Books: Sherlock Holmes: The American Years

I'm about halfway through Sherlock Holmes: The American Years. It features 10 original stories about Sherlock Holmes' years in the U.S.

So far, my favorite story is "My Silk Umbrella." It's an account by Mark Twain of his meeting with Holmes. I don't know much about Mark Twain the man, though, I read his novels and stories in grade school. About the man himself, I knew he had a quick wit and was eminently quotable.

Author Darryl Brock brings that Twainian wit alive with snappy one-liners.

The plot is simple enough. Holmes takes in a Connecticut baseball game (and seems a little put out that it is, in fact, not cricket). He and Twain find themselves sitting together and Twain's silk umbrella, which was given to him as a gift, becomes a topic of conversations. Using those deductive skills, Holmes reduces the prized umbrella to a thing less than the top-shelf module Twain thought it was.

The best scene in the story follows when Twain tries to one-up Holmes' cold logic. You can practically see Twain all but jumping up and down, stomping his feet trying to poke holes in what is entirely simplicity itself.

It shows a much more realistic reaction to Holmes. While reading Doyle's stories and novels, I found myself annoyed at what I thought was a sort of blind faith in Holmes' ability. Sure, the facts were there when he pointed them out. But very few of his adversaries or audiences ever offered an alternative explanation. They were astonishingly accepting, or they accepted, astonishingly.

Twain's determination to doubt was what I was missing in the Doyle books. Twain stood up and said," Wait. What?" He squared off with Holmes and all but pulled a "Dude, seriously?" on him.

And then the umbrella was stolen. Both tried their own methods to get it back. Twain lost. Holmes won.The umbrella was returned. So it goes.

Odd thing is, no matter how irritating I sometimes find the perfection of the Holmes I know, to see him in any other way is hard to believe. Holmes is shown as a young boy conducting science experiments, as a young man feeling the first pangs of love (which presumably keeps him away from women, at least until he meets Irene Adler), and as a young man who meets Dr. Joseph Bell, who introduces him to the powers of keen observation.

I sort of liked the idea that Holmes sprung fully-formed Athena-style from Doyle's head or the fictional Holmes patriarch's head. That I can accept, that he's always got the best explanation, I can't.

In "The American Adventure," by Gary Lovisi, Holmes met Dr. Bell, who was most likely Doyle's model for Holmes. This story helped to humanize Holmes in that it shows he probably didn't pull an Athena and just get born that way. But it did dash the hope I had that he learned his deductive skills from making a study of big brother Mycroft.

Speaking of brothers, Carole Bugge's story, "The Curse of Edwin Booth," features Holmes acting in a production of Hamlet to discover who's trying to kill Edwin Booth, older brother of John Wilkes Booth, sheds the most light on the relationship between Sherlock and Mycroft ... all without Holmes saying anything personal, of course.

Without spoiling this must-read, I can say it offers insight on why Holmes may have been so driven in his detective work, the same "work" that came so easily to Mycroft. It suggests our Holmes is not a pale, lean, hungry, maddening pursuer of his craft because he likes being at the top, but because he's always felt the need to catch up.

Hopefully, the next half of the book will offers more gems.

Creating characters

I'm reading Sherlock Holmes: The American Years, and in one of the stories, a young Sherlock Holmes meets Dr. Joseph Bell, who is supposed to have been Arthur Conan Doyle's real-life model for Holmes.

That got me thinking about creating characters. In a blog post I wrote about the book, I said I liked the idea that Holmes sort of sprang Athena-like from Doyle's head, whole and fully-formed. That may be true to some extent, but knowing that a real person was the model for Holmes was a bit of bummer.

Then that got me thinking. Keir and Gabriel and even Angela are probably based on real people, but insofar as I need a face to work with. Keir now resembles Jonathan Rhys Meyers just because of the coldness of his Henry VII. Gabe is Dwayne Johnson-like with a heavy dose of Vin Diesel. Those men are models in more of a physical sense.

But I think the closest thing I've done to using a model is Chase. He's morphed over the years as I have, but he is a real person. I've never met him, don't know anything about him, except that he's a musician -- a good one -- and you can his CD on itunes. He didn't grow up to be the guy I grew him up into. When we were both younger, I wrote him more closer to the kid I watched afternoons on TV. But as I've grown up, he's become whatever I've needed him to be. Or whatever Kyle has needed him to be.

