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Mar 18, 2010

Lady Danielle "The Book Huntress" rated it:

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

44 comments like (58 people liked it)

Apr 24, 2009

Martine rated it:

'Welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely. And leave something of the happiness you bring!'

These are pretty much the first words spoken to Jonathan Harker, one of the heroes of Bram Stoker's Dracula, upon his arrival at Count Dracula's castle in Transylvania, just minutes after a nightmare journey through the landscape of gothic horror: darkness, howling wolves, flames erupting out of the blue, frightened horses. Within a few days of his arrival, Harker will find himself talking o More...

17 comments like (48 people liked it)

Apr 19, 2008

Jason rated it:

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

The CCLaP 100: In which I read a hundred so-called "classic" books for the first time, then write reports on whether or not I think they deserve the label

Book #13: Dracula, by Bram Stoker (1897)

The story in a nutshell:
To best understand the storyline More...

4 comments like (55 people liked it)

Feb 28, 2011

Paul rated it:

If I was Bram Stoker I’d 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

Which the Count would have sung 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 intor More...

3 comments like (16 people liked it)

Jul 05, 2011

Shannon rated it:

Now here's a novel that is perfect reading for autumn, and added a delicious tremor to the chill air and overcast sky, leaf-littered ground and rotting plants. Which is interesting, considering it's largely set over a long summer.

The story begins with Jonathan Harker, a young lawyer, travelling to Transylvania at the request of his company's client, Count Dracula. The previous lawyer, Renfield, had some kind of breakdown and retired from the business (otherwise known as, being locked More...

21 comments like (16 people liked it)

Oct 22, 2011

Andrea rated it:

I've never been a huge goth/horror fan. I suppose werewolves and undead and all that are okay, as long as the heroes get to smack them good before the story's over. But if it gets too scary, I don't like it. I don't like being seriously scared, I guess. Suspense, that's great, and adventure, but not horror.

Anyway, I really loved this novel. I was a little leery at first, for the reasons mentioned above, and also because of the sometimes association of vampires with sex. I wanted to r More...

2 comments like (9 people liked it)

Jan 07, 2012

Henry rated it:

"Children of the night what music they play". Jonathan Hawker hears those words from Count Dracula, in Castle Dracula ,in Transylvania.What started out as a simple real estate deal by an English solicitor and a foreign nobleman,becomes a blood sucking nightmare. Jonathan is imprisoned by the Count.Three strange, but beautiful women appear in his room looking not quite human.When Dracula arrives also, they fade away....Next day the Englishman can't decide if what he saw last night wa More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Dec 05, 2010

Mike (the Paladin) rated it:

I believe this isn't the edition I read "first" but I did have it. This is an amazing book. I've read reviews by those who disagree and reviews by those who hated the format. But I was swept up in it the first time I read it as a teen and have been every time since.

My advice is don't worry about all the psychological baggage that has been tacked on over the years...and please don't confuse the movie "Bram Stoker's Dracula" with the actual plot, story, and charact More...

3 comments like (20 people liked it)

Jul 20, 2007

Eric rated it:

All cliches were once new. Yet even in Bram Stoker's day, vampire lore had already been around for centuries (indeed, Stoker plundered earlier, though more forgotten, writers on the subject). It is all here in "Dracula": the dark and stormy night, the castle, the funny Eastern European accent, the sexualized nature of vampirism. We've seen it so many countless times by now that we forget that the horror of it all was once fresh...and still is.

"Dracula" remains More...

0 comments like (10 people liked it)

Nov 26, 2010

F.R. rated it:

I’ll be honest, I’ve only actually read ‘Dracula’ once before – when I was twenty or so – and didn’t really think much of it. Jonathan Harker’s opening narrative seemed to me, then, slow and uninvolving and I believe I thought the rest of the book not much of an improvement. One of the joys of art – be it books, films or music – is that you can come back to something with fresh eyes at a later point in your life and appreciate it in a whole different way. ‘Dracula’, this time around, has been a More...

3 comments like (12 people liked it)

Nov 04, 2011

Terence rated it:

I first read Dracula in the tenth or eleventh grade; I still own the Signet paperback edition (which makes it almost 30 years old). It started a love affair with the vampire that had me reading some really crappy stuff in my late high school/early college years. It also had me reading some very good stuff - Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Suzy McKee Charnas, Les Daniels, etc.

When I saw that one of my libraries had it in a Playaway version (read by Robert Whitfield), and I was looking for somet More...

6 comments like (6 people liked it)

Nov 14, 2010

Concannon rated it:

[Please note that this is not so much a review as it is a collection of my various thoughts upon finishing the book.]

