Reader discussion: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Public reader discussion about The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in the WeRead Catalog by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Children’s Mystery Novels

By String26

I was chatting with someone the other day about crime fiction, and it made me think about how I’ve been into mystery stuff forever. Like, since I was a kid I was always reading—Hardy Boys, Nate the Great, Encyclopedia Brown, all that. I even kept borrowing this old hardcover Sherlock Holmes from the library so many times that my mom finally just bought it for me. And honestly, it kind of pushed me to try writing my own mysteries when I was a young teen. So I’m wondering—did you grow up into mysteries too, and what were your go-to favorites?

I had no clue The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was a collection of short stories

By Ink_Tide

When I ordered this online, I thought it was going to focus on one case that Holmes and Watson were working through. But it’s really more like a bunch of short stories with Holmes and Watson dealing with whatever crimes or mysteries come up. This is the first classic I’ve read in this kind of setup, and I think I’ll need a few more stories before I really get used to it.

Unpopular Opinion (I guess?): Sherlock Holmes is a little overrated. In terms of both stories and the dramatizations.

By chillyhawk2001

I’ve read the canon and I’ve watched the big Holmes adaptations (Rathbone, Jeremy Brett, Downey Jr., Cumberbatch) and I really do love them, no question. But when I line them up against a detective like Hercule Poirot, his stories just grab me more. The characters are just as lovable, and honestly sometimes more so. And I swear the original Holmes stories, at least what I remember, had characters that felt pretty flat, like they were mostly there to move the plot along. Poirot also has some wild or kinda disappointing cases, but even his worst ones are usually more interesting than some Holmes stories. And yeah, add in David Suchet’s version and to me it’s basically the clear winner between the two.

I just finished watching BBC's Sherlock, and I think it's the best book adaptation I've ever seen...

By gathersStory

It feels really close to the original stuff, like the most faithful take I’ve come across, but it still finds a way to make Holmes work in a modern setting and keep things entertaining. What’s the best book-to-movie or book-to-show adaptation you’ve seen? Also… that cliffhanger is brutal. I’m not doing great because of it and I really need the next season ASAP.

10 Powerful quotes from sherlock Holmes that'll make you more analytical.

By silver_market

Honestly, a lot of what Holmes says feels like his whole “how to think” thing. Like, instead of just making stuff up or guessing, he tries to knock out what can’t be true, even if the answer left over feels kinda crazy. And he’s big on not forming theories until you actually have the facts, because jumping ahead messes everything up. Also, I get the point about “seeing” vs actually noticing things—like, most people miss obvious stuff right in front of them. It’s weird but kind of true that the “obvious” answer can be the most misleading one. And he’s not even pretending he’s done learning—education never stops, I guess. The way he talks about mediocrity vs real talent is also a little harsh but I know what he means. Crime is everywhere, but being able to think through it logically isn’t. And the biggest thing for me is how he treats tiny details like they matter, because apparently nothing is really “small” if you’re paying attention.

Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection by Arthur Conan Doyle read by Stephen Fry

By Lake_Frog

I thought I’d already shared these, but I guess I didn’t. A while back I took that “collection” cover and made it match each of the books in the set—different color versions for each one, and I added the title too—so it’d be quicker for me to jump to the story I wanted. If anyone wants the 9-book individualized collection (each cover at 3460x2460), it’s HERE. It includes: 1 - A Study In Scarlet 2 - The Sign of Four 3 - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 4 - The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes 5 - The Hound of the Baskervilles 6 - The Return of Sherlock Holmes 7 - The Valley of Fear 8 - His Last Bow 9 - The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes

In what order to read Sherlock Holmes books?

By curious-mountain7839

I’m pretty sure this kind of question’s been asked before, but I’m only now jumping into the books for the first time. I’ve known the character forever just from movies/TV, so I had no clue what order to read everything in. I started last December with “A Study in Scarlet”, then moved on to “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”, “The Sign of Four”, and now I’m about halfway through “The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes”. I’ve been using the Reedsy reading plan I found from their guide. Now I’m second-guessing myself because I keep running into other sites that recommend a different order, and I honestly don’t know who to trust. What do you think true fans recommend?

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

By violet_planet5373

I’m gonna keep asking on every post until there’s actually a real convo here: what’s the difference between your ebooks and Project Gutenberg / Standard Ebooks?

Anybody Have Any Information on the Sweetwater Press Literary Classics ?

