Holmes doesn’t think Watson is dull; just conventional. The dullness came from the plays and films.
I did download two of the Thirndyke books. Mysteries are always good to have on hand.
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I’m really looking forward to starting the Dark Tower books over and actually getting to finish this time. When I read them, I think there were only 3 or 4 and during the long stretches (6 years between books) until new ones came out my life got busy and I just never got back to it. Now that they’re all out, I don’t really have any excuse for not starting over.
If you like it, The Stand, The Talisman, Insomnia, and Hearts In Atlantis all have a good similar feel (and tie in in some way). Desperation and The Regulators are also ‘twin novels’.
The last two of his that I’ve read, Under the Dome and 11/22/63, were a bit different, both just so atmospheric and human. In both there was a weird thing, but the real focus was all on the setting and the people and how they interact.
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A lot of the friends who’d been encouraging me to read them are now re-reading them for exactly the same reason; they’d read them as they came out and can now plow through them as one extended canon.
I’m definitely enjoying them, and can see why everyone kept asking me “have you met Eddie and Susannah yet?” when I’d started Drawing of the Three.
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Ohh, I have another one: Laurie R King’s extension of the Sherlock Holmes canon featuring Mary Russell. I think there are eight or nine books in the series.
[Edit: make that “fourteen books in the series” plus a couple of short stories.]
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Going to throw out
The last and first men Olaf Stapledon
The chrysalids John Wyndham.
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I read that, or rather skimmed through it in such a blur in high school that I didn’t know until a few months ago Waknuk was in what we know today as Labrador. For that missed bit alone I’m eager to read The Chrysalids as ahem a born-again Virgin.
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it’s long been a hole in my literary endeavors, but i have finally purchased Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy. i read a sample and while it’s clearly aimed at a young adult audience, i still felt compelled by what i read. so, i’m looking forward to some easy summer reading.
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Remembered two more novels whose first time readers I envy, both by Jonathan Carroll:
- Bones of the Moon
- The Land of Laughs
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A Perfect Spy is considered by some to be his best book. As to his accuracy of portrayal, I can only record that when TTTS came out the result was our resident ex-spook fulminating “how does he get away with printing that stuff?” Also, The Honourable Schoolboy. I think later Le Carré has gone downhill because he’s no longer writing about stuff he experienced on the inside.
Some of Dorothy L Sayers; Murder Must Advertise, The Nine Tailors and Whose Body. If you are interested in such things, it’s interesting to trace through her books her initial casual anti-Semitism, typical of the time, gradually evolving into something very different. But in the last books she falls rather sloppily in love with her detective which to my mind spoils Gaudy Night.
This is very Anglocentric I know, so for a little balance let me add God Knows by Joseph Heller (which I think is better than Catch-22) and Joshua Then and Now by Mordecai Richler. The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov may not be to all tastes but I like it. Also a lot of Queneau (Zazie dans le Métro of course) which is also available in English, the Piccolo Mondo books by Guareschi ditto (I am showing my age).
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Are we listing favorite books, or books that really do make us envy others for not having read yet? (I think there’s a difference?) Some of the latter for me:
The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
Winter’s Bone – Daniel Woodrell
The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
Maus – Art Spiegelman
The Known World – Edward Jones
Passing – Nella Larsen
Fun Home – Alison Bechdel
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Indeed, this is the topic I raised. I am delighted by the breadth and number of contributions. The tangential “if you like X try Y” reading suggestions are icing on the cake!
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The Warrior’s Apprentice - Lois McMaster Bujold.
An excellent introduction to McMaster Bujold, who is a consistently good writer. I gave up counting the number of times I lent out my print versions of Vorkosigan novels and failed to get them back.
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The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, but only with the illustrations done by Jules Feiffer.
The Proud Tower by Barbara W. Tuchman. No, I don’t work for her estate or for her publishing company, lol.
Any one of the Dell Yearling Series of biographies written for pre-teens. Those got me looking for more information.
Nancy Drew mysteries that aren’t updated to the present time.
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I see your Talented Mr Ripley and raise you a Strangers On A Train, also by Patricia Highsmith. Highsmith was one of the better thriller writers of that era, but hasn’t really gotten her due.
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Also Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror.
If we’re getting into history:
Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan
The Pax Britannica trilogy (Heaven’s Command, Pax Britannica, Farewell the Trumpets) by James (now Jan) Morris. There’s a lot of her work I haven’t read. I envy myself.
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My dad turned me onto that sort of thing (for those of you who’ve been reading my stuff in the POTUS thread, this is the kind of thing that befuddles me: How did this guy born in Flint, raised in Detroit, during the Depression, get into this sort of thing? I do know some may’ve been his father’s mother, and perhaps his own. Like I’ve said, everyone who knows something about it is DEAD.
And The March of Folly!
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His son, Nick Harkaway, writes some ripping yarns himself. I’ve read only Angelmaker and Tigerman.
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Ah, right! Wonderful movie, but I haven’t read the book. Thank you for the reminder!
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Of the two, The Moabite Cypher sticks closest to the text and characterization of Thorndyke. A Message From the Deep Sea plays him as an overly arrogant, egomaniacal ass (which Thorndyke was not) and that lecture by Jarvis on wondering whether Thorndyke is human was completely OOC for both of them. Thorndyke was polite to a fault and surprisingly egalitarian, and Jervis was well aware of a surgeon’s detachment. Nor does Thorndyke think Jarvis is “stupid” (to quote Message) on the contrary, Thorndyke deliberately recruited Jarvis as a junior partner in his practice.
Other than adding in the “culprit was a secret anarchist and Thorndyke was stupid enough to get himself shot”, Moabite was closer to the actual characterization of Thorndyke: cheerful and genial with little unearned arrogance whatsoever. Nor did he have disdain for the police.
About the only thing Message came close on was Thorndyke’s relationship with Poulton. From the text:
The relations of Thorndyke and his assistant were a constant delight to me: on the one side, service, loyal and whole-hearted; on the other, frank and full recognition.
I think the writers (especially of Message)were trying too hard to capture the “Sherlock Holmes, Great Detective” vibe and blew past most of the actual source material.
sigh I guess I want what every book-lover wants from an adaptation: someone who simply slaps the book down and says “there’s your script. Don’t get fancy, start filming… Oh, and all major crew (directors, producers, actors, writers) should make themselves familiar with the source material.”
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Illuminatus!
The trilogy. It’s an experience, and a real rollercoaster, regardless of how profound you actually think it is.
fnord
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