you're not going to slow it down

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!

I keep mis-guessing 'SH' to be either Starsky & Hutch or Sherlock Holmes at the wrong occasion. C'mon brain, pick it up a little huh? Take in the entire context without honing in on just the two letters and we won't have this problem.

January Books Read (for new year's resolution of reading at least 50 this year):
-The Seven Percent Solution
-That Hideous Strength
-Storm Front
-The Final Solution

That's about one a week, give or take. So with 52 weeks in a year, I should make my goal if I keep up. I did not count that I am 1 short story away from finishing another book of Sherlock Holmes shorts, I read a crap ton of fanfiction, and I have been listening to ACD's Holmes as audio books for a refresher. I have been kind of worried about my (lack of) reading recently, but apparently I have not really fallen out of the saddle, just out of the habit.