I'm rambling. My point was it's disturbing to think my people aren't really mine. I don't want them to be based on real people. I want them to be wholly unique unto themselves. I want to be the one who gives their voices an outlet. But I'm not sure if that's possible. People themselves aren't originals. I mean, we all are composites of others, right?

Hmm. Not sure how I feel about that. Other than maybe feeling a bit better about my purely physical models. I can use what I know to fill in their shells, but their insides are unique to themselves.

On reading and writing dirty

Oscar Wilde said something to the effect of when discussing the act of love, you have two choices: the language of the gutter or the language of science.

I encounter this often, in reading and in writing. I'm a lover of words, and I love nothing more than how words -- just words -- can turn me on. But I admit there's a distinct point where you cross the line from sexy to silly.

Case in point: In Zane's Buck Wild book, some of the words she used had be rolling my eyes. Mainly because people don't talk like that, but also because some of the words were just ... stupid. The body parts she talked about may as well have been plastic for all the heat they carried. What was supposed to have been hot quickly devolved in to hokey.

I like my dirty book-talk to be a bit ... humid. I mean, if the words do their job, they (and I) should be humid, which is defined as "containing or characterized by perceptible moisture especially to the point of being oppressive" and I'll add "but in a good way."

Zane's Buck Wild characters had none of that. They had the sex without the sensuality, which sucked.

I'm conscious of that when writing love and sex scenes (which are, in fact, two different things). And, going back to Wilde's words, I skew a bit more toward the gutter, depending on whose point of view I'm writing from. "His"/"hers" can be as sexy as "mine" and "me."

But, funnily enough, "vagina" is never sexy.

Books: The Lightning Thief: Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1

I admit it: I'm a sucker for books set to become movies. Nothing makes me want to read a book more than hearing it's about to be butchered by somebody determined to bring it to the big screen. (OK, so some movies have done justice to their literary origins. And, then again, some distinctly have not.)

Add to this that I'm an impulse buyer who likes interesting packaging, and you can work out how I ended up with a paperback copy of The Lightning Thief: Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book 1. (Oddly enough, I also dig young adult fiction, so that's a factor as well.)

Story
The story goes down like this: Percy Jackson is a 12 year-old "troubled child" with dyslexia and ADHD who finds it hard to concentrate, sit still, learn Latin, control his temper and not get expelled. (When we meet him, he's in the sixth grade at the Yancy Academy, his sixth school in as many years.)

Percy almost gets killed a few times, discovers he's a demigod (the half-human son of a Greek god), tries to stop the obliteration of Western civilization and has to deal with one heck of a dysfunctional family.

Potter parallels
I'm starting to think it make be difficult these days to find a coming-of-age Y.A. adventure story without a few Harry Potter parallels. The Percy Jackson series has its fair share:

• Young, misfit boy discovers his inner awesomeness. Percy learns special and there are other people like him right around the same age Harry did.


• It takes a trio to save the day. Percy's pals include another demigod's daughter known for always having a plan and a mythical woodland boy-creature who has a good heart, loyal to friends, and ambitious, but is kind of a big lug.


• Other worlds have bad guys, too. When Percy makes his way to camp (the safe place where the other demigods train to attain their best demigod-ness), he runs afoul of Clarisse, daughter of the war god and her siblings, thus casting our series' Malfoy and Slytherins.


• Being dead isn't necessarily permanent. Let's just say the little-bit-less-than-completely-dead Titan Kronos is Percy's Voldemort

Read and learn
Since Percy is pretty much the last person to know he's part Greek god, he's got a lot of catching up on family history to do.

Percy's first-person narration breaks down the Greek mythology in manageable chunks. The story of Kronos and his kids becomes something like "Kronos was scared that his kids would overthrow him so he ate them all. But Zeus tricked him into eating a rock and got him to barf up all his brothers and sisters." NIce and simple, if gross.

Author Rick Riordan also makes Percy such an authentic character in such a well-told story that while rooting for him, you find yourself trying to help him. Even though I haven't tackled Greek Mythology since college (at the most recent), I was searching my brain to remember everything I'd ever read about mythology to figure out who was related to whom, why the kids from the Ares kids were suck bullies, and who Mr. D, the director of Camp Half-Blood, really was and why not being able to drink wine would be considered a punishment ...

