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Jan 17, 2012

Lady Danielle "The Book Huntress" rated it:

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories turned out to be a relatively quick read. Here are my thoughts on these stories:

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

This was a little different than I expected. It's rather introspective, if that's an appropriate word. The emphasis is not on the action or the dirty deeds that Mr. Hyde perpetrates. Instead, the focus is on the duality of the natures of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In truth, they are not sep More...

4 comments like (14 people liked it)

Jan 17, 2012

Trevor rated it:

I can’t really tell you what I was expecting when I started this story – except, of course, that I wasn’t quite expecting what I got.

This is another of those ‘classic tales’ that I’ve long assumed I’ve known, but never have really known at all. I had images in my head of foaming test tubes or beakers and of hair spouting from the backs of hands. To be honest, I also had visions of lots of sex too. Unlike Frankenstein, this story mostly lives up to what I guess could be called its More...

5 comments like (8 people liked it)

Jan 17, 2012

Cindy rated it:

Party of my creepy Halloween reads. boo!

Just a quick note: Jeckyll & Hyde was fairly entertaining, filled with the archaic Victorian verbal effluvia. "It was a wild, cold, seasonable night of March, with a pale moon, lying on her back as though the wind had tilted her, and flying wrack of the most diaphanous and lawny texture." Oh those lawny textures! As usual with these old stories, the mechanisms of the story telling (from the POV of a 3rd party, the tale in retrospect, More...

9 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jan 17, 2012

Jason rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 17, 2012

± Colleen of the Crawling Chaos ± rated it:

Jekyll and Hyde is one of those stories that everyone 'knows' but very few people actually have read. I was well aquainted with the general idea of the story from it's various permutations, but this is the first time I read it. One of the major differences is that in almost every version I can think of, Hyde is some hulking brute, but in the story he's actually smaller, physically. I found that interesting, and odd.

Other than that, though, I wasn't entirely enthralled with the sto More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 17, 2012

Jaclyn rated it:

Confession - I joined a new book club. I felt like I was cheating on my California book club. I promise I was thinking about them while we discussed the duality of man - the carnal and the supernal. This concept is one those universal battles that all people face- though many do not acknowledge the battle between being their best self and indulging in life's pleasures. Dr. Jekyll is a good man with a good idea about separating our dueling selves, but of course, it does not work out the way More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 28, 2011

D. rated it:

Classic story of a good man exploring his dark side. Terrific classic horror tale. Smart and well-written, and the age of the language use gives it perfect (authentic) flavor. Dr. Jekyll, as everyone knows, wishes to explore the nature of Man, and through a potion he concocts he is able to transform himself from a man who is knowledgeable and conscientious, able to consciously steer himself away from evil, into a man who personifies all the dark and deviant things that man holds locked away i More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 17, 2012

Jonathan rated it:

The tale of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is so well known that I knew the premise of this tale before I begun. However what surprised me was the difference between the actual tone and the tone I expected. I truly thought that this would read similar to Frankenstein or Dracula with their Gothic ambience. Yet instead I read a novel that tasted (yes I devoured this rather short novel) like Victorian crispness. It was sharp and tightly structured unlike the flowing nature of the other monster classics and More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 17, 2012

Smita rated it:

What an exceptional read! I've read this classic in the past but truly appreciated it this time around when I read it in one sitting...just couldn't put it down.

Reminiscent of Mark Twain's quote, "Every man is a moon and has a dark side that he shows to no one," Stevenson poignantly explores the theme of man's duality, perhaps a "fragmentation of personality" that is brought upon by the modern world.

After completion of this book, I am hoping to see a the More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 28, 2011

Brittany rated it:

I really liked the concept of the book. The split between good and evil in everyone, and how Jekyll devolved into basically pure evil in the end. I almost pitied him as he realized he would/could no longer exist, even though he didn't feel too remorseful about the things he did (aside from the killing of Carew). Also, the idea that Hyde may not have been purely evil, trying to change himself back to Jekyll before realizing it was useless and killing himself. I'm not sure if he was just kille More...

