This evening I lost another procrastinary device: I finished the 1,408 pages of the The Complete Sherlock Holmes Stories.
Phew.
I originally bought it because of a collaboration/competition thingy on Shooting People, someone looking for an original Sherlock Holmes story. I needed to research so bought them in order to get a feel for the style.
It's actually a fascinating historical document, and there are some cracking good stories, although watch out for the longer stories, the second halves are always the back story which can be pretty tedious, even if they are historically interesting.
In my blog this particular piece of writing was referred to as the Bohemian Project. It came to naught and a good chunk of the reason for that was me not reading the brief properly. I completely failed to notice that the company wanted something very dark and possibly supernatural. Mind you, Holmes wouldn't stand for that, read "The Sussex Vampire" story.
It's a crime I shall never be guilty of again, because I mean to win.
Back to Holmes, as I mentioned in a recent blog the word monograph comes up reasonably frequently. However there were turns of language that surprised me by their modernity, such as referring to the USA as "the States", and (I know it's not very recent but still...) a criminal saying "It's a fair cop".
What's on the turntable? "Heartsong" by Gordon Giltrap from "Perilous Journey". Heartsong was his only charts hit, and it's a lovely tune. Gordon Giltrap tells stories in music without words.
2 comments:
I too have the Complete Sherlock Holmes, also bought for research - although mine has 1122 pages and I gave up about a tenth of the way through. So I salute you for sticking with it, god for you.
I thank you. Took about 7 months in total ... though I did read other books in between.
How am I going to waste time now?
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