Sherlock Holmes

Being drawn to mysteries from the time I began to realize there was more to the literary world than Dr. Seuss, it it quite a natural thing to learn that I've read Sherlock Holmes mysteries on and off for many years. In the last 3 months, for a reason I can't quite remember, I became fascinated with them. I realized that I had not read nearly as many as I had assumed, but didn't know how many there were to be read.

I began my research.

Turns out that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote 4 novels and 56 short stories about the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I'm not sure if I have mentioned it here or not, but I LOVE a good book series and if it's a mystery, if they're not too scary, I am a total sucker. I have to start at the very first book written and read them in order. It's just more fun that way. When I discovered just how many Sherlock Holmes stories there were I felt like I had hit the series jack pot! Plus, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (nobody ever just refers to him as Sir Doyle...it's rather odd) got tired of writing about Holmes after two novels and 24 stories and he killed him off. But people where so addicted to the adventures by then that they begged him to revive their favorite detective and so he did with 2 more novels and 32 more short stories. How can anyone NOT be intrigued by that? It's fascinating.

The difficulty came in making sure I read them in published order. Most of the stories where published in The Strand magazine and some of the novels in that same magazine as installments of over a year! Can you even imagine reading a mystery....by installments that takes a whole year to complete?!?!?!

Maddening. 

Soon I found the information I needed. I began to run into problems as I found there are many collections of Sherlock Holmes stories but you have to find just the right book to get them in publication order. Slowly, I began to chip away at my goal of reading all adventures in order.

A week before we went to D.C. as a family, Kevin went on business. He brought me back a souvenir. This!

That's right, my friends. The complete Sherlock Holmes Canon written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ....wait for it....in publication order! Well, that's not entirely true because one of the novels, The Hound of the Baskervilles is found after the third book of short stories when, publication date wise, it actually belongs after the second book. HOWEVER, starting from the very beginning, and being more than half way through the canon, I totally get why thy choose to present it this way.

Why post about this? Well, I can be found carrying this book around most of the day and I'm sure my kids are associating memories of me with it. I thought it might be lovely for them to have documentation that I truly did cart this book everywhere with me. I even took it with me to D.C. 

I tell Kevin often, "Thank you for my book! I love it!"

I really mean it to.