In 2026 I plan to read all the Conan Doyle “Sherlock Holmes” works – 56 short stories and 4 novels (here’s why and how). If you haven’t already read it, Michael Green’s “undiscovered letter” from John Watson is fricking hilarious. I may also read various Holmes homages/pastiches etc. Who knows? (btw I’d recommend theSeven Per Cent Solution, by Nicholas Meyer where Watson has to trick Holmes into going to Vienna to be treated by Sigmund Freud).
In February my target is to read all (or at very least most) of the 12 stories in Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Published: September 1893
Wikipedia here
Online here
Review: I would recommend this. It’s nicely done, as ever. And we meet Mycroft for the first time!
Best sentence(s):
It was after tea on a summer evening, and the conversation, which had roamed in a desultory, spasmodic fashion from golf clubs to the causes of the change in the obliquity of the ecliptic, came round at last to the question of atavism and hereditary aptitudes
******
“My dear Watson,” said he, “I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate one’s self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one’s own powers….”
*****
But [Mycroft] has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solution, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right. Again and again I have taken a problem to him, and have received an explanation which has afterwards proved to be the correct one. And yet he was absolutely incapable of working out the practical points which must be gone into before a case could be laid before a judge or jury.”
*****
“Well, knowing as much as we do, it will be singular indeed if we fail to discover the rest. You must yourself have formed some theory which will explain the facts to which we have listened.”
*****
From the open door there reeked a horrible poisonous exhalation which set us gasping and coughing. Holmes rushed to the top of the stairs to draw in the fresh air, and then, dashing into the room, he threw up the window and hurled the brazen tripod out into the garden
*****
… in less than an hour, with the aid of ammonia and brandy I had the satisfaction of seeing him open his eyes, and of knowing that my hand had drawn him back from that dark valley in which all paths meet.
Ammonia and brandy as a cure?!
*****
Words I didn’t know/ stuff to be aware of
| Diogenes Club | The Diogenes Club is a fictional gentlemen’s club created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and featured in several Sherlock Holmes stories, such as 1893’s “The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter“. It seems to have been named after Diogenes the Cynic (though this is never explained in the original stories) and was co-founded by Sherlock’s indolent elder brother Mycroft Holmes.Diogenes Club – Wikipedia |
| Ammunition boots | Ammunition boots are a form of military footwear. They were the standard combat boot for the British Army and other forces around the British Empire and Commonwealth from at least the mid-1860s[a] until their replacement a century later in the 1960s with the rubber-soled Boots DMS (for “direct moulded sole”).[2] |
| J pen | J pen (plural J pens)(now chiefly historical) A kind of fountain pen with a broad, stubby nib, originally stamped with a “J”. |
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