The Complete Sherlock Holmes Volume 1 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

9/10

A book about deduction and astute observation? Where do I sign up? Count me in. I just finished reading this book last night. This was fun reading. That Sherlock continued to amaze and solve some real puzzlers. This book is a Barnes & Noble book that has gathered all of the Sherlock Holmes stories into two volumes. Volume 1 included:

1. A 100 page short novel called "A Study in Scarlet" and was really good. There's a lot of anti-Mormon stuff in this story that is more comical than anything where Mormons are painted as these crazed religious zealots that murder anyone who does not obey. The story, however, was still very good.

2. Another 100 page short novel called "The Sign of Four" that turned out to be one of my favorites of all the stories.

3. "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" which is 16 short stories that are about 20 pages each. These short stories have far less character development, but get right to the good stuff: Holmes dominating and solving cases. Some of my favorite stories of the 16 were "The Red-Headed League" (yes, it IS as awesome as it sounds), "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" (intense and interesting), and "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb" (this one had a very Poe-like feeling).

4. "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" which is 11 short stories that are about 15 pages each. My favorites were "The Silver Blaze" (my very favorite of all the short stories in Volume 1), "The Reigate Puzzle" (some cool deductions in this one), "The Greek Interpreter" (mostly because we meet Sherlock's lesser known brother who also has an awesome name, Mycroft. He is exactly like Sherlock except better, according to Sherlock. The two of them together were quite the dominators.), and "The Naval Treaty" (just real good). "The Final Problem" is also notable because it features Sherlock's greatest nemesis, Moriarty. I'll leave it at that due to spoiler issues.

5. A 120-page short novel called "The Hound of the Baskervilles" which was amazingly awesome and my very favorite of all the stories in this volume. It is easily the most well written and most suspenseful. Sherlock is at his best here. Watson too.

Now for the quotes:

"It is not easy to express the inexpressible."

"The chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness."

"I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely."

"A change of work is the best rest." I guess he is here quoting William Gladstone, the current Prime Minister at the time.

"Dirty-looking rascals, but I suppose every one has some little immortal spark concealed about him."

"There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman." Holmes says this is an old Persian saying.

"Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent."

"It's every man's business to see justice done."

"Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers."