The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

I’ve been finding lately that I thoroughly enjoy Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories about Sherlock Holmes. I recently picked up the audiobook version of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes and I’ve been listening to story after story, a little bit each day.

I was already familiar with Doyle’s works, first by listening to a Librivox recording of The Lost World, and then enjoying The Sign of the Four and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Aside from four complete novels, most of the Sherlock Holmes stories are self-contained and rather short. This makes for quick and easy reading, and I never tire of the interesting ways in which Holmes solves the case (or occasionally gets it wrong).

When the recent Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law came out I was tickled by many of the smaller plot elements and quotations taken from stories I had already read. No doubt the sequel coming out this December will draw from language and plot points in the stories as well.

The best thing is that all of the Holmes stories have passed out of copyright protection. Go online to GoogleBooks or check out Librivox and you can read or listen to any of the sixty stories written by Doyle about Sherlock Holmes.