J has the day off so it counts as the weekend for me!
So I find the whole thing with "Doyle thought the adultery theme was too much for children" to be hilarious because the thing that always stuck with me the most was, you know, the eponymous cardboard box containing
two severed ears????? C'mon, that's pretty damn horrifying.
Anyway. This one isn't, generally speaking, one of my favorites, but it has some good points - in particular, it's got one of two openings where Holmes does the "reply to Watson's thoughts" thing.
I took especial glee in this bit, this time:
"You remember," said he, "that some little time ago when I read you the passage in one of Poe's sketches [...]"
Remember in A Study in Scarlet when Holmes is like "PAH those fictional detectives are DRIVEL, let me tell you about their flaws in detail" and I was like, this just shows that Holmes
reads them? Not only does this prove it conclusively, but he's actually reading it aloud to Watson??? IT'S ADORABLE??!?!
I'm envisioning him reading these stories and complaining aloud to Watson about how Extremely Disappointing they are and Watson being annoyed and defending the stories and then Holmes is like "look I can do everything they can but better, see, like this example" and Watson is like I HIGHLY DOUBT IT and then Holmes just spends the next like two weeks waiting for an opportunity to do the thing, and this is the result.
I also really enjoyed the bit where he's thinking aloud in Miss Cushing's back yard and going rapid-fire through all the missing connections of the case.
Especially when followed up shortly after by Holmes being all like:
Simple as the case is,
The investigation really was a very simple one
Also, him going over the case to Watson later is so obviously him trying to teach Watson his methods, which is an ongoing thread through all the stories which I absolutely adore and which so few people remember is a foundational part of their friendship.
I really enjoyed this bit of snark inserted into the part reading Lestrade's letter, too
In accordance with the scheme which we had formed in order to test our theories" ["the 'we' is rather fine, Watson, is it not?"]
I found myself skipping over the whole jilted lover confession story again, which I expect I did the first time as well and which explains why I never remember what this story was "about". I pretty much always get bored of the confessions if they're more than, I dunno, 3-4 paragraphs.