Maria's review
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories by Arthur Conan Doyle
This edition of Sherlock Holmes stories and novels is marvellous, and absolutely worth the price (which works out to about $30 per volume). The book is physically gorgeous and lovely to touch, with lots of black and white illustrations and notations in red, and smooth glossy paper. I'm a sucker for that sort of thing. And the cover design is awesome.
What I've seen of the annotations has really impressed me, too. They are partially fannish theories sprouting around narrative discrepancies and plot holes - these evoked fond memories of arguing crazy theories in my HPFGU days just for the fun of it, even when we all knew that the true answer was something along the lines of a mistake - and factual and historical details that provide some context and make the stories that much richer. For instance, I liked the bit where they tried to figure out what sort of snake the Speckled Band was. (Here the answer is, "No real snake, he just made something up.")
(Oh, and it goes witho...more
What I've seen of the annotations has really impressed me, too. They are partially fannish theories sprouting around narrative discrepancies and plot holes - these evoked fond memories of arguing crazy theories in my HPFGU days just for the fun of it, even when we all knew that the true answer was something along the lines of a mistake - and factual and historical details that provide some context and make the stories that much richer. For instance, I liked the bit where they tried to figure out what sort of snake the Speckled Band was. (Here the answer is, "No real snake, he just made something up.")
(Oh, and it goes witho...more
