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#1
11-10-2012, 10:06 PM
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Where should I start with Sherlock Holmes?
I've haven't read any Sherlock, but I thoroughly enjoyed both Robert Downey, Jr. movies, love the new BBC series, and Elementary is appointment viewing. So, I figure it's time to dive into some of Sir Arthur's original stories. There seem to be a lot of anthologies out there. Any recommendations or is there a stand alone novel I should start with?
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#2
11-10-2012, 10:10 PM
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Nearly all the Holmes material is short stories.
The Complete Sherlock Holmes: All 4 Novels and 56 Short Stories costs $10 http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Sherl...herlock+holmes I prefer the Novels and have read them dozens of times since childhood. This illustrated collection has the four novels. http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Illus...herlock+holmes Or just drop by any Library and check out the 4 novels individually. Study in Scarlet The Sign of the Four The Hound of the Baskervilles The Valley of Fear Last edited by aceplace57; 11-10-2012 at 10:14 PM.
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#3
11-10-2012, 10:17 PM
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Oh my, just noticed the Kindle version of the four Holmes novels is 99 cents. Buying that right now for myself.
 I haven't read Holmes in at least 10 years.
Last edited by aceplace57; 11-10-2012 at 10:18 PM.
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#4
11-10-2012, 10:31 PM
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You don't really need to read them in any order. The novel A Study in Scarlett sets up the characters, but your almost certainly familiar with the basic back story from pop-culture, so if you want to start with some of the short stories instead of one of the novels, I doubt you'll have any trouble following them.
Otherwise, the stories don't require you to be familiar with any earlier works, and Doyle was famously unconcerned with continuity in any case. But there isn't really any reason to read them out of the publishing order (unless, as I said, you want to start with some of the short stories before reading the longer novels). So I'd just do that. Last edited by Simplicio; 11-10-2012 at 10:32 PM.
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#5
11-10-2012, 10:35 PM
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It really does not matter very much where you start. Although Holmes gets older and has "retired" in a couple of later stories, and Watson originally lives with him, and later has got married and moved out, there is not otherwise much of an "arc" to the Holmes stories as a whole. All of them are more or less independent of one another, the only real exception being when Holmes dies (The Final Problem) and then comes back ("The Empty House).
An obvious place to start would be with the very first Holmes story, the novel A Study in Scarlet, where Holmes and Watson first meet. Just be warned, though, that it is not entirely typical, since about half the book is a flashback, set in America, that does not involve Holmes or Watson at all. (The Valley of Fear is like this too.) Really, though, it does not matter. Just plunge in wherever is convenient. It is all good. (Although that is not say every story is as good as every other: rather they vary between pretty good and brilliant.) I hope you will not be disappointed, by the way, to find the real thing, and the character of the "real" Sherlock Holmes, are nothing like Sherlock. Sherlock is excellent both in its own right and as hommage, but it is, quite intentionally, very different in tone and content from Doyle's stories. (I haven't seen the Robert Downey jr. movies, but I suspect the same point applies.) Last edited by njtt; 11-10-2012 at 10:36 PM.
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#6
11-10-2012, 10:45 PM
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The Hound of the Baskervilles is my personal favorite. The mood that is struck up on the moors is so spooky. I love both the book and the old 1939 movie with Basil Rathbone. It's currently on youtube. It's so old that I think its in the public domain now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1a0qENQKr8
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#7
11-10-2012, 10:45 PM
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BBC did a series with Jeremy Brett back in the 70s and 80s that is the definitive screen Holmes.
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#8
11-10-2012, 10:58 PM
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Anyways, that's where I started. Study In Scarlet The Sign Of Four Hound of the Baskervilles Then I went on the Adventures but I had to put that down for a while. It's like trying to watch episodes of House one after another. They become a bit repetitive when they're that short. But as others said, you really don't need to read them in any particular order. You can read A Study In Scarlet if you want to learn about how him and Watson met and meet some of the local cops ahead of time, but you'll put it together fast enough if you don't. Also @aceplace, I noticed you said they were 99¢. I know I got them for free from Amazon, you shouldn't have to pay for them since they're out of copyright. The ones that aren't free at Amazon ARE free at Gutenberg.org and they'll transfer right over to your Kindle (and show up on your Amazon.com account just as if you bought it there, they play nice together).
