Title: A Study in Scarlet (free from Project Gutenberg)

Author: Arthur Conan Doyle

Completed: July 2025 (Full list of books)

Overview: After deciding to keep a fiction book on my phone to read during moments of downtime, I picked a classic, then went camping. Turns out, if you’re trying to read around the campfire or in the tent, having a screen that emits light is handy for reading.

This was a fun read and felt very familiar having seen and heard so many versions of Sherlock Holmes without having read any myself. Starting with his first case seemed like the correct way to meet Sherlock. The transition from Part 1 in London to Part 2 in Utah was abrupt enough that I tried double checking that I’d downloaded it correctly from Project Gutenberg. Unfortunately, with no internet access around the campfire, I couldn’t verify anything, but it turned out the story had downloaded without errors.

Highlights:

• a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work
• “No data yet,” he answered. “It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.”