Dracula

The start of the story was indeed captivating. However, around the halfway mark, after one of the main characters met their untimely demise, it devolved into what could be described as the 19th century equivalent of a series of never-ending conference calls, all centered around the question of how to destroy Dracula.

The start was intriguing enough but around halfway, after one of the main characters died, it’s just the 19th century equivalent of conference call after conference call on how to destroy Dracula
How can woman help loving men when they are so earnest, and so true, and so brave! And, too, it made me think of the wonderful power of money!

Contrary to my initial expectations, Dracula wasn't as terrifying as I'd thought. In fact, the book had a somewhat soap opera-like quality. The friends of Lucy were constantly thwarted in their attempts to protect her, and Renfield's repeated escapes from the mental asylum added to this feeling. The structure of diary entries, telegrams, and letters also lessened any potential tension, as it was clear that the writers had survived to tell the tale. For those who are curious but find 400 pages of Victorian fiction a bit overwhelming, the 1992 film available on Netflix is quite faithful to the book and makes for a good choice for a spooky October night.

What I did appreciate and found somewhat chilling were the passages描述 the boat Demeter losing its crew, isolated and helpless in the middle of nowhere. The concept of sleepwalking also tapped into some deep-seated unconscious fears. Chapter XXV, with the mind connection between one of the characters and Dracula, strongly reminded me of the link between Harry and Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
But overall, there wasn't much in the book that truly qualified it as a horror novel.

It wasn't until about halfway through that the pace picked up a little, with four blood transfusions (I hope the patient was bloodtype O) and four burials in just a few chapters. But after that, the book陷入了 endless的讨论 about how to defeat Dracula, bringing together facts that the reader already knew and some rather questionable decisions by Van Helsing to withhold information from the group.

In general, Bram Stoker's writing was quite accessible, but it also felt overly dramatic and lacking in subtlety. The themes and moral were straightforward: at the center was the idea that the male forces of science (Dr Seward), aristocracy (Arthur), practical Americans (Quincy), and spiritual Dutch lyricism (Van Helsing) were necessary to face a threat. They even compared themselves to Crusaders, going to the East to destroy Evil.
The girl with the "man brain" (When most we want all her great brain which is trained like man’s brain, but is of sweet woman) was ignored and excluded after she had helped them, and the brave men conveniently ignored all the signs, simply to move the plot towards its all-too-obvious climax.

Interestingly, for a book written around 1900 in the decidedly post-Enlightenment era, religion and class society played a significant role. One of the men, a Lord, was able to get anything he needed done with ease, including obtaining client records and breaking into places, while everyone else was constantly bribed for information.

In the end, I found that in the Appendix of the Penguin Clothbound edition I read, Charlotte Stoker (Bram Stoker's mother) wrote much more eloquently about the terror of a Cholera epidemic than her son did in the entire book about the supernatural. Those few short pages had a strange resemblance to the later The Plague by Albert Camus, while Dracula itself felt more like the overly dramatic, contrived, and convoluted Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.

Dracula is truly a timeless MASTERPIECE. It's one of my very favorite novels of all time, and yet, believe it or not, I'm still unable to review it. I annotated my most recent reading, hoping it would assist in composing my final thoughts. Alas, what I'm really struggling with is the idea of little ole' me'reviewing'a masterpiece. I guess my goal is more to compel people to pick up this amazing piece of world literature and give it a shot, rather than providing an in-depth analysis of Stoker's work. We all know that in reality, a full review will probably never come. Regardless, take a look at this The Lost Boys gif, a movie greatly inspired by Dracula. Full review or not, I'm so happy to have reread this for the third time. Dracula is a book I will continue to reread periodically for the rest of my life. If you haven't read it yet, please give it a go. It may surprise you. You might think you know this story, but there's so much more to discover within its pages.

Dracula has captivated readers for generations with its thrilling plot, memorable characters, and atmospheric setting. It's a classic that continues to stand the test of time.

So, don't hesitate. Pick up a copy of Dracula and embark on a journey into the world of vampires and horror. You won't be disappointed.

The vampire novel is truly a classic that has haunted our collective experience. It has left an indelible mark on our cultural consciousness.

Whenever I think of Dracula, the image of Bela Lugosi immediately springs to mind. It is one of those images that have been branded deep into my mind.

So many memories of Halloween are connected with Dracula type costumes. The allure of the vampire, with its mystery and darkness, has captured the imagination of countless people.

This book has made such a profound impression on so many individuals. It has the power to transport readers to a world of horror and excitement.

For all these reasons, I give this vampire novel my highest recommendation. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the genre or in exploring the darker side of human nature.

Now I truly understand why this book is such an iconic and influential one.

At first, I had the impression that it might be a rather difficult read, considering the way it is presented through the journals and letters written by the main characters. However, to my surprise, it flowed extremely easily.

