Recent Read: "The Complete Sherlock Holmes," Volume 1, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

My brother bought both volumes for me for Christmas last year and I think it was one of my favorite book gifts ever. Reading the "Complete" has been so much fun. Doyle was not perfect; Holmes takes cocaine and heroin and has some serious misconceptions about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but I still love these stories. I thought that reading the complete would make them feel repetitive--that they would all feel like the same story. On the contrary, I am facinated and spellbounded by Doyle's ingenuity in coming up with different thoughts and especially different story moods in the backdrop. When he does repeat a similar plot--such as stories about sketchy new jobs and selfish stepfathers--it feels like he's really making a statement about something he sees wrong in the world because he addresses that problem more than once, which is really interesting. One volume down, one to go, and I still can't get enough!

Recent Read: "The Red House Mystery" by A. A. Milne

This book was AMAZING. Proof: I finished reading it myself one day and the next started it all over again, aloud, with my husband. It's refreshingly different than Holmes stories, and Milne even makes fun of how the characters are pretending to be Holmes. I really like how he doesn't take himself too seriously. It's a battle of wits, but in the middle I had no idea what was going to happen and started getting really nervous! I think that's the refreshing part. We know Holmes so much, but I didn't know what Milne would do with his characters, which really kept me on the edge of my seat.