you're not going to slow it down

-Revenge of the Hound
-Murder in the Rue Dauphine
-Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon
-The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
-Elementary, Mrs. Hudson

This brings my total to 29/50, and I'm currently casting about for book #30

( Reviews behind cut. )

I picked up and read the first twelve pages of Hostage by R.D. Zimmerman, but I put it down again in frustration. I am not totally ignorant of the fact that AIDS is a big problem, but all of the gay authors I read repeatedly assert that AIDS is not a gay only problem. On the other hand, every time I read a story with a gay protagonist, the plot goes like this:

There was a... AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS.

Oh my god seriously can I just read some gay fiction that doesn't deal with this? I'm not trying to deny it's existence or importance, I just feel rather bludgeoned about the head and shoulders, when really it's just an overdone subject. The horse is dead. YOU GAVE IT AIDS AND IT DIED OKAY. Even Ben Justice has HIV. The equally ridiculously named pothead detective Chanse Macleod (OF THE CLAN MACLEOD) harps endlessly on and on, and then Todd Mills starts off with - SURPRISE - a plot about AIDS. It would be like if every story set in the Victorian era had a protagonist that contracted Tuberculosis. Or any story that ever involved a horse gave it Encephalitis. Find a new plot point, there are many to choose from. :|

Books Read so far for April

-Repo Men (reprint of Reposession Mambo)
-The Italian Secretary
-Dust and Shadow
-Murder at Baker St
-Maurice
-(The Valley of Fear) Audiobook

So that brings the official count to 19, since I think I overcounted my first month as 5, but I only read 4 books in January.

( Book Discussions )

Books read for March:
-The Last Sherlock Holmes Story
-The Canary Trainer
-Arrow's Flight
-My Dearest Holmes
-The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes

Thoughts:
Ironically, the Last Sherlock Holmes Story is the first one I shoved back up on paperback swap the instant I finished reading it. While I am interested in both Sherlock Holmes and Ripperology, and I am somewhat tolerant for the idea of Holmes descending into insanity (such as is done in Nicholas Meyer's The Seven Per-Cent Solution), I am not tolerant of him being so insane that he wouldn't realize he was a serial killer. I think Sherlock Holmes would quite handily see his own handiwork in a case he perpetrated against himself. I'm hoping that Dust and Shadow will be a better take on Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper, but not too fervently.

The Canary Trainer was excellent and I heartily recommend all of Nicholas Meyer's work with Holmes. His reads the most intelligently and loyally of any I've read so far, and he obviously has a love of the subject.

Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series continues to leave me nonplussed. I want to punch the Mary Sue main character in the head, and this novel pretty much just repeated itself over and over for much of the middle part. 'Then it got worse. Then it got worse. Then it got worse. Then it got worse. THEN it got WORSE.'

My Dearest Holmes was a decent read. It felt period, in the views of buggery laws and the handling of societal pressures, though since it was set before the Wilde trial, during Oscar's heyday, I'm not sure if it was a totally accurate reflection of the views. I actually much prefer katieforsythe's take on Holmes - which I might assess as too warm and affectionate a personality if I didn't get the vibe that Watson kind of gave him a little bit of a bad rap in the texts, because nobody would live with someone like that without a good reason. The Holmes in MDH is much more frigid and unapproachable. He really is, even in his private life, a total machine.

Lastly, Adrian Conan Doyle's work on with his father's franchise is... dull, and very recipe. ACD's Holmes had more of a spark of life to him that didn't involve repeating the same sort of cliches in every story - literally every work out of the 12 presented makes reference to the same things, such as the 'ear flapped cap', the persian slipper, and Holmes states 'The game is afoot!' so many times I expect his internal record has a back-scratch. They aren't horrible, simply lacking in the original spark.

Resolution Progress:
15/50

I'm about a third of the way there already. Awesome!