The story was filled with intense suspense, constantly keeping me on the edge of my seat and making me always curious about what was going to happen next.

This book was published in 1897, and yet, it still doesn't seem dated at all. I firmly believe that this is essential reading for horror fans of any generation.

Whether you are a die-hard horror enthusiast or just someone who enjoys a good, thrilling story, this book has something to offer. It has stood the test of time and continues to captivate readers with its unique narrative style and engaging plot.

So, if you haven't already, I highly recommend picking up this book and experiencing the horror and excitement for yourself.

All the plot progresses in a rather plodding manner, and yet, at times, it can be quite amusing. This is my second go at reading it. It's the perfect Gothic thriller to enjoy during the summertime, although it doesn't possess any remarkable style. No, the reason I'm reading it again is for the grisly action and the wonderful scene setting. Take, for example, when Jonathan Harker discovers the Count asleep during the day on a box of dirt. What a strange and creepy image! There is a great deal of over description used throughout the book, which was a common convention of Victorian writing in general. However, this over description makes the scenes extremely effective at times.

I particularly like the scene where the death ship careens into the harbor of Whitby, Yorkshire, during a sudden blow. The ship is completely empty, except for the dead captain/helmsman who is tied to the wheel. Conveniently, he has secreted the ship's log in his pocket, inside a glass bottle. (!) This log reveals the madness that occurred onboard the ship during its voyage from the continent. All fiction, to some extent, is preposterous. And Dracula definitely has its fair share of shameless audacity. It's this combination of elements that makes the book such a captivating read.

Another case of me commencing a review without having the slightest clue about how to rate it. This book was truly a wild ride.

I believe my professor summed it up splendidly when he stated, “Dracula is either really outstanding or truly awful.” Alright, yes, I’m paraphrasing, but only to a small extent.

This book is quite an accomplishment, regardless of the perspective. You can essentially read ANY THEME into this novel: good and evil, race, religion, gender, science, wealth, power, abstinence, war, colonization. There are probably more, but it’s a Monday and I had four consecutive hours of math tonight and I’m extremely sleepy. Anyway, that all sounds great, right? Emma, I envision you saying, what do you mean it could be bad? Look at all those themes! It’s perhaps the great Irish novel! I understand, imaginary reader. I hear you. But there are aspects of this book that are even stranger than that quasi-sex scene. (The joke is that you can’t determine which one. There are countless symbolic moments of characters getting intimate. Truly astonishing.)

BUT OKAY. It’s not merely that there are a bazillion themes. Because that would be cool. No, it’s that you can make an argument for either side of every theme. Sexist or feminist; condemning religion or supporting it; racist or accepting; and so on and so forth. The book is also simply filled with elements like repetition that can either be thematically significant or just a poor job. (Can you picture being the editor of this book? “Uh, Bram?…Hey pal. So, you use essentially the same passage describing Dracula’s powers three times in one chapter, so – I was, you know, wondering – are you a genius or a complete idiot?” If I fulfill my dream of becoming an editor/publisher, I’m only editing YA. It’s too terrifying.)

The upside of all this was that this book was an absolute delight to discuss in class. (A significant and f*cking improvement from slogging through the boring old Huck Finn every day for two weeks.) We would spend approximately an hour on a single page, attempting to distinguish sexism from feminism and eagerly seeking homosexual undertones. (OH BOY DID WE FIND THEM, AND OH BOY DID WE LOVE DOING IT.) Anyway. In-depth textual analysis is like, my favorite thing.

This affair was intermittently a blast (oh my god! Vampires were enjoyable even in 1897!) and extremely boring (oh my god. What’s up with the plotlines from 1897). Still, I have to give a lot of credit to this book, because I read it EXCLUSIVELY by forcing myself through it in 110-page chunks during one work-study shift…and I still enjoyed it most of the time. That never occurs! Certainly didn’t happen with Huck Finn.

The characters really weren’t that great, but that often happens with classics. It’s strange that a few of them endured, though. I won’t miss them even if I end up missing reading this. (It’s been a significant part of my life for a while! Okay, like a couple of weeks, but that’s a long time for me.)

But I do think this book is sexist, and I don’t think it’s anywhere near perfect, and there are creepy issues regarding consent and metaphoric sexual assault and gender roles, and I wanted to write a paper on this book being an allegory of the battle between science and religion (religion won, guys!) but was FORCED to write on gender, the most clichéd topic of them all. Still, though, this book made an impression on me. (To clarify, I wasn’t excited that religion won. I’m excited that said conclusion fit with my hypothetical essay.)

Bottom line: I think I liked this? I definitely recommend it. It’s cool to see what initiated (not actually but don’t @ me) all our cultural stuff with vampires. (Still not that into them though. I say while technically currently reading some dumb book about them.)

If I were Bram Stoker, I would remake the old Melanie hit. Remember this one?

