Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s next set of short shorties, “The Return of Sherlock Holmes”, sees Sherlock Holmes turn out to be alive. Not much of a surprise given Watson merely assumed Holmes must have fallen off the waterfall and went on with his life without really doing that much checking.

I found the stories to be increasingly more engaging. While the mysteries were not any better than the previous set of short stories, the writing had continue to improve from the earliest works and maintained my interest throughout.

I was rather disappointed when I first started reading the Sherlock Holmes stories. Because they were rubbish. However, as time as gone on, the writing has become better and better and each story is more enjoyable. The collection of short stories that form Memoirs continues this trend.

That is until the last book, The Final Problem, in which Watson recounts the death of Sherlock. Professor Moriarty appears from nowhere, having never been mentioned before. Then Sherlock mutters to himself that he would really like to catch Moriarty for a while. Finally Watson goes for a walk and when he comes back he assumes Sherlock and Moriarty have had a fight and plunged over a waterfall.

Having read the first two novels in the Sherlock Holmes series, I recently finished the first set of short stories. These are collectively known as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

They started off in a similar vein to the novels. By that I mean they were not very interesting. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle does not seem to have mastered the skill of structuring a truly captivating story at this point. The language is enjoyable but the plots and the structure are not always particularly well thought out.

As the series goes on however, these points seem to come together to create more and more interesting stories. By the end I could not put them down. Metaphorically at least.

A friend recommended that I read “How to be a Bad Christian: … And a Better Human Being” by David Tomlinson. So I did. His message seems to be that organised religion is not really relevant or useful, it is all about loving Jesus. Meanwhile, he works as a vicar.

He started a church in a pub, called Holy Joe’s, that is pretty cool.

Overall, I did not find it the most interesting read however. I do not think the book was really aimed at me. I think it was aimed at Christians who do not go to church and generally feel guilty that they do not practice actively enough. For them, it would probably be quite an enjoyable read.

I recently finished the Sherlock Holmes novel, “The Sign of Four”. It was along the same lines as A Study in Scarlet in that it was a reasonably enjoyable read, but not as good as I had hoped.

I find the TV series Sherlock far better than the books. The novels are just a bit boring in comparison. Once I have suspended by disbelief as to how clever Sherlock could be, he might as well be insanely brilliant (as he is in the TV show) rather than rather brilliant as he is in the novels.

A common theme between the two novels I have read is that the mystery does not actually take up that much of a novel. But during the explanation, it will suddenly go into a huge back story that goes on for ages.

Finally, I also found the end a bit of a let down. I did not actually feel like anything was resolved. On balance, I enjoyed it more than I did the first novel though, so I am hoping it will continue to get better and better.

I have started reading Sherlock Holmes to see if Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss had many any changes when they developed their TV series.

I think I prefer the TV series. The novel is straight forward. Sure, Sherlock Holmes is a very clever man. But it is almost believable. Where I quite like the TV series because it is escapism – nobody could be that brilliant, or that much of an arsehole.

I also found the structure of the novel rather strange. In the middle it changes to a story set in Utah for “The Country of the Saints”. I understand why it was there, but it goes on for ages and ages. It is like a mini-novel inside another.

The problem with Terry Pratchett novels is that I often have not read the book that it is a satire of. This is true of Maskerade. I have not read Phantom of the Opera. So when I do, I imagine I will spend the whole time thinking “ha, they have just stolen that from Discworld”. Good read, but nothing amazing.

Rinsewind. Two Flower. The Counterweight Continent? What more could you really want from a Discworld novel? There was even a Dibbler-style character, not to mention a great horde of rather ageing hero barbarians! Good read.

Back in May I read I, Partridge: We Need To Talk About Alan. It was well worth a read and so James recommended I listen to the audiobook as well.

I was good, but not amazing. Steve Coogan did a good job of providing the Partridge voice for so many hours (though his normally voice is very similar anyway) but I would have liked it to be even more annoying. It’s not quite the emotionally-charged whining that I remember from the TV show.

Through the Looking-Glass is a sequel to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

It was certainly strange, though I didn’t enjoy it as much as the original as it didn’t read quite as much of interesting nonsense. Some of it seemed to drift off into James Joyce style ramblings that seemed a little out of place in what is really a children’s book.