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#9
11-10-2012, 11:02 PM
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Free PDF facsimiles of some of the original publications (with notes) can be found here:
http://sherlockholmes.stanford.edu/archive.html http://sherlockholmes.stanford.edu/readings.html
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#10
11-10-2012, 11:16 PM
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As others said, don't worry about the order too much. Doyle wrote stories out of sequence on occasion.
I found the complete works available for my nook for about three or four bucks (can't remember which) and that's less than many dead tree versions of a single novel. So if you have an ereader, you might want to buy the collection. I tend to read a few short stories, read another author, go back to Holmes, read another author, etc. Otherwise, I tend to get tired of the setting.
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#11
11-10-2012, 11:30 PM
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As someone who just recently read Sherlock Holmes for the first time, I'll tell you the truth. A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four suck. They suck hard and they suck long.
The Hound of the Baskervilles is great. The stories are hit and miss. Proceed as you see fit.
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#12
11-10-2012, 11:36 PM
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#13
11-11-2012, 09:23 AM
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The best place to start is with the Adventures, the first twelve short stories. About 95% of everything that is "Holmes" comes out of these stories. Then Hound, then you can fill in around them as you feel like.
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#14
11-11-2012, 09:35 AM
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If you're serious enough to care, the various editions of the Annotated Holmes are worth using for your reading copy. Besides page annotations on the obscure points of the story and time, there are helpful notes that tie things together, and inter-story essays and references (which you can skip the first time through) that go into great, sometimes Britishly-silly, depth on fine points of the two men, their lives, and the milieu.
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#15
11-11-2012, 11:03 AM
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Though it's pretty much a given that if you don't like "The Hound of the Baskervilles" you won't like much else in the repertoire. Do not start out with the last of the short story collections, as most of them are inferior to the early ones (despite Holmes' efforts to pump them up by telling Watson stuff like "Strangest case I ever had!"). "The Sign of the Four" and "A Study In Scarlet" are enjoyable in my view, better than "The Valley of Fear" but not up to "The Hound of the Baskervilles".
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#16
11-11-2012, 11:18 AM
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Persecute! Unbeliever! Persecute!
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#17
11-11-2012, 11:56 AM
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The short novel A Study In Scarlet is the first Holmes story to be written, and it does introduce Holmes to Watson and to us. But the second half of the novel is all backstory explaining the lead-up to the crime, and doesn't involve Holmes at all, which of course isn't what most readers expect/want from a Sherlock Holmes story. (See the thread Is this ever going to end (Middle of A Study In Scarlet)? Quote:
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#18
11-11-2012, 12:23 PM
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#19
11-11-2012, 12:29 PM
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I'd read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes first, and also the short story "The Adventure of Silver Blaze", which includes the famous line about "the curious incident of the dog in the night time." It's my favorite Holmes story.
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#20
11-11-2012, 12:42 PM
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#22
11-11-2012, 01:03 PM
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#24
11-11-2012, 04:14 PM
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Holmes fools Von Bork and busts up his spy-ring. Plants false information with the German High Command. That's gotta involve some detecting.
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#25
11-11-2012, 04:17 PM
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And I'll just concur with most of the advice in this thread. Read the short stories, Adventures being the obvious starting point. Hound of the Baskervilles is the only novel that's as good as the short stories.
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#26
11-11-2012, 04:33 PM
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#28
11-11-2012, 07:33 PM
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As to reading, just get the complete Holmes and start at the beginning. Some are better than others, and they eventually get a little repetitive, but all are fun.
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#29
11-11-2012, 07:35 PM
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#30
11-11-2012, 08:07 PM
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#31
11-12-2012, 12:15 AM
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#32
11-12-2012, 07:20 AM
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I agree to start with the first short stories, in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The first novel (which was the first published), A Study in Scarlet, introduces the characters (whom you already know) but also has a long interval in the middle, describing the history of the suspects from many years before in the US. It's a good story, it's an interesting story, but it's not about Holmes. After you've read the short stories, you'll be into it, and can put up with the Utah diversion.
