Monday 15 September 2008

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes


Title: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Author: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Number of pages: 285

Started: 8 September 2008

Finished: 15 September 2008

Opening words:

To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer -excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.

Plot summary:

Amid the foggy streets of sinister London and the even more sinister countryside, Holmes and Watson once more solve the unsolvable. This book is a collection of stories, including "A Scandal in Bohemia", "A Case of Identity", "The Red-Headed League" and "The Boscombe Valley Mystery".


What I thought:

This was an enjoyable read with a variety of stories to try and fox Holmes. They were an interesting collection of stories, although perhaps mainly a variation on a theme and the solution to the mysteries were always very speedily explained, perhaps because the answer should have been had we truly managed to observe what took place. Very readable and some good classic stories.

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