Last weekend I finished the Sherlock Holmes stories. This has been a four-year journey, I think. I’ve blogged about it before, but, to be honest, I don’t feel like searching my archives and linking to the earlier story. Perhaps I’ll add it later.
My wife and I started reading S.H. about four years ago. I picked up the two-volume set produced by Barnes & Noble from their bargains table. I would have preferred to get the three-volume set published by Norton, for they have the chronological order of the stories identified—the order that Holmes’ adventures took place, that is, not the order they were written in. But I bought the B&N ones, so that’s what we read in. I also have a paperback of some of the stories, and I downloaded a couple of files for my Nook. As we started, we passed the B&N book back and forth and read aloud. As we got further into them, and a story was in an alternative volume, I read from that and my wife kept the other.
At some point our joint reading petered out. The language isn’t archaic, but you can tell it’s not quite modern. References in the stories aren’t always clear, so you have to decide to plow (or ‘plough’ at Watson would write) on with limited understanding or consult the endnotes. Whatever the reason, we got through the first volume and a little way into the second before we quit.
I don’t like to leave a book unfinished, so at some point I picked it up again. I read 1/3 of it, set it aside, and about a month or two picked it up again, and, as I said, finished it last weekend.
My judgment of it…doesn’t matter. Holmes has been around for 125 years; his position in the legion of detective heroes is solid; A. Conan Doyle’s standing among authors couldn’t be higher. So whether or not I liked the Holmes stories doesn’t matter. But, this is a blog that includes my opinions, so I’ll give it. I liked the Sherlock Holmes stories, but not as much as I expected to.
The way detective stories are written has changed over the years. Now writers give clues in the story so that the reader can figure the story out along with the detective-hero. Doyle didn’t do that. Holmes has knowledge the reader doesn’t. He sends telegrams we don’t know about till after the fact. He goes places and sees people the reader knows nothing about. Partly this is because Watson is the point-of-view character. The story is always solved, but the reader is unable to assist.
If I were rating the Sherlock Holmes opus on Amazon, I’d give it 3.5 stars. But the big question I always answer about the books I review here: Will I keep it in the library, and will I read it again? I will definitely keep it. If life gives me enough years, and enough time in those years, I’ll read it again. For sure I’m going to re-read the second Holmes novel, The Sign of the Four. I must have been reading or listening without comprehension on much of that, for at the end of the book I couldn’t have told you much about it. As for the rest, re-reading will be when leisure and interests converge, sometime in the future, probably the distant future.