The Great Consulting Detective

So today is the last day of October, and also the last day for me to do an October Series Series post.
Originally I was going to review some kind of spooky series, but I couldn't think of any. As I am currently dressed as John Watson for Halloween, I will review the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, even if that doesn't really count as a series so much as a collection of short stories.

I feel like Sherlock Holmes is a character that everyone knows about, whether they've read the books or not, but they don't exactly know who he is. I just knew that he was the most famous literary detective of all times and that he had a companion named Watson. Then my friend got me into Sherlock BBC and I fell in love with it. I picked up the books at the library, hoping that I wouldn't be disappointed and that it wouldn't be too difficult to read. 

I couldn't have been more surprised.

The writing is wonderful, it's sarcastic and subtly hilarious. The books are written from Dr. John Watson's point of view as he helps the great consulting detective Sherlock Holmes unravel the mysteries of victorian London. The cases are brilliant, well thought out and exciting. The setting is exactly what you would imagine a victorian-era detective would call his home. And then there's the man himself.

In the tv series, Sherlock is a very cold, rude, sociopathic man, who can occasionally be very unintentionally funny and sassy. He's incredibly intelligent and frowned on by his peers (excluding a few individuals such as John and Lestrade). I found that the tv series was very true to his character in the books. They didn't try to make him more, I don't know, heroic. In the books, Holmes is a jerk. To everyone. He is very intelligent and quick, he knows how to get what he wants when he wants. He isn't your typical do-gooder, because you know that if he wanted to, he could be the most dangerous criminal in the streets of London. However, you can see that he isn't heartless, that Watson really does matter to him and that he is inherently a good person. 

Then there are other characters, such as Holmes' brother Mycroft. In the books and in the tv show, Mycroft is incredibly intelligent and strange. He holds a very important post in the government, but he doesn't want to be a detective like Holmes the younger. He doesn't like legwork. He's a great character, but we don't see much of him in the books. He has more appearances in the tv show.

To wrap this up, we have the criminal, Professor James Moriarty and his henchman Colonel Sebastian Moran. Moriarty ranks among my top villains of all times. He is cunning and witty, deadly sharp and a completely psychotic wreck. He is calm and quiet, doesn't get his hands dirty, but gets the job done. He is the spider at the center of London's crime web. In Sherlock BBC (because this review is basically turning into a comparison of the show and the books), Andrew Scott portrays a Moriarty that is quite different from the one we are used to. He is loud and Irish, very casual in his manner, but very classy in everything else - for a murderer that is. He knows how to mess with Sherlock, he knows how to get him to do exactly what he wants. I thought he did a phenomenal job as Moriarty, because he is a villain that you are genuinely scared of. He feels no remorse, he doesn't care that people have died, or that people will die. He just wants to play the game. And it's terrifying. 

Well this was a different series series post. More of a comparison. Ah well, hope you enjoy it anyway!

Read the books. Watch the show. Sherlock Holmes is a great character, no matter how you see him, on page or on screen. And then of course, there is John Watson, who is one of my favorite characters in any series ever. Talk about being an inherently good person: Watson is the epitome of goodness.

Happy Halloween!

Random Renaissance Revolution Ramblings

Ten points for alliteration.

Okay, so recently in my social studies class we have been studying the Renaissance, which is a fascinating period in time.

I don't particularly care for the whole religious aspect of it (mostly because of the many hours of notes I had to write on it) but what I really like are the artists, the writers and the scientists.

Learning about the people who let go of everything that they had been taught, everything that was considered to be true and to doubt it, to rethink it, to question the limits of knowledge just makes me really proud, in a strange way.

It makes me proud that at a time of impossible dreams (think Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel), there were humans who transcended the limits of their world and discovered amazing things.

Just think about it: today, when we drop something, we know that it's because of gravity. Even children know that. But hundreds of years ago, Newton established that law, and consequently deduced how planets orbited the sun. It took him twenty years to fine tune it. Imagine what his amazement would be at the word "gravity" coming out of a child's mouth today!

Then there are people like Descartes who thought about thinking (which is a really cool yet confusing thing to do) and thought about how thinking cannot start with an answer, but with a question. Only at the end fo your thinking do you have an answer.