6 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 17, 2012

Angela rated it:

One of the nice things about reading a lot of ebooks as of late is the sheer number of older classic works available in public domain electronic copies. Among these is the Feedbooks ebook edition of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson, and I decided it was high time I read it.

We all of course know the basics of the story, but what I didn't know was that the original story is not from Jekyll's point of view at all, but rather from that of a third par More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 17, 2012

Shannon rated it:

Jekyll and Hyde: The dual nature

This is also available at my blog, 149 Novels.

There's a popular question: if you could choose a super power, would you choose flight, or invisibility? The question is deceptive, because it's not just about entering the world of comic book heroes. It's about why you want that power. People who want to fly want to get someplace quickly, want to stop paying for transportation, and want to show off. In an episode of This American Life, one man More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 28, 2011

The other John rated it:

The introduction to this book has a great quote: "...Stevenson's story is more known about than actually known..." This was certainly true for me, and ever since enjoying The League of Extra-ordinary Gentlemen*, I had a desire to change that. I finally managed to snag a copy of the tale and read it. As you probably know, it's the tale of a Doctor Henry Jekyll, who concocts a potion that transforms him into Mr. Edward Hyde, an amoral man without restraint. Or perhaps you can say that th More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 17, 2012

Chris rated it:

As I'm going to see the play Jekyll & Hyde this weekend, I felt compelled to reread the book. The first thing I was struck by was the size of the novel. I remembered it being short, but I didn't realize just how short it is. The edition I'm reading has less than a hundred pages for Jekyll & Hyde and then takes another hundred pages to present 3 of Stevenson's short stories and a brief editorial note.

Despite its short size, the writing is dense in portions. Steeped in heavy Victor More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 17, 2012

Lee rated it:

I only really wanted to read the strange case of dr Jekyll and mr Hyde when I picked up this book, and while I really enjoyed that story, I was pleasantly surprised by some of the other short stories in this book. Most of the stories are strange tales of sinners and murderers.

All of them are entertaining in their own right, but the highlight of the book for me was The Misadventures of John Nicholson, a story about a hapless boy who is cursed with terrible luck and accused of crimes he More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 17, 2012

Julie rated it:

I am actually just listening to the main story (as read beautifully in the LibriVox version) in order to participate in the SFFaudio readalong discussion. I originally listened when Heather Ordover at CraftLit discussed the book a couple of years ago (?). Perfect listening for October and I am very much enjoying going over the story again.

A fascinating look at good and evil and a short read actually. If you have only seen a movie or know "what everyone knows" about this story More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 17, 2011

Emma rated it:

I remember a day from when I was young. Somewhere between the ages of four and seven.

Mom was out for an afternoon of shopping and Dad was babysitting, which meant that we were allowed to watch whatever we wanted on TV. Well, not really. If we'd tried to watch some sex comedy or horror movie, Dad would have intervened and cut us off. But practically anything; anything that a seven-year-old would actually want to watch. Like the Cartoon Network.

We turned on Looney Tunes. I More...

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Sep 12, 2011

Beth rated it:

God, what a horrible, insufferable slog of a book. (This review refers solely to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, not the other "tales of terror.")

My editions (GR doesn't list it) is 88 pages long. 88 pages has never felt longer or nastier or...yes, the crtiicism of the uneducated and impatient and blah blah blah, so BORING. It took me six days to read. For an 88 page book!

I'll admit it: I'm judging Jekyll and Hyde solely on the book I expected to ge More...

2 comments like

Sep 10, 2011

Luke rated it:

Nothing like settling down with an old classic and being brilliantly surprised. Jekyll and Hyde is one of those stories where you think you know it all after the countless interpretations rolled out year after year. The story starts as a mystery. We are told of peoples' strange interactions with a new resident of London. The dwarfish and creepy Edward Hyde. As a lawyer known as Mr Uterrson investigates he discovers there is a strong link between this Mr Hyde and the well respected Dr Jekyll. Whe More...

