The Hound of the Baskervilles
Posted by Lanea on Wednesday, February 14th, 2007
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Snowed in, sans husband (who is in Arizona with Richard and Otuell and Moragh and and and . . . I’m trying very hard not to be jealous) reading, watching every scrap of material on the Rome season one DVDs, and knitting my fingers to the bone. Also, trying but failing to catch up on blogs . . . I’m not trying to be so far behind, my stitching friends, but I can’t catch up.
Perfect winter reading, this. I’m still on the "I should have read this fifteen years ago" kick, and some Sherlock Holmes demanded attention.
I’m glad I read it, I’m well into The Valley of Fear, another Doyle classic, and then I think I’ll be covered. As the child of a true mystery buff, I’ve got to say that the "who done it" isn’t much of a question to me in these novels. Maybe I’m over-qualified, or maybe mysteries themselves have changed too much since Doyle’s day and modern audiences are too hard to surprise.
There are certain bits and bobs in Doyle’s work that make us well-trained liberal arts folks a bit antsy. I think the word "Hottentot" and all of the hateful racism associated with it should just fade into history now, and it hasn’t yet. Phrenology is funny from a distance of many decades–perhaps it wasn’t when Doyle was scribbling away. Still and all, a good light read for good cold weather, and an interesting study into British questions of class.
Filed in Books | 2 responses so far
Megon 15 Feb 2007 at 4:11 pm 1I like to read Sherlock Holmes when I need to unwind at the end of really bad days. There’s something about all those drawing rooms and tea and tweed … Hottentots, though. I remember those were in “Heidi,” too. Totally puzzled me as a 6-year-old. My parents didn’t know who they were, I didn’t know who they were – so I assumed (for my own weird reasons) that they all looked like Abraham Lincoln. It wasn’t until *years* later that I got it all straightened out.
Junoon 19 Feb 2007 at 2:07 pm 2I do try to accept the cultural context of things like that – not with approval or complacency, but pragmatism.
Its jarring though.