Look what they done to my song, ma
look what they done to my song
well it's the only thing that I could do half right
and it's turning out all wrong ma
look what they done to my song

The Count might have sung it as

Uite ce au facut sa ma cantec, mama
Uite ce au facut cintecul meu e singurul
lucru care i s-ar putea face jumatate
dreptate si e intorcandu-se in toate regula mama
uite ce au facut sa ma cintec

Reviewing Dracula in this era of overly sexualized young vampettes and vamparistas is like praising the sexual allure of Clara Bow and Jean Harlow.

Dracula was the first “grown up” book I read. At 12, it was a great choice! It made my heart race and my skin crawl. But I doubt a modern reader would have the same reaction. Poor Dracula, rewritten, cartooned, parodied, and Buffyfied in countless ways. He's undead, but only as a Halloween costume and a footnote in an essay about Stephanie Meyer.

Despite all that, and Stoker's verbose Victorian style, I still give it five stars. It's filled with the sexual hysteria the Victorians loved to write about, from Wuthering Heights to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. They couldn't mention sex directly, so they used language to hint and wink, often talking about purity, chastity, and its opposite. Bosoms were okay, but anything below the waist was off-limits, except for shapely ankles and well-turned feet. You can see they were desperate to write about sex, and Bram Stoker found vampires as a metaphor. The sexual dread that fills Dracula is like a thick London fog, and it's all about seduction. That's what Stoker wanted to write about - seduction and sexual enslavement. Why do good girls fall for bad men? The Count is the ultimate seducer. He comes at night, gets into your fiance's bedchamber, and you have to drive a big phallus through his heart. I get it. Bram Stoker was passionate about all this.

Bram Stoker invented many of the vampire tropes here and included some outrageous scenes. Three beautiful female vampires arguing over a baby in the middle of the night, three men giving a woman a blood transfusion with just a rubber hose, and the Count climbing a castle wall as fast as a man can run. Great stuff!

I say read Bram Stoker, read Let the Right One In, and avoid Twilight.

Yesterday I completed reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It was a wonderful experience as I read it with a group of friends on Goodreads, and we all finished on the same day. What's more, we all began on May 3rd, and hundreds of people around the world did the same.

In case you think that spending 6 months on one novel is a long time and that this is a peculiarly specific time frame, I should probably explain.

If you have read Dracula, you may well remember that it is an epistolary novel. It consists of letters, diaries, telegrams, and newspaper clippings, and every part has a date. The entire story takes place between May 3rd and November 10th, over one year (apart from a sort of coda, which is 7 years later). Have you guessed yet?

We have all been part of “Dracula Daily”, a project that sorts the book into strict chronological order and sends the daily entries by email as they occur. It is a kind of “real time” read. So, if someone is imprisoned in a castle for months, you have the authentic sense of time passing and might know what the other characters are doing on exactly the same day. You might also read one short 3-line telegram one day and have 4 or 5 long diary entries to read on another day, sometimes telling the same events from multiple perspectives. There are also days when nothing happens, with the longest stretch being a fortnight or more.

Does it work? Yes, quite a few of us read the whole novel this way. But I have to say that it is impossible to compromise. Back in May, I thought I would wait to see which part of a chapter was due that day, only to find that some parts were skipping ahead, some paragraphs apparently missing, and others backtracking according to the written order. In fact, all the text is there, but I had to stick to the prescribed content. This means that I would now like to read the novel again, in Bram Stoker’s original order, perhaps in a couple of years’ time.

As I said, following the true timeline adds a kind of authenticity to the feeling of time passing, but it means that it is impossible to judge how well the novel itself is paced. Besides the incarceration I mentioned, another part that seemed far too slow was the time spent on a ship at the other end of the novel. Other sections that I might have preferred to dwell on felt a little rushed.

On the other hand, I think a slow read benefited this novel. I tend to like horror stories that slowly inculcate fear, chilling and terrifying me by making me conjure up demons in my own imagination. The master of classic creepy tales for me is M.R. James’s insidious and atmospheric prose, rather than Edgar Allan Poe’s explicit descriptions. Of Dracula, M.R. James specifically said that it was: “a book with very good ideas in it, but—to be vulgar—the butter is spread far too thick. Excess is the fault here”.

I can see that compared with M.R. James’s subtly understated chills, Bram Stoker’s prose could seem overblown. Reading the novel slowly seems to decrease the sense of melodrama and increase the excitement and threat factor. And it has to be acknowledged that Dracula is the novel that has spawned the plethora of vampire fiction ever since. There were other incarnations earlier, from 18th-century poetry to Sheridan Le Fanu’s tale “Carmilla”, but it’s a fairly safe bet that anyone you ask to name the most famous classic vampire story will say Dracula (which was written in 1897). The two words have become almost synonymous.

Dracula simply has to be a 5-star story. And if you too would like to try reading in “real time” starting next May, it does seem to be an annual event if you google: “Dracula Daily”.