I have started to work my way through the hordes of reading suggestions elicited from you by my comoplaint about the rightward political tilt of the spy novels I had been consuming. I have already remarked on The Sunday Philosophy Club. I have now finished The Beekeeper's Apprentice, a charming "sequel" to the Sherlock Holmes stories featuring a teenage girl who possesses many of the same skills of observation and deduction that Holmes exhibits in the canonical stories. I was utterly charmed by the book [whose plot I shall not reveal, should any of you wish to sample it], and was quite amused to find it referred to online as belonging to the genre of "young adult" fiction. I guess I am in my second childhood.
Now I have launched into Death Comes to Pemberly by the great detective novelist P. D. James. This too is a"sequel," this time to Jane Austen's immortal novel Pride and Prejudice. James is well aware that she is treading on sacred ground, and is appropriately self-deprecatory about the undertaking, prefacing her novel with a lovely quote from the end of Mansfield Park.
I really am very, very grateful to all of you for your suggestions, the first two of which to be sampled have proved spot on. At a time when the egregious Rick Santorum is calling Barack Obama a "snob" for making the anodyne suggestion that all young people should aspire to a college education, I desperately need a protected space into which to retreat from time to time, and a seemingly endless series of delightful fictions may well provide it.
Professor Wolff --
ReplyDeleteRegarding Santorum's "snob" remark with respect for the pursuit of higher education, he would do well to remember the words of W.E.B. DuBois:
"The history of civilization seems to prove that no group or nation which seeks advancement and true development can despise or neglect the power of well-trained minds."
Quoted from W.E.B. DuBois, "Industrial Education -- Will It Solve the Negro Problem, VII. The Training of Negroes for Social Power," The Colored American Magazine 7 (May, 1904): 333-339.
-- Jim
Jim, a nice quotation. I do not think I had ever seen it.
ReplyDeleteI need to check out this pastiche.
ReplyDeleteHave you read "The House of Silk" by Anthony Horowitz. I liked that one very much.
Also recommended is "Bending the Willow: Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes" by David Stuart Davies. This book is a must read for fans of the Granada adaptation and/or Jeremy Brett.
Cheers!
I was of course brought up on Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Holmes and Watson, but I think Jeremy Brett is actually much better. The Robert Downey Jr. interpretation is godawful.
ReplyDeleteThe very concept of 'Sherlock Holmes--Action Hero' is alimentary. What's next, 'Albert Einstein--Kung Fu Master'?
ReplyDelete