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Sep 20, 2011

Stephanie rated it:

Robert Louis Stevenson does an excellent job in this tale of a man seeking to better himself and society. The way the author examined the psycology of this piece and the amount of details added really intrigued me. I felt that I could relate to the characters in the story and felt the suspense as the reader was slowly becoming aware of just what was going on throughout the story. This story had a very heightened climax at the end in the laboratory where the reader gets to really see the full hap More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 04, 2012

Tori rated it:

I actually really liked this book. Of course I knew the story line way beforehand, and I expected a three star, nice but not-really-my-type-of-story, read. I'm not sure why I even thought that, because I love novels like Journey to the Center of the Earth and other Science Fiction of that era, maybe it was the monster thing.

(I might just have really liked it because it was the first book I'd read after reading quite a bit of Shakespeare and Le Morte d'Arthur and it just felt good to More...

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Jan 17, 2012

Eric rated it:

I think everyone is familiar with the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, however, I don’t think most of us know how the story was originally told. For one thing it’s written in more of the style of a psychological thriller than a horror story. A great deal of philosophical debate goes on about the duality of man. Most of the narrative is from observers, friends of the “good” doctor and his horrible friend Hyde. I really enjoyed the story.
Of the other stories I only really liked two of them More...

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Jan 17, 2012

Breanna rated it:

A great piece, especially for its time. I read it as part of course material, but enjoyed it more than some of the other works of the same era. Some of the descriptions were surprisingly grotesque; I assumed they might be a bit watered down due to the era in which this was written - but this is definitely something everyone should read.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 17, 2012

Stephen rated it:

With one of the most well known twists in fiction, it's easy to forget on reading The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that it was written as a mystery novel. As with the creation of Frankenstein's monster the transformation Dr. Jekyll undergoes to become Mr. Hyde is not described as it happens and and the connection is not revealed to the reader until the final act. Nowadays "Jekyll and Hyde" has become a common expression associated with split-personality disorder and so the w More...

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Jan 17, 2012

Ane rated it:

The thing I love about books like this is the author's view on mortality, good vs. evil, things that make you think deeper than just the storyline going on. I wish I didn't know the story about it being one man because it certainly would've been the twist of the century, but it was still a good short story! :)

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 20, 2011

Julie rated it:

I regret to say as an AP English teacher that I have never read this book so I picked it up after realizing that it is only about 60 pages long and finished it over the weekend. It is older language so difficult to read but very skillfully written. It is told from a completely different perspective than I imagined and I was surprised at its similarity to Frankenstein. I plan to use parts of the book with the Frankenstein unit I teach. Overall, I can see why this is a classic and enjoyed the quic More...

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Feb 04, 2012

Nur Aulia rated it:

I had heard story about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but I actually didn't know what was up to those men.

Then on my birthday, my grandfather gave me some money to buy books. I was around bookstore, holding Mockingjay in my hand, and had no freaking idea what to buy next.

That was when I found this 128 pages book. Like I said on my previous post, I was about on page thirty-something when I began reading books from library, because I only had three days to finish them.

More...

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Jan 19, 2012

Sam rated it:

A brilliantly written collection of stories that reflect the complexities and desires of the human conditions. The classic tale of Jekyll and Hyde reflects how people yearn to be someone else or lead a double life. I found Jekyll's character more interesting than Hyde's. Hyde was clear in his wants and desires and did what he wanted, how he wanted and when he wanted while Jekyll was clearly far more restrained and controlled. The comparison between the two characters reflects on the dual and com More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 19, 2011

Tatra rated it:

This isn't my edition, I have a 1963 Schoolastic books edition, but I couldn't be bothered to make a new edition for it. Anyway, onto the review.

It's funny, I tried to read this book over a decade ago and didn't get anywhere on it. I read this book in less than three hours over the course of today. And I actually really liked most of this book. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was a great read and I really liked the Bottled Imp. Markheim really didn't engage me at all More...

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Jan 10, 2012

Claire rated it:

I was surprised that there wasn't more meat to this story - I'd always imagined a tall tale with alot of meat to it but this classic always passed me by. As one of the January book club books on it went into my Kindle and so the reading began. Nearly every click of the kindle indicating another percent done - quite exciting but also quite short. The story is well known, hard to imagine what the impact would've been like if it wasn't - the obvious moral to take from reading is the duality of p More...

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