{"id":173,"date":"2002-10-20T22:09:54","date_gmt":"2002-10-21T02:09:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=173"},"modified":"2002-10-20T22:09:54","modified_gmt":"2002-10-21T02:09:54","slug":"doyle_arthur_co","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2002\/10\/doyle_arthur_co\/","title":{"rendered":"Conan Doyle, Arthur: (03) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> <\/a> <\/p>\n

Several months ago, I was browsing our Local Independent Bookstore with Chad and his parents, and discovered a rather nifty trade paperback, The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes<\/cite>, by Arthur Conan Doyle. It was a reproduction of all of the Holmes stories that originally appeared in The Strand<\/cite> magazine, together with their illustrations. I thought this was kind of a neat way to read the stories, and it was fairly cheap ($8 for what was effectively four volumes), but for some reason I was dithering over whether to buy it. Chad’s mom asked to see it as I was wandering around looking at other things; I, thinking nothing of it, handed it over. Five minutes later she walked up and handed it back to me, in a store bag, and said, “Happy Easter, Kate.” I was impressed—I had no idea she could be that sneaky . . .<\/p>\n

Anyway, I appreciated the thought then, and now that I’ve actually got around to reading some of it, I appreciate the fact, too. Believe it or not, these are the first Sherlock Holmes stories I’ve read. (I may have read one of the novels when I was far too young to appreciate it, but I don’t really recall anything about it.) I have no idea how I managed to get this far without doing so, but I’m definitely enjoying them now.<\/p>\n

The first set of stories was apparently collected as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes<\/cite><\/strong>, and includes some fairly famous ones. The first, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” is apparently our only in-canon glimpse of Irene Adler, who was always the<\/em> woman to Holmes, probably because she managed to outwit him. She is the heroine of a series by Carole Nelson Douglas, which I may have to try after I’m done with the Holmes canon; I wasn’t impressed by her cat mysteries<\/a>, but I think I have heard good things about these. A friend tells me that someone has advanced the meta-fictional theory that she and Holmes had an off-camera liaison which produced Nero Wolfe. I rather wish I hadn’t heard that before my first encounter with Holmes, because it was quite distracting . . .<\/p>\n

These were mostly fun puzzles, though in a few places, I couldn’t help but remember Samuel Vimes’ famous opinion on Clues:<\/p>\n

\n

He distrusted the kind of person who’d take one look at another man and say in a lordly voice to his companion, “Ah, my dear sir, I can tell you nothing except that he is a left-handed stonemason who has spent some years in the merchant navy and has recently fell on hard times,” and then unroll a lot of supercilious commentary about calluses and stance and the state of a man’s boots, when exactly the same<\/em> comments could apply to a man who was wearing his old clothes because he’d been doing a spot of home bricklaying for a new barbecue pit, and had been tattooed once when he was drunk and seventeen and in fact got seasick on a wet pavement. (Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay<\/cite>)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

However, the puzzles were enjoyably imaginative and bizarre, even if they stretch credulity here and there. (For instance, I don’t buy that she would have called it a “speckled band.”) The odd thing is that I presently have very little sense of Watson’s personality. (And nevermind personality—as far as I can tell from these, Watson’s wife doesn’t have a name<\/em> . . . ) I suppose this is the problem with starting with short stories; I’ve picked up A Study in Scarlet<\/cite> and The Sign of Four<\/cite> and will read those before going back to my nifty Strand<\/cite> collection. I’m looking forward to them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several months ago, I was browsing our Local Independent Bookstore with Chad and his parents, and discovered a rather nifty trade paperback, The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle. It was a reproduction of all of the Holmes stories that originally appeared in The Strand magazine, together with their illustrations. I thought this … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Conan Doyle, Arthur: (03) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,16,117],"tags":[175],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mystery","category-sherlock-holmes-mystery","category-short-fiction","tag-conan-doyle-arthur"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}