The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle

Read Eighteenth on August 13, 2012.

I don't know whether I should be disappointed in myself or in the Adventures. Either way, I wasn't entirely too impressed with it. And I'll tell you why it might be me and why it might be the nature of the stories.

Let's start with the stories. I learned when I borrowed the rather hefty book from the library that the Adventures were originally published as short stories in a newspaper called The Strand. That being said, it took me forever to read them because the cases were solved in ten pages. In a novel, you finish a chapter in ten pages with the story incomplete, giving the reader an incentive to read on. It left the reader wanting to complete the story and to keep reading until it was over. When I finished the "chapter," the story was done. Riddle solved. No more to it. So what had me wanting to read more? Just another case. It was a tad monotonous, quite frankly. I would rather there be less, lengthier cases. Don't get me wrong, dear reader; it's quite impressive how quickly Sherlock can solve these mysteries. But it's, I believe, a detriment to the story as a whole since these mysteries rarely stump Sherlock and give him any kind of struggle. Multiple times he had practically solved the case merely by looking at the client and hearing their story. Kudos, man. I sure don't know of anyone who can do that. But the intrigue of the story is lost if he doesn't have trouble with the case! Fiction is supposed to have a conflict, and if the conflict isn't really all that interesting, then the piece of literature isn't going to be interesting either.

Now I'm not too ignorant. I know that these were published as short stories in newspapers. If they came out once a week, I can definitely see how they would become popular. People would pick up the newspaper, read a quick story about Holmes and Watson, enjoy those ten pages and move on with their coffee break. I can see how they would be enjoyable to the readers when they were published. But not to me. In being so short, I can understand how it might be difficult for Doyle to include a substantial amount of literary merit. The stories just weren't quite meant to be literary masterpieces.

And this is why it might be me: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is actually a little less than 30% of all Holmes literature. The hefty book which I borrowed includes The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, and The Hound of the Baskervilles. The latter is an actually novel, which would probably make the two previous paragraphs ignorant ramblings. I would read it, but in three days I'm leaving for my freshman year of college. I just don't really have time to do that, especially considering the rate at which I read the twelve (feel free to be disappointed in me; twelve just isn't a whole lot) stories.

I try not to judge a book by its cover (heheh). So I will readily admit that I don't know everything about Sherlock Holmes. But I will admit that I know about his Adventures, and I will admit that my expectations were not met. Plus, not once did he say "elementary," but I guess that's a luxury for those people who read all 100% of it.