an entirely fair mystery, since a good number of the necessary facts are gathered off-screen, but it does seem to make sense all the way through, at least. Definitely worth reading, though part of the fun of it is seeing how Watson’s grown since the early stories, so I’m not sure I’d recommend it as a starting point.

And now, having book logged, I am going to bed.

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Pratchett, Terry: (26) Thief of Time (re-read); (29) Night Watch

I had been putting off reading Terry Pratchett’s new Discworld book, Night Watch, because I was afraid that it would suck up too much of my valuable sleep time while I was so busy. The night I found out I passed the bar, though, one of my rewards to myself was a super-quick read through it: now I knew what happened, and could re-read at my leisure.

Of course, during the re-read, I got some bad personal news that made this just a bit darker than I wanted to be reading at the time. I’d been planning to re-read Thief of Time anyway, because I was intrigued by Pam’s comments about the History Monks. (Also, I particularly like this one, as I’ve said earlier.) The Monks actually first appear in Small Gods, where their stated purpose is to make sure history happens correctly, as it is written down in a bunch of big books. Of course, the monk in question doesn’t seem to feel particularly bound by what is written (perhaps taking a cue from Adam in Good Omens, who opines that “I don’t see why it matters what is written. Not when it’s about people. It can always be crossed out.”), with History none the worse for the wear as a result. Pam’s correct that, put that way, the History Monks really don’t fit in with either the Discworld or with the philosophy Pratchett seems to be espousing in the Discworld books. I’d be curious if Pratchett realized that and tried to backpedal somewhat, because in Thief, we’re told that yes, history is written down, but by the founding Monk who saw it all—which makes it sound a little less deterministic to me, if it’s just one person’s idea of history. Also, though originally their job was to see that history happened the right way, both Thief and Night Watch claim that, at present, it’s apparently all they can do just to make sure that history keeps happening at all. I do think that the History Monks don’t fit all that well with the Discworld, but neither do a lot of things that showed up in earlier books, so I’m willing to roll with it a bit. (Pam’s other spoiler complaint doesn’t bother me, because I’m willing to believe that it all makes sense in eighteen dimensions. Or something.)

The bad personal news got somewhat better later, and I was able to go back to re-reading Night Watch. As any number of people have said before me (Martin Wisse, Mike “no permalinks” Kozlowski, Chad, and Michael Dirda of the Washington Post, plus Pam), this book tells how Sam Vimes gets transported back in time while chasing a psychopath. The psychopath gets transported too, promptly kills an important person in Vimes’ life, and Vimes suddenly finds himself having to teach everything he knows to, well, himself.

The present-day sections of this book are just beautifully done, absolutely pitch-perfect. (I particularly like the line “Usually—always—there was a part of Vimes that watched the other parts, because he was at heart a policeman. This time it wasn’t there.” I know the feeling, though I can’t say it’s a career I’d be good at.) The past sections do have some wonderful moments, such as when we meet younger versions of well-known Discworld characters. The best, of course, is the Patrician as a young man. His repsonse to his aunt’s comment, “I do think Dog-Botherer is an unpleasant nickname”? “When your name is Vetinari, Madam, you’re happy enough if it’s merely Dog-Botherer.” I have this horrible urge to re-read all the Watch books now, as I remember very little about them—such as whether we’ve met Madam before, and why I thought Vetinari was considerably older than portrayed here . . . Perhaps in January, after I’ve disposed of the new books that I have no time for now (the new Brust, on its way from Amazon, and The Prize in the Game, which is flippin’ dedicated to me—it is truly wrong that I’m too busy to read that at the moment.)

However, I’m not sure that the past sections (which makes up almost all of the book) work overall. For some vague, indefinable reason, they don’t seem to me to cohere in terms of plot. Unfortunately, I can’t define it any more precisely than that. *shrug* Sorry. Maybe someday when my brain isn’t trying to crawl out my ear, I will re-read and be able to figure out what’s bothering me about it.

In other news, the US covers of the Discworld books: still ugly. The UK cover: done by the guy who did the art for The Last Hero, and very nice. That is all.

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Conan Doyle, Arthur: (04) The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes; [personal] passing the bar exam

I was going to start talking about The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by saying that it was good bedtime reading for when one is vibrating with stress and going crazy because one is overworked. And it is. However, while I am still (presently) overworked, I really don’t care today, because

I passed the bar exam!

