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Review Summary: Unreadable Text. It's WAYYYY TOOO SMALL TO READ
Review: The text is so small a normal human being can't read it. I was so excited to get this book and the text was so small. I tried to read it but was getting headaches and serious eyestrain. Why are these publishers so cheap? Why not have legible text? Why do they print these classics too small to read? No wonder kids hate reading these classics. I search high and low for text that big enough to read comfortably. I'm a young guy and there is nothing more frustrating than small mouse sized text.
I'd pay a dollar or two more for legible text... but it's way too small to read... and the whole point of a book is to "READ" it. It's like making a car with no windows... or a tiny little one inch windshield. It's silly... BIGGER PRINT, BIGGER PRINT, BIGGER PRINT (CHANT) ON CLASSIC BOOKS!!!!
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Review Summary: Care and competence equals quality construction and cozy familiarity
Review: My final installment of the Holmes' series, I can now lay claim to having read them all. Some of the stories toward the end slipped a bit, as it feels like Doyle, bored with the basic premise, characters, settings, and plot line, tried to tweak the variables to re-enliven the series for himself as the writer. But the life-long problem that Doyle had with Holmes is that people wanted their Holmes and Watson just as Doyle had always given it to them with no fancy flourishes.
Two of these stories are written first person by Holmes, with Watson not involved, and one was written in third-person with both Holmes and Watson as external actors. While I can imagine Doyle enjoying the challenge as a writer of the shifted perspective and the changed writing style of Holmes vs. Watson, the stories suffer as a result in comparison to the classic Holmes format and style.
Doyle would have to (and did) seek other avenues to stretch his artistic muscles. See for example Lost World & the Poison Belt where Doyle introduces his Professor Challenger character.
And in any case, compared to so much of the modern adventure or mystery fiction, these still deserve the rating of "What a Classic" for the care and competence involved in constructing them and the cozy familiarity of the Holmes magic.
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Review Summary: Rediscovering a great classic
Review: I just recently got interested in reading the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. This is the second Sherlock Holmes book for me. I particularly love this story collection and would recommend it to anyone who likes to do some brain-gymnastics in order to follow the twisted cases. Some of the stories are short enough to read them over breakfast, which wakes up my brain and gets me ready for work.
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Review Summary: The greatest Sherlock Holmes collection!
Review: Recently I finished reading E.W. Hornung's The Crime Doctor, the outstanding novel about Doctor John Dollar (both physician AND detective), and I decided to pick up a complete set of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's works on Sherlock Holmes. Although this collection is a little dated, I consider it to be the best availible on the market.
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Review Summary: One of my favorite writers!
Review: There's not much left to say about this literary classic. It's great to have all of the stories and novels put together, in the order that they were published--there are references here and there to things that happened in previous stories. Of course, you don't have to read everything in order, but its worth it all the same.
Some of my all-time favorite stories in this volume of the collection are "The Red-Headed League," and "The Adventure of the Speckled Band." Also worth a read are the short novels A Study In Scarlet, The Sign of Four, and The Hound of the Baskervilles. They illustrate Doyle's (and Holmes's) mastery of the art of observation. As Holmes says in a story in the second volume, "I see as much as you, but I notice what I see." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is one of my all-time favorite authors; this collection is highly recommended.