I have no television in my flat which means that I cannot watch television shows live, I need to wait until they appear on iPlayer, so I usually wait until the next day. So last night while almost everyone I know was watching Sherlock, instead I was lying in bed feeling jealous. Even my noisy neighbours were watching it at a deafening volume - I actually had to put my headphones on to avoid any spoilers transmitted through the ceiling. To keep myself occupied I read all of The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle. It is not my favourite of the Holmes books, but it is still a good little novel, and it was a great choice for distracting myself. Now I just need to avoid the internet all day until I can watch Sherlock after my class this afternoon!

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle was one of the first Sherlock Holmes books I read; I have a very strong memory of skiving off a school sports day when I was about nine or ten, sitting at the edge of the playing fields and reading a really old copy of this book that had belonged to my Mum when she was a younger. I’ve read it and all the Holmes books quite a few times since then, and I’m always amazed by how fresh it is and how much I still love it like it was the first time I was reading it. I wasn’t actually planning to read it, until last night when I was halfway through a book I wasn’t enjoying at all, and decided that I just wanted to read something different, something I knew I would enjoy. I then further realised that this would be an excellent choice, in preparation for the next episode of Sherlock! Fortunately I had this lovely copy on hand, part of this collection which I bought myself a few years ago to replace my various mismatched copies. I read the first half of it last night and then finished it off this morning , because I really couldn’t put it down. 110 years since it was published, 15 years since I first read it, and it is still a completely brilliant book.

The opening paragraph of the short story ‘A Case of Identity’ from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. I remember what a profound effect those words had on me and my way of thinking back when I first read them as a child. I love reading the Holmes stories, they really never grow stale.