Too Much Book, Not Enough Blog, or Review of "Whose Body?"

Have you ever found yourself so engrossed in books that it was difficult for you to take a break from READING them long enough to BLOG about them?  That's the state of distraction I've been in the past few weeks.  I've just been DEVOURING books like a starving man who has stumbled upon a smorgasbord.  Huge, non-fiction tomes, tiny little novels, all have been gobbled up lately into the swirling vortex that is my new-found reading appetite.  I'm already over 30% finished with my Goodreads goal for the year, despite the fact that it's only March, and my Goodreads "currently reading" shelf is displaying four books at the moment.  Don't ask me what happened; I've always been an avid reader, but suddenly, I simply cannot get enough of the written word.

ANYWAY, the fact that I've been reading a non-fiction trilogy lately, the last two volumes of which are each over 900 pages long, has slowed me down enough that I can breathe for a minute and continue chipping away at my reviewing backlog.  Thus, on with a review, what, what?

Whose Body?

by Dorothy L. Sayers

 I really enjoyed this mystery novel, the first in the "Lord Peter Wimsey" series, though the jury was out for most of it on whether I liked Lord Peter himself (and therefore the whole book) or not.  He's one of the first of what became a very familiar pattern--the rich young English nobleman who makes a hobby of investigating crime and gets away with it because of who he is and how powerful his family is.  His mother gets into the act as often as possible to keep her life from getting dull, and his older brother, the responsible one who inherited the family titles and estate, thoroughly disapproves of the whole business, to no avail whatsoever.

In this first novel, the case in hand quickly blossoms into two cases, one a missing business magnate and the other the random appearance of a naked corpse in someone's bathtub.  As usual, the police officer assigned to the corpse case is a complete imbecile, but unlike in all the Sherlock Holmes books, the cop's idiocy gets exposed before the end.  Meanwhile, another police officer, a friend of Lord Peter's, actually has a brain, and Lord Peter uses him as his side-kick/lackey/Watson.

Wimsey himself is very aptly named, if his conversation is anything to go by.  He's so full of random quotations that he's barely intelligible at times, speaks with a rather annoying drawl, and really did not make a favorable impression on me at all until he started demonstrating post-World War I "shell shock" (PTSD).  That factor humanized him in a very dramatic and effective way.  It didn't occur until about 2/3 of the way through the book, and it wasn't until then that I was truly hooked.  Fortunately, I got invested in the next in the series much more quickly (as future reviews will demonstrate).

The Victor's Mailbox

To the victor go the spoils, so they say.  Thus, my mailbox had a very pleasant week, more than making up for in quality what it may have lacked in quantity.

BOUGHT:

First off, let's talk about the book I bought for myself that finally arrived this week, though it was ordered before Christmas.  These are the joys of buying a used book from across the pond; it just takes a long time to get a book sent from the UK to the US when you don't pony up for expedited shipping.

Either way, the book finally arrived in all its glory this week, completing a set I've been determined to own since 2005.  I had to wait several years until even used copies of it were within my fiscal reach, especially considering the astronomical exchange rate between the US dollar and the Pound Sterling.  Yes, readers, I am finally the proud owner of--well, "a picture is worth" etc.

For any Americans who may be reading this and didn't realize until just now how much better the covers of the British originals are than the American versions, I am truly sorry to have forcibly altered your worldview in such an abrupt fashion.  Don't get me wrong; I LOVE the artwork done by Mary GrandPre in our American exemplars, and would consider any edition perfect that was the UK original with the Bloomsbury cover and GrandPre's illustrations inside, but since that's not available, I insist on owning copies of the originals.  "NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN CHANGED," and all that sort of thing.  Sorry, got a little worked up.  Moving on.

WON:

I was incredibly pleased to receive this week a copy of The Victoria Vanishes, courtesy of a delightful giveaway hosted by Peggy from Peggy Ann's Post.  I honestly knew nothing about this book when I signed up for the giveaway, except that I'd been seeing it all over the place and the cover looked almost unbearably intriguing.  Naturally, it turns out that it's #6 in a series I don't own the rest of--yet!  Oh, drat, a whole new series I'll have to buy.  Unfortunate me.  Oh, the suffering.  HURRAY!  Excuse me.  Sorry.  Got a little worked up again.

