To buy or not to buy

[cadeira]

I have been flirting with the three volumed 'The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes' edited by Leslie Klinger quite some time now and I can´t quite decide whether to get it. I have all the stories stored somewhere on my harddrive and never manged to read them. But in the last four months an increasing amount of references to the Holmes stories popped up in my readings, TV shows I watched etc. It´s a blank space I want to fill in. This edition I´ve mentioned looks really nifty as the silhouette of the pipe-smoking detective forms when you put all three books next to each other onto your book shelf but the problem I have with it is a) it´s incredibly expensive. I got vouchers from my boyfriend´s family but I could buy tons of other stuff with the money and more importantly b) the annotations work on the premise of Sherlock Holmes being a real person. I´ve read some reviews and most of the critics were rather suspicious of the approach.
I don´t have anything against seeing Derridarian deconstruction in the works but I also love me some good storytelling uninterrupted. It´s layouted in two columns, one for the story and one for the annotations and I´m not sure whether the first time reading experience would be spoiled by that approach. I´d love to read an explanation when some kind of weird Victorian piece of cloth is mentioned or references to other authors of the time are made. I would not however like to read theories that extrapolate from one dependent clause how the Holmes character derives from some kind of Muslim dentist (which judging from the review actually doesn´t seem to be an exaggeration). So what do you think? Has anyone read other good complementary material to the stories?

Btw. Mr Fry is reading Ian Fleming at the moment--a desire that is yet to spark in me.

I have heard the cutest song on a BBC Radio 1 podcast.

Comments

[triedunture.livejournal.com]

I have an old Ian Fleming on the bookshelf; my BFF is a huge fan and is always trying to get me to read it. I think Mr. Fry's approach to reading something HIGH and then something looooow is a good one. It's nice to space those out, so in between the classics and modern "classics" I read a lot of trash.

[muhsilisk.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, shiny.
I have never really wanted to read Sherlock Holmes myself, but that one, although it is shiny, doesn't sound like it's worth the money if you have the stories anyway and aren't sure if you'd like the annotations.

I just started reading "Orlando". I don't know why I did that. I have barely recovered from interpreting the hell out of "Perfume".

New Annotated Sherlock Holmes

[lklinger221.livejournal.com]

At the risk of being accused of trying to sell the book, let me say that the only critics who carped about the Sherlockian game were Michael Chabon, who thought the game disrespectful to Conan Doyle (but who had the audacity to write his own Sherlockian pastiche) and Judge Richard Posner, who mainly failed to see any merit in the stories themselves. The "game" of pretending that Holmes and Watson were real people is over 100 years old, and in my notes, I merely reflect the views of 1000's of writers who have studied the stories from this perspective. I think that the Game offers the highest respect to the quality of Sir Arthur's writing. I first got hooked on Sherlock Holmes by reading the William Baring-Gould "Annotated SH," now sadly out of print. I hope that you too might find the game to offer a new perspective and greater pleasure from these wonderful stories.

Les Klinger