Nit-picking
I have only one complaint. Well, one and a half. Percy is 12 years old when we meet him. For the most past, he talks like a 12 year-old, which makes the story fun to read. And because of that, it's a little like hitting an unexpected speed bump when a kid who's been talking about "the deep pit" or "the huge hole" suddenly breaks out with "the chasm." That raised the Editor flag for me. It just didn't seem like something Percy, or any other sixth-grader, would say. I fully admit that I'm nitpicking on that score, but I figure if I noticed, then it's noticeable, right?

The half-complaint is names. Percy, Annabeth and Grover are fine. But Chiron? Hephaestus? Um, what with the who, now? Nothing interrupts the flow of a good book like tripping over a name. But, that's what the online version of Merriam-Webster English dictionary is for. You can hear the words spoken. And now I (re)learned how to pronounce the names of the Greek gods. So that's why it's only a half-complaint.

In or out?
Books: I am definitely in! I breezed through the 300-odd page Lightning Thief and The Sea Monster, the second book in the series, in just under two days. I started The Titan's Curse this morning. I would have finished it, too, except I had to go to work.

If you're a Potter fan, check out the Percy Jackson books. You'll find the same morals about being true to yourself, and the importance of love and friendship, and you'll also find yourself firing up your computer to Google the gods because you really can't let a comment describing World War II as "a battle with Zeus and Poseidon on one side and Hades on the other" go by un-Wiki-ed.

Movie: Well, yeah. I guess. I mean, there is all sorts of potential for crazy CGI monsters and huge Hollywood-sized blockbuster water works. But, you know what? It would be wicked cool if theaters brought Book 1 with special PJ blue popcorn! And if they ponied up for ballpoint pens? Maybe a Yankees cap and reed pipes? That would be sweet! Like, really.

(Read the books!)

Books: My first Sherlock Holmes mystery

That's not entirely accurate since I read a big book o' 37 Sherlock Holmes mysteries, which also included two novels.

Somehow I'd gone though high school and college without ever reading a Holmes mystery, and admittedly, it was Robert Downey Jr.'s turn as the famous Baker Street detective piqued that my interest in the books. But it was definitely worth the wait.

Knowing the Holmes mysteries were not originally intended to be read back to back, I will set aside my nitpicking on minor annoyances such as repeating phrases. While seeing the same phrases over and over was slightly irritating, it also created a consistency, both with Doyle's writing and Holmes himself. As a new reader, I gained a trust in author and character that lead to a full-on belief in their ability to give me an "ah-ha" moment based on an obvious point that I had missed. While reading the Holmes mysteries, I was able to be Dr. Watson for a couple months.

Reading the Holmes mysteries also taught me something about myself as booklover. Or more accurately, a novel-lover. In general, the short mysteries wound down too nicely me. Instead of meeting a shady figure two chapters in who would become the villain, Holmes deduces a young woman -- whom we meet fleetingly -- was taken by the dashing scoundrel -- whom we never meet -- whom her brother played cards with at his club. Instead of "ah-ha!," I was left with "o-kay?"

It was just too convenient. I allow for the answer to the riddle being only Sherlock Holmes can see, but sometimes I found the answer happened entirely away from the main story in a way that no one could have seen. This serves to further the mystique around Sherlock Holmes, and I can see how this would be doubly true a century ago. But in the CSI age, and after my own 20-plus years of reading, there was an element of the fantastic present in how Holmes knows everything.

That said, I was surprised by how modern the stories are, in science as well as subject. "The Adventures of the Five Orange Pips" in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes addresses racism and the Klu Klux Klan in the South. "The Adventure of the Yellow Face," a story in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, involves a young mother with a mixed-race child. Also, I would think nothing of reading a 2010 mystery in which the detective was an occasional cocaine user, but somehow it was scandalous reading about it in a story from 1901!

Movie vs. stories

Now that I've read the Holmes mysteries, seen the 2009 movie and a few of the movies starring Basil Rathbone, I can see how Downey's Sherlock could grow up to be to Basil's Sherlock, with his boxing and drugging and overall stubborn rebellion behind him. Jude Law's Dr. Watson could in no way decide to Nigel Bruce's Dr. Watson, who seemed to be good-naturedly clueless.

In or out?
I'm definitely in, to the extent that I can be, of course, with no new Doyles/Holmes mysteries forthcoming. but I did come across a compilation of Holmes stories "retold" by contemporary authors. I may check that out.

Books: My new thing

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