Fun with Conan Doyle
I've been re-reading the Sherlock Holmes novels on gutenberg.org at work. I do adore them; I'm only sorry I started reading them so late in life. I was always worried that the language would be inaccessible. Obviously pretty much anything is accessible to me at my current fluency level, but Sherlock Holmes I could have read in my late teens, quite easily. Which is not to say the text isn't interesting - far from it, in fact! For one thing, I do take childish pleasure in the fact that Watson seems to ejaculate all the time. I realize that the usage of words changes over time, but Conan Doyle seems overly fond of the word, and it amuses me. Then there's the fact that he seems to have very little idea of European geography and culture (to whit; the King of Scandinavia, which always makes me giggle), and then, there are those little passages of text that just make you stop and go "wait... what?" Like this one:
As evening drew in, the storm grew higher and louder, and the wind cried and sobbed like a child in the chimney.
It was a different time, friends.
(Please note that I am in no way detracting from the genius of the late author. On the contrary, I adore Conan Doyle's writing, and find him extremely talented. It's just that time, and culture, has moved on, and sometimes it is too amusingly evident.)
EDIT: Courtesy of qzee - for those who do not know the significance of the "child in chimney" reference: http://www.executivechimney.com/pages/hist.html
As evening drew in, the storm grew higher and louder, and the wind cried and sobbed like a child in the chimney.
It was a different time, friends.
(Please note that I am in no way detracting from the genius of the late author. On the contrary, I adore Conan Doyle's writing, and find him extremely talented. It's just that time, and culture, has moved on, and sometimes it is too amusingly evident.)
EDIT: Courtesy of qzee - for those who do not know the significance of the "child in chimney" reference: http://www.executivechimney.com/pages/hist.html