Dracula (Penguin Clothbound Classics)

What a grand story. The style is unusual and contributed to the suspense. It shocks me how poorly all the recent movies retell this story.

Great book, some cutting edge themes and even technology for its time. A great book to read chronologically. Thanks Bram!

Definitely a classic and worth reading. However I will have to admit that I did hurriedly run through a lot of it - particularly at the end.

Already familiar with Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the films that have hence been made, I wanted to read the original classic. Upon reading, it took a chapter to get use to the language of that period before I found my flow. The numbered chapters contain sub chapters which are indicated as diary and journal entries, letters and telegrams, but don’t let that deter you as the novel reads as any other with correspondence and the unfolding of the tale. Keep in mind that the dialogue between characters gives the reader an understanding of their relationships which builds up the drama that occurs throughout. As the usual, many differences can be found between film and book throughout the story to it’s very end. It’s a horror classic, read it, you’ll be glad you did.

Very good. Very suspenseful. I enjoyed it immensely. The ending was like a race against time and it was exciting. Great read.

Rereading Dracula after forty years, I find the eerie charm and tightly wound drama still very compelling, though the story is by now too familiar to create in me the terror of imagination that it first did. Dracula himself and the other villains in the story are appropriately horrifying while the heroes, with their long and florid Victorian era speeches, exaggerated nobility and piety, interrupt the reader’s absorption and keep reminding us that this is all just make believe. Van Helsing in particular becomes a comic figure with his stumbling English and grandiosity, rather than the exotic, stalwart man of genius and action that Stoker might have intended. So for me, this book read much like a history, as I tried to imagine it being read afresh by people in the very early 1900’s, and the impact it must have had then. Stoker’s genius and craftsmanship that brought this fable of delicious terror to life more than a century ago still excites us today, and deserves to be read in its original form.

What a tale. I was so pleased to read it again after many fun tv and movie interpretations. Those did good to great jobs with it, but the original was captivating.

I just had to read the source, or rather one of the main sources, that gave birth to the vampire genre. As a long time fan of the movie, I was excited about this book. Reading it, however, was less exciting. First though, I'll talk about what I liked. This novel is told from many perspectives, which I loved. Stoker uses diaries, memos, newspaper articles, and letters to piece together the narrative. It's brilliant, well, mostly. Like those shaky video cam movies where supposedly "lost footage" is found and edited together for the audience, some of the things recorded and how they are recorded are too convenient and rushed. But for the most part, it's a great way of telling this story and it also gives you an intimate glimpse into each of the major characters. You really start to understand and care for them. Unfortunately, that's also a disadvantage. We never get to really "meet" Dracula. We see him as the other characters see him, but we don't understand him or why he is what he is, and how he feels about it. The movie is superior in that regard. Another thing that puts a barrier between the reader and the story is the language. It's written in very old English. But even Shakespeare knew how to talk *to* people and not at them. The Van Helsing character, in particular, comes across as very pretentious and unrealistic in his speech. He's a philosopher, but you have to really read his parts more than once to truly digest it, and it's difficult to believe that the people he's interacting with understand him so easily. But maybe that was just me. Besides that, the descriptions were very good, although sometimes the language was repetitive. Some of the characters' reactions didn't ring very realistic to me. I also had an an issue with the way the author discusses masculinity and femininity, it was annoying and pronounced enough to make me roll my eyes more than once. Looking past that though, the plot was fairly engaging, there's a lot going on. The suspense about where it is all heading was gripping up until the end. Unfortunately, for me, the climax did not justify the build-up. I expected a lot more, and was disappointed about how quickly everything ended.