Me and Mr. Holmes

My reading affair with Sherlock Holmes started when I was 11, in a campground in Lancaster, PA.  The campground had a small lending library, and I found a copy of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" there.  I got to the words "Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!" and that was that; I was hooked for life.  A couple of years later, I did some volunteer work for a local bookstore and they let me pick out any book I wanted.  Any book.  I chose "The Complete Sherlock Holmes", a book known in library lingo as a "doorstop". Well over 1000 pages. Every Conan Doyle story and novelette published.  My parents were mystified, but I read it cover to cover, many many times over.  In later years, this book was lost in one of my many moves in a particularly stormy time in my life, and I would love to have it back again.  (I would also love to have the version of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" that I read in that campground.  It had a grey cover.)  Some of my favorite stories in the book: "The Sign of the Four", "The Speckled Band", "The Five Orange Pips", "The Solitary Cyclist", "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual", "The Dying Detective", "The Sussex Vampire", "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (of course), and "His Last Bow".  I have read some other authors attempts at Holmes stories, and particularly like Laurie R. King's Holmes and Russell series, especially "The Beekeeper's Apprentice".

As far as other media is concerned, Jeremy Brett IS Sherlock Holmes, IMHO, and I do like the new BBC version as keeping to the spirit of the stories while moving them into the 21st century.  I can't stand many of the movie versions as not being true to Doyle's Holmes. Sorry, Robert Downey Jr, you are decidedly NOT The Great Man.   Again, my opinion.  I make a nostalgic exception for the Basil Rathbone - Nigel Bruce "Baskervilles" as being so bad, it's good.  I also did like "Young Sherlock Holmes" despite its many flaws.  We have also visited William Gillette's castle in Connecticut.  Gillette popularized Holmes on the stage, and the castle is quite a marvel: Gillette State Park.

I have read a couple other books by Conan Doyle, but nothing compares with Holmes.  I'll keep an eye out for the doorstop version of the complete stories, and for that grey-covered book that started me on the Holmes path many years ago.