My friend Addie (whose blog you should definitely read by clicking here) has been learning a lot about Vincent Van Gogh for a while now, reading biographies and the letters he wrote, etc. It seems like a really good idea, to just pick someone whom you admire and learn all that you can about them (please don't stalk people that are still alive, I'm talking dead geniuses). As much as I like Van Gogh, I think I'd rather focus on the writers and thinkers of the Renaissance. Here are a few of my possible choices of study:

- Sir Thomas More: he wrote the book Utopia about a perfect society during a time where the Catholic Church was trying to establish their idea of a perfect society. He was later killed, then posthumously recognized as a saint (Canonized, by the way, is the proper term. New vocab word of the day.) I find him to be a very interesting person, from what I've read so far, which is to say, my textbook.

- Galileo: discovered that the four moons of Jupiter orbited Jupiter in the same was that the Earth orbited the sun. His discoveries rocked the entire human perception of the physical world. He was threatened by death if he did not publicly admit that the Earth was motionless. As he left the trial, he muttered: "Nevertheless, it does move." (Again, this is from my textbook, so don't quote me on it.)

- René Descartes: a french thinker who discarded all traditional ways of thinking on his quest to seek "probable knowledge". He believed that human reasoning was the best road to understanding. Eventually, he was left only with doubt, and deduced that the doubter must then exist. He's the guy who said "I think, therefore I am." Although, I imagine he said it in french, considering that's where he was from. "Je pense, donc je suis", I suppose.

Leonardo Da Vinci: of course. He was an amazing man, I find it mind-blowing to see everything that he had imagined, created, drawn, and to discover that today we use some of the things that he invented. He was one of the first to dissect a human body to see how it worked (as gross as that is, it is pretty incredible and let's ask ourselves, where would we be if he hadn't?). He was a genius, there's no other word for it. I think he's an incredibly important and interesting person. (That's another ten points for alliteration.)

There are probably others, but those are the ones that really stuck with me. Feel free to suggests others in the comments below!

I'm thinking I'll maybe research them and write an essay or something about them. It's mostly for my personal knowledge and curiosity, but I'm a very goal oriented person, so the goal here is going to be to write an essay eventually.

Paper Towns Ad Placement (just kidding)

Paper Towns 

by John Green

I had particularly high expectations for this book, because I absolutely loved The Fault in Our Stars and because John Green is such an amazing person in general. I also knew that the main character and I have something in common (take a wild guess as to what it is). All that to say, I unwittingly set the bar pretty high. And I must say that as much as I love John Green and the way that he writes, this book fell a little flat.

Let me explain.

First, a brief description. Quentin and Margo Roth Spiegelman have been friends since they were little. However, high school happened and we all know that high school is that dreadful time where people change and friendships split. Luckily, both were pretty well off: he had his solid group of friends and she was the most popular, drop-dead gorgeous girl in the school. But Margo Roth Spiegelman is very different from all the popular girls. Because this isn't her element; high school isn't her world. So one day, she vanishes. Not for the first time, but at the very end of senior year, it's a critical moment in all their lives. 

Here are my pros and cons (by now you know that I love lists):

Pros:

- Well written

- Very different from traditional coming-of-age stories

- Well-rounded characters

- A very interesting perspective on Orlando, Florida

- I liked the way the book ended (no spoilers, have no fear)

Cons:

- The characters (as they usually do in John's books) sound and act a lot older than they are

- The ending sort of... happened. Does that make sense? It was good, but it didn't quite live up to the build-up

- Not as interesting as it could have been

Okay, let me dissect my criticism for you. First, the characters in John's books usually sound older than they are (yes Augustus Waters, I'm talking to you). It's an easy mistake to forgive, but being in high school myself, I don't know anyone who acts like his characters do.

Second, I liked the ending itself, I guess. I liked that it was non-traditional. If you've read it, hopefully you'll know what I'm talking about. However, there was a lot of tension, a lot of anticipation building up to it and it fell short of the expectation that we were given. That may have been the point, which is something to consider.

Lastly, the idea was very interesting, the descriptions were as well, but there were some passages that just dragged on and on and on and you were left pushing through to the next chapter, which is never good. Again, though, that may have been the point. 

In conclusion, it was okay, not his best, but if you love John Green's style, you'll probably like it.

Leave your opinions on Paper Towns in the comments below!

Also, in case you didn't know, John Green and his brother Hank run a channel on YouTube (as well as a million others, but this is their main). You can check it out by clicking here.