Like all anthologies, this one is a mix bag. Unlike some I've read, though, it leans much more heavily toward gems than duds. I greatly enjoyed the strange, genre-hopping pastiches and serious "lost cases". Many of the parodies, though, relied far too heavily on slapstick for my taste.

This was a huge book with a collection of stories featuring a most beloved character, Sherlock Holmes. I confess that this was my first time reading Sherlock mysteries, but it certainly won't be my last. I loved having immediate access to his adventures. Although this book requires that one reads its content over time, it is not so overwhelming that the reader gets lost or burdened. Each story invites more and more engagement. I look forward to learning more from this amazing character.I believe...

The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories is a superlative anthology. It was a delight to find so many Holmes tales under “one roof” and apparently some of these are very difficult to track down. The list of contributors features so many famous authors I am not even going to try to detail them. Best story is arguably “The Doctor’s Case” by some guy named Stephen King. I could have done without the parodies-for some reason I do not like people making fun of Sherlock. Also as editor Otto Penzler sta...

The stories collected in this very large book range from the silly to the serious, from very short two almost novelas in length. Some are quite good with strong clots and stay fairly close to the original style of Sherlock Holmes stories. Others are parities or almost complete reinventions, using Sherlock Holmes as a very small foundation pointPeriod I personally don’t like those particular stories and Wood have been quite happy to skip them. Fortunately, thry were in the minority, and there wer...

The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes was a huge book with 83 stories, two by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but along with these stories there were also stories by 81 other authors, some of them parodies and some of them pastiches, which I did not know the meaning of until I picked up this book which means-an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period. This anthology was put together by Otto Penzler, and it is a huge work, and the largest of its kind ever! In this book th...

[I received a copy of this book through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.]A huge collection of Sherlock Holmes-related short stories—as is made obvious from the title—written by various authors: some who were Doyle's contemporaries, some from the late 1990s or even 2000s, and some from the 20th century. Mostly two kinds of stories are represented: “serious” Holmes adventures, and humorous ones (the latter ranging from light pastiches to ridiculous ones).Breaking down this collection i...

Pastiche, literary references, many different takes on a classic character, as a whole, fun to read but still can't quite compare with the original stories themselves, though some of the individual stories are quite good.

Okay first, full disclosure - I actually haven't finished the book. That being said I have read about 1/2 of the 80 some stories in it. Some stories are only a page in length, others much longer. This is collection of stories done over decades by a number of famous authors using Sherlock Holmes (or variant thereof) as one of the key characters. As pastiches go this is one of the better collections out there. Authors include P. G. Wodehouse, Dorothy B. Hughes, Anne Perry, Stephen King (yes you re...

Although Penzler's boyish enthusiasm is hard to dislike, his taste in fiction is questionable. This taste is on display in the gargantuan The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories. Also on display is Penzler's definitive preference for quantity over quality. Very few stories in this elephant of a book are both actually good and faithful to the verve and snap of the originals. As you can see from my rankings below, by far most of the stories are mediocre and forgettable.5s - "The Devil and Sherlock...

This thing was a BEAST! It took me 2.5 years to read. I quickly learned that you can only read so much Sherlock Holmes fan fiction in a row. Too many of the authors hit the same beats over and over. What I started doing was reading two short stories between each novel that I read. That made it a much more enjoyable way to digest everything.There's a lot more good than bad here and a few that rival the master himself. But please heed my warning, take many breaks reading this or you'll quickly get...

This was a collection of short stories starring Sherlock Holmes or Holmes-like characters written by various authors. Like most anthologies, some stories were great and some were junk. But, most of these stories were enjoyable. Which was good considering how long the book was. My favorite stories involved a Martian version of Sherlock Holmes and a story where Watson outsmarted both Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes. I enjoyed reading this collection.

The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories edited by Otto Penzler does not exaggerate. It is a big, heavy book. If you are Sherlock Holmes fanatic, you will love this. I am not a fanatic, but I enjoyed most of the stories in this collection. This collection groups the stories into different categories: “The Master,” “Familiar as the Rose in Spring,” “Not of this Place,” “You Think That’s Funny?” and others. In the table of contents, each section is introduced with a short explanatory paragraph. The...

Given that there are 83 stories here, I'm not even going to attempt to go through and discuss them individually. For that matter, given how long it's taken me to finish this book - almost a year, on and off - I don't know that I want to try to remember all the high- and lowlights of the collection. I will say that I generally enjoyed this. There were definitely some stories that weren't very good, and to give an example I would've much rather had A Study in Emerald than the Neil Gaiman story inc...

I should’ve read the description before I checked out this book. However I did enjoy it. It is a collection of Sherlock Holmes related stories, some quite good and most of which are very short. The beginning of the book is excessively boring so I fast forwarded to the first or second chapter and from there on it was interesting.I can’t imagine that anyone would enjoy this book unless they were a Sherlock Holmes fan.

So many stories, despite my repertoire of Holmes books I only recognized a few from this collection. It covers from comedic parodies to full length mysteries, and gave me many authors to look up and continue reading.

Probably the best statement from me for this book would be that I liked some of it, but by no means all. There are 83 short stories in this book with a brief biography of the author of each story preceding it. There are over 900 pages. Under normal reviewing conditions I like to list each story with its author but that would simply be too unwieldy for this collection. I am the type of reader who wanted this book to be made up of predominantly serious pastiches. I wanted to watch how other author...

The preface is the most interesting of the collection, particularly because it notes that some stories will overlap in categories, so don't take it to heart; and that funny stories may not necessarily be funny, but they were included for historical significance. Eighty-three short stories in total, averaging 2.71 stars. I rounded up as a whole for the book. Definitely some standouts, not as many as I'd hoped.Highlights: - How Watson Learned the Trick - Arthur Conan Doyle - 4 stars (Watson learni...