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#33
11-12-2012, 07:50 AM
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The problem with both Study in Scarlet and Sign of Four is the same: an over-reliance on exoticism for the mysteries. (Also, the Utah section of Scarlet is deadly dull.) It falls flat especially today, when we read Holmes partly for the Victorian atmosphere, not these exotic locales that Conan Doyle didn't really understand in the first place. And the mystery simply isn't fun when it's like, "How was this man killed in a locked room?" "Oh, a special kind of Pygmy from Papua New Guinea who can walk on ceilings used a special New Guinean poison that you've never heard of. Case closed!"
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#34
11-12-2012, 02:04 PM
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The main thing, the most important thing, you absolutely must do when attempting to read all of the Sherlock Holmes stories, is this:
Skip "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone." If you happen to buy a collection that has this story in it, rip it out and burn it unread. If you dowload an electronic version or visit a Website that has this story as part of its offering, immediately throw away your tablet or e-reader or whatever and purchase another one. Trust me on this.
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#35
11-12-2012, 02:55 PM
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A video of the play does not exist, sadly. I wish I had seen it. Last edited by teela brown; 11-12-2012 at 02:55 PM.
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#36
11-12-2012, 03:12 PM
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If you're into audio books, Edward Hardwicke has also done some of the short stories.
http://www.amazon.com/Adventures-She...ward+Hardwicke Last edited by Battle Pope; 11-12-2012 at 03:12 PM.
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#37
12-05-2012, 01:05 PM
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Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes tales are timelessly wonderful. My favorites: the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles, of course, and the short stories "The Red-Headed League," "The Norwood Builder," "The Musgrave Ritual," "Silver Blaze," "The Speckled Band," and "The Problem of Thor Bridge." June Thomson has written a series of Holmesian short stories that are every bit as good as Conan Doyle's best, IMHO; her first collection is The Secret Files of Sherlock Holmes.
I also recently learned, thanks to the Dope, about Neil Gaiman's fantastic, Hugo-winning Conan Doyle/Lovecraft mashup, "A Study in Emerald," which you can find here: http://www.neilgaiman.com/mediafiles...es/emerald.pdf
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#38
12-05-2012, 02:35 PM
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The later short stories are somewhat formulaic, a reflection of the fact that C-D didn't place much value on them and was frankly sick of Holmes by that time. He thought his historical novels like The White Company and the Brigadier Gerard stories would cement his reputation. The Study In Scarlet is juvenilia, with the crime solved and the perpetrator in custody half-way through. C-D improved at it as he went on.
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#39
12-05-2012, 03:57 PM
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If you've started with the ones you mentioned, you may want to try next Young Sherlock Holmes. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090357/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
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#40
12-05-2012, 04:08 PM
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Years ago when I first thought to read Holmes, I picked up "The Aventures of Sherlock Holmes", "The Return of Sherlock Holmes", and "The Hound of the Baskervilles". (I also picked up "Sherlock Holmes and the Case of Sabina Hall", which I will discuss below.) I found them entertaining and a cover of most elements of the characters of Sherlock and Watson. However, it was lacking how they met, which did annoy me slightly, but I was able to enjoy the stories.