*bounces up and down some more*

(I’ve been doing that all day, off and on. I found out this morning, waiting for the elevators at work; one opened up and disgorged a bunch of my co-workers going off to Special Term (court, that is). One of them said “congratulations”; I said, “what—wait—no, I don’t believe you.” He told me they were online and went off to court, and I waited for the next elevator (having missed theirs in my bogglement) and checked for myself. It’s not that I thought he was lying to me, but I couldn’t believe it until I saw for myself.)

Anyway, back to booklogging. By coincidence, the first story in Memoirs is possibly the work of fiction most often cited in legal documents. I speak, of course, of “The Adventure of Silver Blaze” and the curious incident of the dog in the night-time. (Not only does it get cited all the time, but I could swear that I once read a judge’s opinion that chided people for thinking that the dog in question was the eponymous Hound of the Baskervilles. However, a quick Lexis search doesn’t seem to turn it up.) It’s a pretty good story, though I have my doubts about just how anonymous a horse like Silver Blaze could be made to be. (Speaking of citing, I’m not really clear why it’s usually cited as just “Silver Blaze”; my edition is a facsimile reprint of its first publication in The Strand, and the title there is “The Adventure of.”)

I’d like “The Adventure of the Yellow Face” considerably better if it didn’t have such a completely idiotic premise. It’s included as an example of Holmes being just dead wrong, and that’s lovely. However, the “right” conclusion is so factually absurd that he probably couldn’t have figured it out regardless, which does detract from the effect. As a general matter, though, I find it vastly amusing when Holmes refers to Watson’s printed reports, complaining that he gives the wrong impression to his readers and so on. It’s a level of self-referential irony that I hadn’t expected to find in these.

Of course, I do get the sense that Doyle was just making it up as he went along. For instance, in “The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter,” suddenly Holmes sprouts a brother—not even an estranged brother, but one who refers cases to him occasionally. And then there’s Professor Moriarty, who, I suspect, was created just to give Doyle a chance to kill Holmes off. That’s a pity, because I think more Moriarty stories would have been entertaining (after all, the Zeck sequence in the Nero Wolfe books is, and Zeck certainly owes a lot to Moriarty).

Those quibbles aside, these were useful and enjoyable ways to unwind for the evening. Now, I must go and think about what restaurant to choose for tomorrow night’s celebration.

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Snicket, Lemony: (03) The Wide Window

Over breakfast this morning I read The Wide Window, the third book in Lemony Snicket’s “A Series of Unfortunate Events.” There’s really not much to say about these once you’ve read a few, so I’ll refer you all to Pam’s review and leave you with some legal advice:

Stealing, of course, is a crime, and a very impolite thing to do. But like most impolite things, it is excusable under certain circumstances. Stealing is not excusable if, for instance, you are in a museum and you decide that a certain painting would look better in your house, and you simply grab the painting and take it there. But if you were very, very hungry, and you had no way of obtaining money, it might be excusable to grab the painting, take it to your house, and eat it.

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Macdonald, James D., and Debra Doyle: (01) “Stealing God”

While we were out picking up the extended DVD of The Fellowship of the Ring, we also got a copy of Tales of the Knights Templar, edited by Katherine Kurtz, which has the first Peter Crossman story, “Stealing God.” Unlike The Apocalypse Door, this one is co-written by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald. (I think it was a mistake to read this story after spending several hours immersed in the extended version of FotR and appendices; Crossman was briefly looking like Viggo Mortensen in my head, which is particularly wrong considering that Mortensen once played Lucifer.)

Because this is a short story, I really noticed all the allusions that made me say, “Huh?” Among the things I googled on after reading it were the Cathars and Rennes-le-Château (“I was working the security leak at Rennes-le-Château when the word came down. The Rennes flub was over a hundred years old, but the situation needed constant tending to keep people off the scent. That’s the thing about botches. They never go away.”). It makes me wonder what references I was missing in The Apocalypse Door. I also looked up the Meditation Room at the United Nations, where, according to Crossman, that big hunk of rock is actually the Grail: “We could never hide the fact that there was a Grail, or that it was holy, but for a long time we tried to get people to go looking for dinnerware. Then someone talked. Somehow, somewhere, there was a leak. And blunders, like I said, never go away.”

All the crunchy goodness of The Apocalypse Door is present here in smaller form: ancient secret societies, double-crosses, danger and dead people, assassin nuns (okay, just one, but that’s enough), and Crossman’s First Person Hardboiled Narration. I feel sort of guilty for not reading the rest of the anthology, but I’m just not interested in the Knights Templar as a general proposition.

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