By nebulatower

I found these Sweetwater Press “Literary Classics” books at a used bookstore a couple months ago and I really like this version of them. They’ve also been pretty cheap, so I’ve been trying to track down more, but it’s been a mess trying to figure out what all titles exist. I can’t find basically anything about Sweetwater Press online. From what I’ve been able to piece together, there might be multiple print runs, and some of them were sold through Books-A-Million (only like 7 or 8 out of the 24-ish I’ve seen so far). A few more I only know about because they showed up in photos from Google image searches (like *The Prince*). I also emailed HarperCollins and never really got anywhere. What’s throwing me off is that Books-A-Million told me some of the copies I found were actually HarperCollins releases, but the books still have the SWP logo on the spine and the copyright page doesn’t seem to mention HarperCollins at all. So I’m not even sure what info is accurate. If anyone else has copies, could you drop the title(s) and ISBNs if you can? I’m trying to build a complete list of what’s available. Also, if anyone knows anything about Sweetwater Press itself, I’d love any pointers. Edit: Here’s what I’ve found so far (updated 2/16/25): - *Little Women* - Alcott (ISBN10: 140168811X, ISBN13: 9781401688110) - Edgar Allen Poe Vol I (ISBN10: 0529121328, ISBN13: 9780529121325) - Edgar Allen Poe Vol II (ISBN13: 9780529121363) - *Persuasion* - Austen (ISBN13: 9781401688097) - *Pride & Prejudice* - Austen (ISBN10: 140168789X, ISBN13: 9781401687892) - *Sense & Sensibility* - Austen (ISBN13: 9781401687922) - *Jane Eyre* - Bronte (ISBN13: 9781401687953) - *Wuthering Heights* - Bronte (ISBN13: 9781401687939) - *Secret Garden* - Burnett (ISBN13: 9781404112858) - *The Wonderland Collection* - Carroll (ISBN10: 0529121387, ISBN13: 9780529121387) - *The Canterbury Tales* - Chaucer (ISBN13: 9780718094294) - *Inferno* - Dante (ISBN13: 9781400379231) - *A Tale of Two Cities* - Dickens (ISBN10: 1401687911, ISBN13: 9781401687915) - *Great Expectations* - Dickens (ISBN10: 1401687962, ISBN13: 9781401687960) - *Poems* - Emily Dickinson (ISBN10: 0718094328, ISBN13: 9780718094324) - *The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes* - Doyle (978-1-4041-0726-7) - *The Return of Sherlock Holmes* - Doyle (978-1-4041-0727-4) - *The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes* - Doyle (978-1-4041-0725-0) - Grimm’s Fairy Tales Vol I (ISBN13: 9781404111240) - Grimm's Fairy Tales Vol II (ISBN10: 1404111255, ISBN13: 9781404111257) - Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales (ISBN13: 9781401687977) - *The Scarlet Letter* - Hawthorne (ISBN13: 9781401687885) - Four stories - Lovecraft (ISBN10: 1404107282, ISBN13: 9781404107281) - *The Prince* - Machiavelli (ISBN-10: 1400276226, ISBN13: 9781400276226) - *Anne of Green Gables* - Montgomery (ISBN13: 9781404106260) - *Dracula* - Stoker (ISBN13: 9781401688103) - *Walden & On the Duty of Civil Disobedience* - Thoreau (978-0-5291-2137-0) - *Huckleberry Finn* - Twain (ISBN13: 9781401687908) - *Leaves of Grass* - Whitman (ISBN13: 978071809433) - *The Picture of Dorian Gray* - Wilde (ISBN13: 9781401688080) also (978-1-5325-1744-0) - *Beowulf* (978-0-7180-9425-6) - *Frankenstein* - Mary Shelley (9781401687946) - *The Jungle* - Upton Sinclair (9781532535420) - *The Phantom of the Opera* - Gaston Leroux (ISBN 978-1-5325-4970-0) 33 titles so far!

I just finished reading almost a thousand pages of nothing but Sherlock Holmes and now I'm experiencing "Post-Holmes Depression"

By weather-eagle5

“Sherlock Holmes” and “Watson” have been kind of stuck in my head since I was a kid. I remember seeing them constantly through Detective Conan when I was like 8, then years later I watched Knives Out, and my interest would come and go. Eventually I just decided to finally jump into the real stuff and see what the big deal was. I started with A Study in Scarlet just to test the waters. It wasn’t bad at all, but I also didn’t think it was as amazing as I expected. Still, it got me curious enough that I ended up buying basically all the novels and short stories. I’m really glad I did, honestly. After that, every new story had me more and more hooked. Out of all the 19th-century books I’ve read, Holmes and Watson ended up being my favorites. I got so attached that when Holmes died, I was genuinely shocked and felt awful for Watson. Then I seriously couldn’t believe it when he came back in The Adventure of the Empty House—I was just sitting there like “aww” out loud, which I’ve never done before while reading, especially not for a classic. I guess I just loved how close they were and how much they cared about each other, like near the end of The Adventure of the Three Gables. I actually expected myself to focus more on solving the mysteries and care less about the characters over time, but it turned out the opposite. I still tried to guess who did what and why, even if I kept myself from getting too lost in details. And when I finally turned the last page and saw that blank white space staring back at me… yeah. I kinda felt hit with “post-Holmes depression.” Suddenly my “hello” turned into these weird “halloas,” and words like “strange” and “intriguing” felt like they didn’t fit anymore, like “queer” and “singular” were the only things my brain wanted. Now I just want more Holmes content, whether it’s canon or not. I’m even trying to write something as a way to accept that my Holmes phase is over, since my doctor basically told me it might help with the pain. They also suggested I try other similar books, but I honestly doubt anything will scratch the same itch. I’ll try anyway—I just don’t know where to start.

In what order shall i read the Sherlock Holmes hooks?

By rose

I’ve been meaning to get into the Sherlock Holmes stories for ages, but I’m not sure what order to read them in. Does anyone know the chronological order of the books?