I recently started listening to Sherlock Holmes books at night to help me keep the phone out of my hands and fall asleep instead of doomscrolling. Sadly, I am now just stuck listening to these highly addictive stories and still cannot fall asleep, but that’s not the point.
The point is, that these books are absolutely wild. I had never read them before and only know Holmes through being one of the – if not the – most referenced literary figure in the western genre tradition. I have seen various adaptations of the stories over time, but never read or listened to the originals. So imagine my surprise when I found out a good third of the very first book is a re-telling of the founding of Salt Lake City and the villains in that book are basically described as being evil because they are Mormon! And then you start the second book and while I’ve heard that Holmes uses drugs in the original books, I didn’t expect the first chapter to basically be “Holmes uses Cocaine intravenously, because he’s bored”. And it goes on from there!
How do you like the orignal Holmes books and stories and are there any other classics that made you go “this is very much not what I expected!”?
by meem09
6 Comments
Things were a lot different back then.
I love the Sherlock Holmes books, not only the original but any of the good pastiche novels and short stories that have kept the character going.
With the first book, I think you will find a weakness that shows up in the books – Doyle’s unfamiliarity with America. Not just the Mormons, but in some other stories (5 orange pips, the Yellow Face, Thor Bridge) there is just something off about the way he portrays Americans, Americanisms, US history.
Yes the take on social, cultural issues is pretty 19th century, but there is a reason that Sherlock Holmes held up as the most popular character in literature. If you have a chance, check out the Granada series from the 80s, especially after you read or listen to one of the stories they did. (The first season is the best IMHO)
I’m so glad you’re so enthralled! – with all the pop-culture usurpations, I don’t think the original outrageousness of Holmes and his adventures often gets enough attention.
I’ll give a shout out for “Gulliver’s Travels” where the eponymous hero swinging from giant nipples doesn’t seem to make it into the kids’ classics rewrites, the unexpected cross-dressing scene in “Jane Eyre”, when “Peter Pan” introduces Hook commiting murder, and that “Wuthering Heights” is literally violently anti-romance…!
I liked reading the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. I eventually stopped reading them in favor of Agatha Christie because I never felt that you had quite enough information to solve the mystery with Sherlock, where Poirot usually gave you all the information. It always seemed like there was some missing piece of information that Sherlock had that the reader didn’t that made it so he could solve it and you could not.
Of course, even when I had all the same information as the detective, I never figured out a Poirot mystery ahead of time either.
Dude, I love Sherlock Holmes! I have read all four of Conan Doyle’s novels and all the short stories with him! You should really get into the short stories, some of them are pretty wild and weird! You have a man who believes his wife is a vampire, a girl attacked by a ribbon, people who are believed to have become possessed by the Devil and many other wacky stuff!
At some point Conan Doyle came to hate Holmes as his stories where getting all the attention and none of his other works where able to reach that level of fame (he wrote many fiction books, ghost stories and other stuff besides Sherlock Holmes), but also because it was getting very difficult for him to find such weird and convoluted plots for his stories. So, he >!kills !<Holmes in the story “The Final Problem” and people got pissed. Like, there where>! elegies!< for Holmes written in newspapers, workers in London wore >!black ribbons in respect!< and even the Prince of Wales was reported as being “very upset” with it. So Doyle had to >!revive!< Holmes some years later and continue his saga basically.
You should get into the other stories, they are so much fun!
Completely agree – love Sherlock Holmes. When I first read a book of Sherlock Holmes stories as an adult, I went back to the library the next day to get more. A great read!