Sherlock Holmes FAQ by Dave Thompson

All That's Left to Know About the World's Greatest Private Detective 
The Sherlock Holmes FAQ is a one-stop guide to over a centurys worth of mystery, mayhem, and most of all, deduction. 
Digging deep inside the manifold worlds of Sherlock Holmes, the FAQ is a dramatic and detailed digest of the Baker Street sleuth in all of his many guises, as TV and radio star, movie phenomenon, and, of course, literary giant. 
Chapters investigate his predecessors and his successors, and discuss the influence that Holmes has had not only on other writers, but on real-life police procedures as well. 
The London that he perambulated in deerstalker and cloak is laid bare, plus the life and other fascinations of Holmes creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, are mapped out in all their foggy, darkened atmosphere. 
We meet giant hounds and fearful foes, common crooks and misdirected souls. 
Ghosts appear in these pages, and vampires, too and more puzzles, conundrums, and mysteries than any mortal detective could ever hope to solve. 
But Holmes, as we shall see, was no mere mortal. 
And Sherlock Holmes FAQ is the story of his immortality.

[Book Description Source: www.amazon.com ]


Ratings
Goodreads Rating - 3.46 out of 5 (28 Ratings , 7 Reviews  - As on Dec 6 2017)
My Rating:   3 out of 5
My Comments:
Will be a great addition in the library of a Sherlock Holmes fan. Lots of interesting trivia. Beware of the spoilers though if you have not read any of the 56 short stories and 4 novels featuring Sherlock Holmes.

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The Art of Fiction by David Lodge

The Art of Fiction is a book of literary criticism by the British novelist David Lodge.
The chapters of the book first appeared in 1991-1992 as weekly columns in The Independent on Sunday and were eventually gathered into book form and published in 1992.
The essays as they appear in the book have in many cases been expanded from their original format.
Lodge focuses each chapter upon one aspect of the art of fiction, comprising some fifty topics. 
Every chapter also begins with a passage from classic or modern literature that Lodge feels embodies the technique or topic at hand. 
Some of the topics Lodge analyzes are Beginning (the first chapter), The Intrusive Author, The Epistolary Novel, Magic Realism, Irony and Metafiction. 
Among the authors he quotes in order to illustrate his points are Jane Austen, J. D. Salinger, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Martin Amis, F. Scott Fitzgerald and even himself.

[Source: Wikipedia ]

Goodreads Rating - 3.9 out of 5 (1097 Ratings, 88 Reviews)

My Review:
Borrowed this book from the library with all good intentions of developing a better sense of appreciation of English Fiction.
Not a very interesting book, though it is not too boring.
The reason I was able to  finish this book was the chapters were rather short and I kept reading chapter after chapter with a hope that the next one would be more interesting.  
But sadly that was not to be.
A OK sort of book as far as I am concerned. 
Maybe it will appeal more to students of English Literature.

Links:

• List of all chapters and the authors quoted in this book

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Stories We Need to Know

Author:          Allan G. Hunter

Published:    2008

Publisher:     Findhorn Press

Paperback: 240 pages

There are many people who suffer from soul starvation at some point of time in their lives. Soul starvation is a continuous feeling of boredom, discontentment and a sense of disengagement from the world.  

According to the author the remedy to overcome this malaise lies in reading and benefiting from the wisdom embedded in our literature - folk tales, stories,myths, legends.

 

These literature through their characters,  suggest that as we go through our lives each one of us can expect to come across six distinct stages of personal development, which always occur in the same order. Each stage needs to be well understood to achieve peace of mind. 

 

The six stages along with their main attributes are:

1. Innocent - defenseless, undefending, trusting, accepting, loving and feeling loved
2. Orphan - sense of abandonment, looking for someone to take care of us, or someone to identify with
3. Pilgrim - trying to find out what one's capabilities are
4. Warrior-Lover - passionate commitments to one's own interests,values, family, etc. and fighting to sustain them.
5. Monarch Pair (the King and Queen) - serving and protecting something larger than one's immediate turf with a balanced mix of pride and humility; toughness and softness.
6. Magician - making things happen while seeming not to do anything much at all

 

In this book the author discusses how each one of us can embark on our own journey through these six stages and what are the pitfalls to watch out for as we do so.

To support his discussion, he explains the archetypes of each of these stages drawing examples from three thousand years of Western literature.

 

Just to cite a few of those - 

• The Odyssey, The Illiad - Homer
• Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus - Sophocles
• Oresrteia - Aeschylus
• The Bible
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
• Plays of  William Shakespeare
• Dr.Faustus - Christopher Marlowe
• Novels of Charles Dickens
• Books in the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowlings

The book is structured systematically and  well written in a manner which fairly easy to understand. But it may not appeal to those who are on the lookout for a conventional self-help book or to those who are not much interested in English Literature.

It was an  interesting read for me nevertheless !

Links:

• Goodreads Reviews - 4.24  ·  rating details  ·  17 ratings  ·  6 reviews 
• Author's Website 

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