Customer Reviews

Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Illustrated Collection (mobi) (Wordsworth Library Collection)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

On the whole this is a decent Kindle version. It contains the complete works of Sherlock Holmes including all novels and short stories.

There are reproductions of the original art which render rather nicely on the Kindle although they are out of sequence sometimes showing up on the page after where you would expect them to follow along with the story.

There are some slight formatting issues that I personally have with the layout of the chapter headings. In addition, which the Table of Contents links you to the beginning of a story, it doesn't allow navigation to chapters within some of the novel works. If not for these 2 issues I'd give this edition 5 stars.

Otherwise the Table of Contents works well and also gives direct links to the illustrations in the book, which is a nice touch.

For the price, this is definitely the best of the Sherlock Holmes collections available for Kindle on Amazon.

You can't go wrong here. The book is light, the type is large and the original illustrations and reproduced in their original sizes. Plus you have the charm of seeing the actual type laid out when these now classics stories were first read.

I'll admit it. Although I am a voracious reader, I have been remiss in my enjoyment of the adventures of Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson. I have spent the last few weeks rectifying that lamentable omission in my literary background.

Frankly, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are an absolute joy. Each story is a delight to read. To my mind Conan Doyle's short stories represent the best of mystery writing. They plumb the depth of the human heart and run the gamut of emotion.

No one can truly say that he or she is truly educated in English Literature without reading Sherlock Holmes. (It's interesting -- even persons who tend to dislike mysteries -- tend to like Holmes and Watson!)

Highest of all possible recommendations!

I grabbed this collection because of the movie that's coming out around Christmas ([...]) I just finished it yesterday and it's a great collection. The stories are interesting and fun to read, the format was really nice most of the short stories are linked from the table of contents and the books have linked chapters. There's not too many images but they are pretty neat and it's completely worth the $[...]. The stories are fun and well written, can pretty much read a story a-day and their are some great quotes to underline

This is a great collection of stories. It had been years since I read any Sherlock Holmes and this brings it all back - what great stories and fantastic writing! In particular I love having it available on my kindle. I have been reading the shorter stories in between reading some longer novels that sometimes get a bit intense. I find the navigation easy, and while it is not the prettiest of formats (one story ends and the next story starts on the same page),it really doesn't bother me at all. Absolutely a great purchase and one of the reasons why the Kindle is so great!

My 9 year old carried this edition of Sherlock around with him for a week. The replica images are cool; the type is a bit difficult to read. A great gift.

The great thing about the Kindle is that it lures you into checking out material you might not have considered before because of the price (or the heft) of a volume. I never knew Dr. Watson was wounded in Afghanistan. There's a modern detail for you. Or, really (despite the movie), that Sherlock was hopelessly addicted to intravenous cocaine. But it's the writing and the plotting that makes the Baker Street team still so engaging after more than a hundred years. And with this inexpensive (and nicely formatted) collection of the famous material, you're on your way to entertaining adventure.

I was expecting to find an illustrated edition similar to the ubiquitous printed ones. Only a few of the original illustrations are included.

I finally managed to read through all the Holmes stories and novels, which I consider a minor accomplishment that had always been on my to do list. It is simply delightful to follow the evolution of Conan Doyle's fictional detective in chronological order, against the background of the transition from late Victorian England to the onset of the 20th century. While the later stories are certainly not at the same level as the early and middle ones (my favorite is, perhaps predictably, The Sign of Four), they also present the reader with somewhat less familiar situations and formats. In one, for instance, we see Holmes retired in the countryside to raise bees (and write a treatise about them, of course), even though somehow crimes follows him to give him yet another chance at brilliancy (in The Adventure of the Lion's Mane). We even see Holmes narrating in first person (The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier), and while I certainly prefer the classical format featuring Watson as the narrator, it gives one an interesting perspective and contrast with the bulk of the Holmes canon. Some of the stories are not really about crime as usually conceived, and occasionally Holmes himself is stumped - as one might expect considering that, as brilliant as he is, he is still a fallible human being. And speaking of being human, there is a touchy story when Holmes uncharacteristically shows his love for his old companion, at a moment in which he thinks Watson to be seriously injured (The Adventure of the Three Garridebs). Of course the classic tales are always worth reading: other than the already mentioned The Sign of Four, there is The Hound of the Baskervilles, A Scandal in Bohemia, The Final Problem (in which Moriarty and Holmes both die at the infamous Reichenbach Falls - of course, Holmes actually survived the fall to re-emerge once Conan Doyle's readers clamored for more adventures). The book is beautifully illustrated with drawings from the original Strand edition of the Holmes canon. This is a gem, where nowhere you will find the famous "Elementary, dear Watson," for the simple reason that Holmes never uttered those words in any of the original stories.

This (Kindle) edition was OK. But I continue to be dismayed by the lack of attention to typos in eBooks in general. Some publishers make a greater effort than others (such as Mobi) and have clearly started utilizing their Spell Checkers, but without a grammar checker, that doesn't help.

For example, in A Study In Scarlet, toward the very end:

"...any sudden chance would be likely to draw attention to himself." "Chance" should clearly be "change" but was overlooked somewhere in the publishing process. Because it is a legitimate word, no spell checker would flag it, but a proofreader would. Short of that, could you please use a grammar checker?

I would really like to see greater care taken with all eBooks, but particularly with these cherished stories which sometimes have antiquated words and phrases in them. I want to be certain that when I buy a book (yes, even for such a small cost) it will be an accurate electronic copy of the original.

A great deal of energy is currently being poured into marketing eReaders like the Kindle; perhaps the same should be done for the books themselves.

***ADDED***

This edition has proven uneven in its quality. As I read through the stories, it was clear that the ones in "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" were not as carefully transcribed as those in "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes." I have been reading "The Stock-broker's Clerk" and it is filled with typos and dropped letters. Getting this right is not rocket-science, folks; it's simple literacy. Someone human needs to review the book before publication.