Sherlock Holmes is kind of a jerk

Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes is one of the best known characters in literature. And yet, I'd never read any of his stories before signing on to the awesome Discovering Sherlock Holmes serialization put on by Stanford University. When you sign up (which is free), they send you one reproduction issue of a Holmes serial a week for twelve weeks -- each issue is a reproduction of the stories as they were released in the Strand Magazine, complete with the original illustrations.

It is too late to sign up for the printed editions, but you can still read all the archived serials here [or look at their previous series of Dickens' novels here]. And they are doing another series in January, so check back if you want to get in on that one.

In my recent Holmesploration I read "A Scandal in Bohemia," "The Speckled Band," "The Hound of the Baskervilles," and "The Final Problem" (wherein Doyle actually kills Holmes, leading over 20,000 people to cancel their subscriptions to The Strand in protest, nearly bankrupting the magazine).

I signed up for the series a little late, and my issues came in spurts and starts and not in order. Once I had a few of them, though, I played by the rules and just read one issue a week. This was amazingly fun (although hard when the next issue is right there). I'm really thinking about going back to that Dickens site and reading Hard Times in the same way.

Sherlock Holmes is pretty much a jerk, but sort of a loveable jerk, and the mysteries are engaging and dapper. Ten thumbs up to the Stanford University Libraries for putting these guys out.