Anyway, that was my exciting week, along with obsessively tuning in to every new episode of Downton Abbey and discovering Sherlock and holy sh*t! Where has that show been all my life?!  Okay, I've really got to get a handle on this bout of worked-up-outburst I'm suffering from, but it's true--I can't BELIEVE I haven't been watching Sherlock since the very beginning!  If you haven't seen it yet, put down your book for an hour (and yes, I realize I'm speaking sacrilege by saying that), flip open Netflix streaming and watch the pilot.  You won't be sorry (unless your viewing tastes are TOTALLY different from mine, in which case, I'm sorry in advance).  I'll stop rambling now.  Happy reading!

Review of "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

The Hound of the Baskervilles

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I'm just going to announce right up front that I really liked this book.  It wasn't the most earth-shattering book I've ever read or anything, but the chemistry between Holmes and Watson simply works, and apparently will never go out of style (at least until modern English evolves to the place that Victorian English becomes archaic).  So, to set the scene...Holmes and Watson are informed by a country doctor that a friend of his, Sir Charles Baskerville, has died under suspicious, maybe even otherworldly circumstances.  The doctor fears that Sir Charles' heir, Sir Henry Baskerville, may also be in danger.  Holmes and Watson have to unravel the sinister from the superstitious and figure out what the Hell is going on, which they eventually manage to do, of course, as always.

This may be a tiny bit of a spoiler--not much of one, though, I promise; I HATE real spoilers--but I have pretty well decided that I don't like my murder mysteries to contain epilogues.  This is the second mystery I've read lately that was really good right up to the epilogue, at which point it just felt anti-climactic, as if the author had felt like taking the easy way out at the last minute.  Conan Doyle's epilogue is pretty well-crafted, and fits in with the motif of demonstrating how Sherlock Holmes is ALWAYS in command of what happens during his investigations, so it doesn't have the smack of authorial laziness as strongly as many epilogues do.  Still, I wish he'd chosen a different way to wind up the action, which was quite thrilling and thoroughly satisfying--right up until the epilogue.

So, I really enjoyed the book, and that's not a big surprise, is it?  There's a reason Holmes and Watson have been popular for over 100 years and are still going strong.

Review of "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes"

After a false start due to Heinous Head Cold from Hell (I've decided that's actually its name), I think I'm finally ready to review this book.  I've progressed from thinking I was going to die, to merely wishing I was dead, to being the walking undead, to now finally just being a live lump in my chair, so I think I can do a review this time.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I KNEW that ridiculous wife that Conan Doyle insisted on giving Watson in the last book was going to be nothing but trouble!  He went to some lengths to make the woman rational, intelligent and articulate, even having Holmes comment on the fact, so it would have worked much better if he had allowed her to go on Holmes' and Watson's adventures with them.  But of course, the conventions of the time forbade that sort of thing, no matter HOW rare it was for Holmes to compliment a woman.  So, Mrs. Watson spent most of her time visiting her mother, on vacation, or waiting up late at night for her husband to return home from some dangerous caper.  Several more of the stories stated baldly at the outset that they took place BEFORE Watson's marriage, and for the last couple, Conan Doyle abandoned all pretense entirely and didn't bother to give any explanation at all for why Watson was living at Baker Street again.  It was rather annoying.

Other than that, however, this book was solid Holmes and Watson fare, enjoyable as usual and laced with humor that never goes out of fashion.  I liked it.  I just wish Conan Doyle hadn't kept creating situations to end the famous partnership, only to then change his mind and have to find ways to work around his previous messes.

Review of "The Sign of Four"

Obviously, I supported the idea of the Read It 1st pledge from the moment I first spotted it on another blog--in principle, anyway.  But I found myself thinking that taking a pledge about it was perhaps a bit extreme.  Yeah.  I'm over that now.  I just took the pledge, and invite all book bloggers to do the same.

Here's the story.  The Granada dramatizations of Sherlock Holmes, with the incomparable Jeremy Brett as the eponymous sleuth, are fabulous.  Nevertheless, they're not as good as the books--big shocker--so there you are, already knowing the whodunnit when you start reading the book.  Big mistake.  Don't get me wrong; I really enjoyed reading The Sign of Four.  I just would have enjoyed it a good deal more if I didn't already know the general outlines of the solution.

NOW, having gotten that grumble out of the way, let us proceed (as if the grumble never happened) to a review of The Sign of Four.  WARNING:  There are some serious spoilers ahead, but I promise that I at least WILL NOT REVEAL THE MURDERER, so you've still got that to look forward to, if you've never read this before and wish to do so now.

