Is it worth it? I've never read crime fiction before.
They're great, dunni why you would ask here when you could see by just reading any of the stories
>>24955692I would buy a kindle for immersion
>>24955692No, they're boring as sin and a waste of time.
I couldn't get into Sherlock Holmes personally, I'm not huge into mystery
Sherlock Holmes isn't "crime fiction" it's detective fiction. There's a difference.
>>24955692Boring and unreadable as hell
>>24955692>everyone are idiots except Holmes who understands everythingone of the insufferable characters in all literature
Let this be a lesson to you about the wisdom of asking /lit/ about books.
Sherlock Holmes is fun. I would recommend starting by skipping Study in Scarlet and Sign of Four and reading a few of the short stories, then going back to those two. Most of the canon is short stories, so the longer ones tend to stand out. Study in Scarlet in particular has its second part almost entirely ignore Holmes and tell a backstory about the people involved in the murder, in an entirely different setting.
>>24955692>has never read crime fiction before>contemplates buying an entire collectionwhy do people do this? buy ONE you fucking moron.
>>24955692Sure. Just be aware that detective fiction is a game first and a story second. The author presents you with all the evidence and then at the very end the detective smugly explains the crime using said evidence. The intention is for you as the reader to try to guess the criminal's identity before the detective reveals it. Some detective stories have good plots, but since the author generally puts the game first some of them have pretty thin plots.
I wanted to buy a nice edition with illustrations but I don’t think they exist anymore, I got a cheap Wordsworth(?) like a decade ago for 10 bucks and it has illustrations all through it but apparently these days even the fancy ones don’t have any
Where did popular culture get the idea that Watson, and Holmes as well, were stodgy old men during their escapades? The stories themselves have both men as quite young and full of daring. Watson is basically Holmes' muscle, he's always the one with the gun.You wouldn't think it, but the fucking steampunk action RDJ Holmes movies actually get more of the spirit of the stories correct than a lot of TV adaptations.
>>24956162>victorian clothing makes them look old to anybody not alive during the Victorian era>the Norwood reaper is creeping up on Sherlock>watson has an old man moustache
>>24956157>The author presents you with all the evidenceNo they don't, at least not for what I have read from Doyle or Christie. The solutions to the mysteries are as ass-pullery as it gets
>>24955839His brother mogs him tho
>>24956157>The author presents you with all the evidenceNot really. You are not meant to be able to solve these. Only Holmes does otherwise the whole point of him being a super autist cocaine detective would be lost. Looking at the story afterwards and going “oh yeah that fits” isn’t the same.
i read them all back in the day in a two volume edition with annotations. the long ones are kind of rough but i remember liking the short ones
>>24955692Read Arsène Lupin by Maurice LeBlanc instead.It's Sherlock Holmes but fun.You won't regret it.
>>24955692I could never get into them even though they always sounded like the sort of thing I would like, so I'd recommend dipping your toes in some free ebooks before shelling out for a big hardback.
>>24955692I read the whole thing recently. It's all right and got better as it went along imo, but as a fan of the show, I was disappointed that a lot of the reoccurring characters there like Irene Adler, Moriarty, etc. are mostly one-offs.
