Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search This Site

| Log in
  1. Follow us on Facebook
  2. Follow us on Twitter
  3. Follow us on Instagram
  4. Follow us on Goodreads
  5. RSS Feeds

  • Home
  • About
    • About CBR
    • Getting Started
    • Cannon Book Club
    • Diversions
    • Fan Mail
    • Holiday Book Exchange
    • Book Bingo Reading Challenge
    • Participation Badges
    • AlabamaPink
  • Our Team
    • Leaderboard
    • The CBR Team
    • Recent Comments
    • CBR Interviews
    • Our Volunteers
    • Meet MsWas
  • Categories
    • Review Genres
    • Tags
  • Fight Cancer
    • How We Fight Cancer
    • How You Can Donate
    • Book Sale
    • CBR Merchandise
    • Supporters and Friends of CBR
  • FAQ
  • Contact
    • Contact Form
    • Newsletter Sign Up
    • Newsletter Archive
    • Follow Us
> FAQ Home
> Genre: Fiction > Book Club Discussion Post: Any Sherlock Retelling

Book Club Discussion Post: Any Sherlock Retelling

September 20, 2019 by faintingviolet 14 Comments

The time is here for our most free-form book club yet. Our goal here is to discuss any Sherlock Holmes retellings or adaptations you have read (doesn’t have to be in the past month or two) and how they reflect on both the larger mythos of Sherlock and what it takes to tell a good story based on another.

For those of you returning or who might be joining in for #CannonBookClub for the first time (hello new friends!) all are welcome, you don’t have to be registered for CBR11. The topics are numbered, and we ask that you refer to them below by that number to help people find the conversations they are looking for. If you are responding to someone else’s thoughts, please try to reply directly to them.

We will also be talking on our Social Media platforms, and of course in our Facebook group, Cannonball Read Book Chat, we’ll have some additional prompts so please join us there as well.

On to our topics:

  1. Which retelling did you read, and why?
  2. As discussed in our previous book club, Holmes and Watson have come to be viewed as archetypes for certain types of characters. How are those archetypes used in your selection?
  3. Did the retelling you read build on the core characters in Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic, or rely on them?
  4. What essential characteristics of the secondary characters (Mycroft Holmes, Lestrade, or Irene Adler for example) were used in your remix?
  5. How much or how little does an adaptation need to “use” from the original for a good retelling?
  6. What qualities of Arthur Conan Doyle’s writing style carried through?
  7. Did the allusions to Arthur Conan Doyle’s writing style positively or negatively impact your reading experience?
  8. How did the remix compare to the original?
  9. I have a thought that doesn’t fit with the above topics, meet me in the comments.

Come! The game is afoot.

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: Arthur Conan Doyle, CannonBookChat, CannonBookClub, retellings, Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Retellings

Post by faintingviolet · Genres: Fiction · Tags: Arthur Conan Doyle, CannonBookChat, CannonBookClub, retellings, Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Retellings ·
· 14 Comments

About faintingviolet

CBR13 participantCBR13 CommentsCBR12 participantCBR11 participantCBR10 participantCBR  9CBR 8CBR 7CBR 6CBR 5CBR 4

A reader and caffeine addict who consumes all sorts of books, some just more frequently than others. Your CBR Book Club Maven in my 10th (!) year of Cannonballing, I believe in the beauty that comes from a common goal of reading, reviewing, and discussing. Also, Fuck Cancer. View faintingviolet's reviews»

Comments

  1. MsWas (Admin) says

    September 20, 2019 at 11:54 am

    #1 I read two adaptations.

    First: The Affair of the Mysterious Letter by Alexis Hall. This one I just happened to pick up from my library’s new book shelf, and then it turned out to be a Sherlock retelling. It was fate!

    Second: The Singularge Experience of Miss Anne Duffield by John Lennon. It was just so wild that I found that he’d been into Sherlock and had written this. It was, in a word, BONKERS!

    Reply
  2. KimMiE" says

    September 20, 2019 at 12:08 pm

    Question 1: I had quite the Sherlock retelling year this year! For Christmas, I got a copy of Mycroft and Sherlock by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse. I was so intrigued by that I bought the first in that series, Mycroft Holmes.

    Finally, after discovering Anthony Horowitz, I read his House of Silk.

    I loved all three of these novels, but House of Silk was the real stand-out for me!

    Reply
    • Jen K says

      September 20, 2019 at 12:35 pm

      I just started his novel The Word is Murder!

      Reply
      • KimMiE" says

        September 20, 2019 at 7:55 pm

        The Word is Murder and the Sentence is Death are fun! I enjoyed those, and then I read House of Silk and Magpie Murders and I’m a fangirl now.

        Reply
    • Mark Goldberg says

      September 21, 2019 at 2:10 pm

      KimMiE, although the stand out for you was House of Silk, & I will be picking that up at some point, are the books co-written by Kareem worth the time? I have been curious about them for a while. Thanks

      Reply
      • KimMiE" says

        September 21, 2019 at 2:33 pm

        Hi Mark, I really liked those, too! Although I have to say they are really up my street; I’m not going to pretend they are great literature. But they are fun and they fueled my desire to know more about the characters in early life. Mycroft & Sherlock is stronger, in my opinion. You can read my review here:
        https://cannonballread.com/2019/02/mycroft-holmes-and-mycroft-and-sherlock-kimmie/

        Reply
        • MarkAbaddon says

          September 22, 2019 at 10:25 am

          Thank you!

