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I’ve had several separate conversations about books I read as a child over the past few days. One of them evolved around fairy tales, particularly the quite grim Grimm’s ones [see what I did there...?] and the other about Sherlock Holmes.

If my memory is correct, which is always a caveat to add to most of my childhood memories, one of the first stories I ever read myself was the one with the sweet porridge. I had been read the more traditional ones over the years and only picked this one, because it was probably one of the shortest ones in the book. I remember leafing through the pages until finding one that was less than a page. Now, many years later, I couldn’t even remember its entire plot and had to look it up during one of the conversations.

Whilst I had been aware of the concept of Sherlock Holmes from a young age I didn’t read them until I was 11, as my parents considered some of the themes and settings to be too adult. I spent Christmas one year reading the collected Sherlock Holmes works.

It’s interesting to see what has happened to the books since. With the Grimm’s fairy tales I’ve watched the Heath Ledger film, some of Grimm and a majority of Once Upon A Time and none of them really does it for me. The latter probably is the most interesting because of its recurring characters and intriguing story, but I have no real drive to carry on watching. With Grimm I’m finding the premise incredibly difficult to swallow.

Sherlock Holmes has had many adaptations and I remember watching quite a few of the older ones. Nothing seemed to quite grab the character for me as the 2009 film though and I’m still planning to see the new film. By all intents and purposes I feel like I should like Sherlock, but, just like Grimm, find the overly modern setting irritating. Sherlock makes me feel both bored and angry at the same time.

Maybe it’s best to keep the fond memories in the past.