Through the Magic Door [Formato Kindle]

I absolutely love the beginning of this book. It is the most poetic description of a library that I have ever encountered. The first paragraph of this book is absolutely five star and I would suggest that if you are a lover of books, then download this book just for the warm feeling comfort that this first paragraph evokes.

The next few paragraphs are also very nice, but as for the rest of the book, well, it's a book about books. Actually, it's really a curious piece and I find myself reading it every few years or so. The author (you may remember his other works such as Sherlock Holmes and The Lost World) basically just chats about books in his collection. Some of the books he bought as a student, others he's read many times. Every book has it's own story and he is willing to share his opinion of them.

As much as I love the beginning, I find the body of the book to be a bit dull, but it would be very useful for academic purposes.

This is a good book for those who are interested in the History of the Victorian period as it discusses books that were considered relevant at that time in history. It is also an unusual chance to discover what sorts of books were in the library of such an important author.

The kindle version has no menu or title page, it jumps right into the text. I don't know if there were illustration in the original, but there are no pictures in the kindle version. There are no apparent errors in the text.

Conan Doyle wasn't quite a grownups' writer, but he had an amazing prose style, and this record of his reading shows where he got part of it. Some of his tastes are surprising: he admired George Meredith, one of the great unread-but-admired Victorians, but (predictably) he liked his most conventional novel, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, and he doesn't even mention Meredith's Modern Love, a sonnet sequence that deconstructs love thoroughly. The best part of Magic Door is Doyle's own voice: large, genial, generous--a big man, and good company.