          Reply
  3. emmalita says

    September 20, 2019 at 2:12 pm

    A 1: I have like 50 bazillion arcs right now that I’m struggling to get through, so I didn’t read a new retelling this month. Previously though, I read Brittany Cavallaro’s A Study in Charlotte and the two following books. They are YA books set in a New England prep school and around Europe with a gender flipped Charlotte Holmes and narrated by Jamie Watson.

    A 2 & 3: In Cavallaro’s world, Jamie and Charlotte are descended from the original Holmes and Watson, and the two families have been entwined for generations. Charlotte is very much the offbeat genius with a drug problem and Jamie is the everyman chronicler of her and is also kind of overly emotional. I would say that Cavallaro both relied on our understanding of the Holmes and Watson archetypes, but also built on them and evolved them to fit into a boy loves unattainable girl dynamic.

    A 4: The Moriarty family also plays a role in the series. And of course, Charlotte has a Mycroft like older brother.

    A 8: I think Cavallero had some interesting ideas – what would a modern day descendants of Holmes, Watson and Moriarty look like and how would the mythology impact their families. Bot Cavallero leaned pretty hard on aspects of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope for Charlotte and made a weird toxic triangle between Charlotte, Jamie and August Moriarty. Jamie increasingly becomes a gross and entitled “good guy.” I stopped reading after the third book because it was just too icky.

    Reply
    • faintingviolet says

      September 20, 2019 at 4:38 pm

      I read A Study in Scarlet Women and A Conspiracy in Belgravia by Sherry Thomas (who also named her genderswapped Sherlock Charlotte) and I LOVE that she split the various characteristics across several characters and I think it worked really well.

      Its set in the same historical time-space, but she really broadens the type of characters we see.

      Reply
      • emmalita says

        September 20, 2019 at 4:40 pm

        I had planned on either reading Sherry Thomas or the science fiction book where Sherlock is an AI, but life happens.

        Reply
  4. teresaelectro says

    September 20, 2019 at 2:17 pm

    I’m reading A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas. I love gender swaps and this one did not disappoint.

    Reply
  5. faintingviolet says

    September 21, 2019 at 8:19 am

    5. I think it depends on the end goal how much an author needs to pull from the original to tell a good remix.

    There are definitely some retellings I’ve read over the years and I wouldn’t have known if I wasn’t told – and to me that makes them good books on their own merits but not good retellings. For me, a good retelling for its own sake, needs to have enough of the original’s connective tissue without feeling like its been made using tracing paper.

    Reply
  6. Mark Goldberg says

    September 21, 2019 at 2:07 pm

    1. I recently re-read “Shadows Over Baker Street” a short story collection that places Holmes in a Lovecraftian universe. Why did I read this. Because the idea of Holmes, the ultimate rational being, having to confront the cosmic and ineffable beings that exist in Lovecraft’s stories was utter catnip for him. While the stories varied in quality, there were several that were outstanding

    4. While most of the stories are focused on Holmes & Watson, there is one that focuses on Adler and is one of the standout pieces in the collection, Tyger, Tyger allows Irene’s intelligence and quick thinking to shine as she confronts a creature that would have confounded even Sherlock

    5. One of the strengths of the Holmes stories is that one can take elements from them and still remain true to the original tales. The Neil Gaiman Tale “ A study in emerald” is an excellent example of this as it is an inversion of the traditional Holmes story, as he is the criminal being hunted, yet absolutely true to Doyle’s vision of the character. Plus, it combines many elements from Kim Newman’s “Anno Dracula” so I can assure you it is fun.

    9. I recently reviewed on this site a series of books involving Holmes & Lovecraftian, but rather than rehash them here you can read them yourself. They started out strong & really faltered by the end

    Reply
    • KimMiE" says

      September 22, 2019 at 11:25 am

      This sounds interesting. Do you need to be a Lovecraft fan to appreciate these stories? Not that I’m opposed, I just haven’t read anything by him (which is sort of surprising–my husband has a giant volume of Lovecraft on his nightstand).

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.



Recent Comments

  • Emmalita on Quick Questions with a Cannonballer: dsbs42I was looking at the website for Pizza Piccomilano and they are either charmingly earnest or hilariously dry. "Potato dishes are potatoes that are baked...
  • Emmalita on A beautiful portrait of a white outsider in 1930s Great Depression KentuckyMy landlady read and loved this book a few months ago. She loved it and talked about it for a good two weeks.
  • Emmalita on CBR Diversions – It’s Never too Late to Have a Happy ChildhoodI’m almost there with you on Are You There God. It had been out for a few years when I read it, but I recall...
  • esme on CBR Diversions – It’s Never too Late to Have a Happy ChildhoodWhat a treat! /s It is a fabulous book and movie, but good god, is it good for kids to experience that depth of grief...
  • jomidi on CBR Diversions – It’s Never too Late to Have a Happy ChildhoodI know I was a voracious reader, but I don't remember books from when I was very little. I do remember reading stuff like The...
See More Recent Comments »

Want to Help Out?

CBR has a great crew of volunteers, and we're always looking for more people to help out. If you have a specialty or are willing to learn, drop MsWas a line.

  • How You Can Donate
  • FAQ
  • Shop
  • Volunteers
  • Leaderboard
  • AlabamaPink
  • Contact

Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo
  3. Google Pay
© 2021 Cannonball Read | Log in