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While reading this book, I changed my password at work to Gigantic_Hound. Because, seriously, how cool is the line, ‘Mr Holmes, they were the pawmarks of a gigantic hound!’
It carries all the weight of the atmosphere, the bleak and mysterious moors, the supernatural, spectral hound, the mists around the house. The novel is a masterpiece of atmosphere. Mystery, not so much as there are gaping plot holes. (Who was feeding the hound, for instance? Some unnamed deaf and dumb servant commissioned by Stapleton?)
And, of course, it reminds me of the countless adaptations, film version, novel spin offs. Who can forget the episode of Sherlock* with the psychosis mist and the H.O.U.N.D.?
Basically, I’m just fan-girling here. My only comment of substance is that I had forgotten how little Holmes is actually in the novel. The majority of it consists of letters from the ever-in-error Watson reporting on the intrigues at Baskerville Court. Holmes only swoops in at the end to clear things up and unmask the hound (almost literally, like a Scooby Doo villain).
PS: Wiki tells me that the book was listed as number 128 of 200 on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's "best-loved novel" in 2003. In 1999, it was listed as the top Holmes novel, with a rating from Sherlockian scholars of 100 of 100
It carries all the weight of the atmosphere, the bleak and mysterious moors, the supernatural, spectral hound, the mists around the house. The novel is a masterpiece of atmosphere. Mystery, not so much as there are gaping plot holes. (Who was feeding the hound, for instance? Some unnamed deaf and dumb servant commissioned by Stapleton?)
And, of course, it reminds me of the countless adaptations, film version, novel spin offs. Who can forget the episode of Sherlock* with the psychosis mist and the H.O.U.N.D.?
Basically, I’m just fan-girling here. My only comment of substance is that I had forgotten how little Holmes is actually in the novel. The majority of it consists of letters from the ever-in-error Watson reporting on the intrigues at Baskerville Court. Holmes only swoops in at the end to clear things up and unmask the hound (almost literally, like a Scooby Doo villain).
PS: Wiki tells me that the book was listed as number 128 of 200 on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's "best-loved novel" in 2003. In 1999, it was listed as the top Holmes novel, with a rating from Sherlockian scholars of 100 of 100