The Sign of Four

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 

So, what is our favorite analytical genius up to in the latest installment?  A woman comes in search of news of her father, missing 10 years, after she gets a strange message about long-standing wrongs that need righting and a hint of incredible riches.  Before it's over, Holmes and Watson, with some unorthodox help, have searched up stream and down all over London for the world's most bizarre villains.  It's a story that takes us to the India of imperial England, through the history of an Indian uprising, and into some extraordinary reminders of the racism of the Victorian era.  It's also a reasonably gripping mystery.

SPOILER #1:  Did you know that Sherlock Holmes is a hardened cocaine user?  Yup.  That's really all I have to say about that, except that in his day, cocaine wasn't illegal yet, and lots of hard drugs were routinely prescribed and easily available.  May not want to hand a volume of Sherlock Holmes to your adventure-book-seeking kid without some parental guidance, however. 

SPOILER #2: Did you know that Dr. Watson got married in the course of this series?  I was kind of annoyed with Conan Doyle for this, honestly, because it ruined the whole male bonding, buddy books vibe that Holmes and Watson had going.  I'm glad sweet little Watson won the heart of his lady love, but I think it should've happened much later in the series.  I have a feeling this was one of Conan Doyle's numerous attempts to retire the detecting duo.  Sherlock Holmes' adoring public would never let him do so, though.

221B Baker Street

Thank you to Bev from My Reader's Block for pointing out to me that I could double-dip on the Sherlock Holmes goodness and use my current Holmesian TBR pile in order to complete the Baker Street Challenge, as well!

This challenge has already been long underway, beginning in January 2011 and ending on December 31st, but as I've recently read one Holmes, and have plenty more waiting in the wings, I believe I can safely sign on at the lowest level, "A 3-Pipe Problem", and finish before December 31st.  I'll stick to the more novella-sized Holmes, and should therefore be able to get through the three required books in plenty of time, especially since Holmes and Watson are usually real page-turner material.  The game is afoot!

Review of "A Study in Scarlet"



Image from Google Books

So, it is time for me to give you the low-down on my first encounter with Sherlock Holmes!  As I've mentioned before, I have an iron-clad policy of reading series in chronological order whenever humanly possible--yes, I'm even one of those annoying people who counts The Magician's Nephew as the first book in the Chronicles of Narnia, and publication dates be damned!  Obviously, then, if I was going to dive into Sherlock Holmes at all, I had to acquire the very first novella, the installment in which Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson first meet and begin their fantastically successful partnership.  I must say, it held a few surprises for me!

First of all, I had no idea the MORMONS would feature so prominently in this tale, and let me tell you, they did not come off looking very well in the whole affair.  (Put the search terms "Doyle Mormons" into Google; you'll get a taste of what I'm talking about.)  As many others have said (this I discovered when I did the aforementioned Google search myself), whether or not Doyle had any of his facts straight about the Latter-Day Saints, his view is certainly representative of the public anti-Mormon feeling that was running quite high at the time.

The second surprise was finding out exactly how the friendship between Holmes and Watson began.  I had always pictured Watson rather like the little dog in the old Warner Brothers cartoon who follows the big dog around, constantly excited about everything and saying things like, "Can we go to that real nice restaurant tonight, Alfie?  Can we?  Huh?  Huh? Can we?"  In other words, I assumed that Watson worshipped Holmes, and Holmes tolerated Watson.  In point of fact, the great detective needed a friend quite as much as his side-kick did, which makes me like the whole arrangement even more.  Besides the loneliness factor, Watson also proved very useful in many situations which required a doctor's services, (though I know that more from Granada's made-for-tv versions of Holmes than from this book).  It was in reading the front matter of A Study in Scarlet that I learned that, in point of fact, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was sort of a composite of both his main characters, since he had to put the ideas into Holmes' mind and mouth, and had also once been a doctor by profession.

I'm sure my rating of this book comes as no surprise at all, except maybe in the fact that I didn't go the whole hog and give it a perfect score; after all, it's been popular this long for a reason.  However, I have been known to give classics bad reviews before, and probably will do so again occasionally.  This one earned its stars.  The only thing that really annoyed me about this book was Holmes' trick of spying out "military men" by their "bearing."  I could easily buy most of his deductions, but I still find it hard to believe that a man's "bearing" or demeanor, witnessed from a second-floor window across the street, could so easily tell the observer that he had been in the army.  Even if it could, the device gets a little over-used.  Otherwise, this was a page-turner, and I can highly recommend it.