Earlier this year, for a variety of reasons, I decided to reread all the Holmes stuff, and realized that I had not, in fact, read all ACD's stuff yet. So I acquired "The Complete Sherlock Holmes" in the version edited by Kyle Freeman. This one is nice because it is annotated enough to explain some of his cultural referents like people names he drops, and some comments on contradictions with other stories, etc. It did take me around 4 months to read it all, but I'm not that fast a reader. I generally agree with the assessments of others. "A Study in Scarlett" is the first, which introduces the characters, and it often referred to in other literature. Consider reading the first couple chapters that introduce the characters, then jumping to "The Adventures" when the cops show up to invite him to the case. Alternately, you can likely read through the first half, then jump to the last chapter where the criminal explains things. The long second part is all back story on what happened, which is not uninteresting, but has nothing to do with Sherlock and seems out of place. After a while, I did notice some patterns in ACD stories. He tended to reuse story elements or themes. Like the adventurer from Australia/America/South America who lied about some secret from his past and someone from that past has shown up to take advantage of it. Or the old manor house in the country with the miser and the dedicated servants. Also, Doyle doesn't always play completely fair with the audience for conventional mysteries, by withholding details. Sherlock often keeps Watson in the dark when he knows more than he's telling and wants to manufacture the big reveal. Quote:
Another thing that never did feel right about those, somewhere along the way Sherlock retires to the English countryside to keep and study bees. He's supposed to be content with his scientific studies. Except it is established early on that is scientific studies are not enough to keep him engaged and fulfilled, and he lapses into use of cocaine when bored. He needs the criminal cases to keep his attention, the uniqueness of the puzzles. It seems uncharacteristic that later he is content without them. But the worst one to me was "The Final Problem". Here's why I felt it sucked. Spoilered, because it gives way major flow of the story. SPOILER:
Later stories try to shoehorn Moriarty in, and prove he was working all along in the background. Not fully convincing to me. Watson makes a contradictory statement that he was aware of Moriarty for some time before "The Final Problem". Doyle was never really that concerned with consistency. He doesn't even keep Watson's name straight (is it John or James H. Watson?) Doyle does jump around a little in time with his stories, so they're not strictly sequential. And he does make occassional cross references - his stories often start out with an explanatory note from Watson about when it was, things that were happening, other cases that had just been resolved - some of which we never hear about. There are also a couple of self-parodies that Doyle wrote. They hinge on the same basic joke about Sherlocks method of observation and its effectiveness. Quote:
I mentioned I was going to comment on L.B. Greenwood's novel, "Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Sabina Hall". It is fairly well written and feels authentic in style, tone, and character. It does have a slight weakness in that it repeats a Doyle flaw of borrowing heavily on elements - an old manor house in the country, a miserly old man, some weird staff, bizarre occurrences, some exotic information. It isn't bad, though, certainly not as bad as the couple authentic stories mentioned above.
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#41
12-05-2012, 05:17 PM
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After "The Adventure of the Empty House", ACD could still make it happen, but it got rarer and rarer as he went on, and finally he was just phoning it in. I would start with The Adventures, do A Study in Scarlet (and skip the Utah part) and The Hound of the Baskervilles. Save the rest for after you are addicted. Regards, Shodan
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#42
12-05-2012, 05:25 PM
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Holmes' idiosyncrasies, eccentricities, and borderline crazy plotlines were being spoofed as early as 1896. Some of the early ones are funny but hard to find.
Fortunately, the best Holmes parodies - the best parodies in the crime genre - are cheap and easily available. Schlock Homes: The Complete Bagel Street Saga by Robert L. Fish contains the two original volumes, all masterpieces even though a few shine above the rest. "The Adventure of the Adam Bomb" is glorious punnery and the spoof of "The Final Problem" is sublime. Homes' deductions are always ludicrous yet always lead to an ending, if not necessary a solution, that slices Doyle's hackery into shreds. I assume that everybody who's reading here loves a great pun - and if not, go to a different internet and leave us alone. Everybody else should grab this book and treasure it.
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#43
12-06-2012, 10:36 AM
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Holmes says something like "Through persuasive arguments, metallic or otherwise, he convinced you to let him in ..." and the servant says something like "He is a very free-handed gentleman." Freeman's footnote for the "metallic or otherwise" quote says "A gun or a knife can be a very persuasive argument." Please! It's obvious Holmes is implying the man bribed his way in with coins, and the woman is essentially agreeing with him. Overall I love the footnotes and additional information Freeman brought to the table, but the obvious swing-and-a-miss on this one is particularly frustrating.
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#44
12-06-2012, 10:45 AM
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#45
12-06-2012, 01:13 PM
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#46
12-06-2012, 02:27 PM
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Shodan: I tend to give ACD a pass on stories that reference scientific principles (such as "The Creeping Man" or "Speckled Band"), because I assume his understanding was based on the prevailing knowledge of the day. For my money, the worst story of the bunch is "Mazarin Stone," and I'm pretty well convinced ACD didn't actually write it.
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