Okay, so, here's the thing. I was just browsing through other reviews, and most of them start with, "I don't usually read horror novels..." or something to that degree. But I feel like Dracula isn't really horror, even though it is categorized as such. Classically it is, of course it is. It's a prime example of a Gothic novel. But never at any point whil More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Oct 12, 2010

Hannah rated it:

Rating clarification: 4.5 stars

Welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely. And leave something of the happiness you bring!
Sounds like something fine living maven Martha Stewart would say, doesn't it? Or perhaps the Persian poet Omar Khayyam? Well, you'd be wrong on both counts, as this lovely little welcome speech is from none other then the Count of all counts: Dracula.

I'm sorry it took me so long to read this book. Gotta admit that after the Epic Fai More...

10 comments like (7 people liked it)

Oct 15, 2011

Paul rated it:

This mighty volume should stand apart from all the thousand editions of Dracula because of its great beauty and because of the many interesting, witty, alarming and plain bonkers annotations which would the the main reason it's called The Annotated Dracula.
In 2008 an even more annotated edition was published, by some other people entirely, and that too is gorgeous and devoutly to be requested as a Christmas present. It's called The New Annotated Dracula, to distinguish itself from this o More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Nov 24, 2011

jzhunagev rated it:

More Than Bats, Castles, and Fangs
(A Book Review of Bram Stoker's Dracula)

Conceivably, no other single work in horror fiction has had a greater impact than Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Published in 1897, Stoker’s vision of the vampire, based from a Romanian folklore, has experienced repeated resurgence from time out of mind and had been imitated countless times in books, films and television (even video games) making Count Dracula probably one of the most iconic villains apart from Satan. More...

7 comments like (3 people liked it)

Apr 11, 2008

Werner rated it:

Actually, I read Dracula in a different edition than the Norton one (and so can't comment on that edition's critical features). I'd read a dumbed-down kid's adaptation of it as a child; but when I was in the process of writing my own vampire novel, I wanted to read the real thing, just to experience the roots of the literary tradition. I'm glad that I did!

Of course, Stoker's isn't the first treatment of the vampire theme in literature, though it became the first one to have world-w More...

6 comments like (13 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Shellie rated it:

Forget the Hollywood adapatations. This is the tried and true original and is much more of a buddy novel than a love story. While it does follow the courtship of Mina and Joanathan, there is zero love between the count and Mina as portrayed in the 1990's film adaptation. If you are into hokey special effects and botched storylines, then by all means watch the movie. This on the other hand is a great book, and a very interesting story. Its layed out as several intertwined diaries, letters, an More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Jan 20, 2012

Mariana rated it:

1º livro de 2012 --> DONE!

Este livro veio parar-me às mãos um pouco sem querer. Sabem aqueles momentos em que se está a falar de algo que outra pessoa tem e vocês dizem "tens de me emprestar!" sem intenção completamente consciente de ver o objecto nas mãos durante os próximos tempos? Depois até nos esquecemos que pedimos aquilo emprestado, e normalmente fica o dito por não dito. Pois é, descobri que isso com a Ely não funciona. Na verdade, mal ela o acabou, meteu-mo n More...

4 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 05, 2011

Joseph rated it:

eBook

It's hard, at this point in my life, not to feel as though I've already read this book. The Dracula story has been told and retold and reimagined and reinterpreted so many times that it was kind of shocking to realize I've never actually dealt with Stoker's original work.

That said, I don't feel that I have too much to say about it. Vampires and sex and blood and superstition and science and religion ... it's all kind of played out. The most unexpected part of the More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 09, 2008

Leli rated it:

a great adventure, gak sehoror yg diharapkan, 3,7 *

bram stoker bercerita lewat jurnal dan surat2 yang dibuat tokoh2nya.dekriptif dan mengalir.

dracula, buku impian
vampir, mahluk impian juga
munkin obsesi.., gw sudah kenal mahluk ini sejak umur 4 tahun (pake proyektor keluarga) dan mimpi buruk gw selalu ttg vampir (kualat)

count dracula, tokoh yang diadaptasi stoker dari vlad tepes, pangeran transylvania dari ordo dragul (naga)yang sangat "berda More...

11 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 06, 2008

Juushika rated it:

When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to arrange for an English home purchase for Count Dracula, he becomes a prisoner in Dracula's castle and discovers horrific and unnatural facts about Dracula himself. Not long after, strange events occur in England—a unmanned ship beaches on shore, a madman awaits his master, and a young woman with unexplained puncture wounds on her neck becomes pale and ill. These events bring together a diverse cast of characters who tell the story through their diaries More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Oct 03, 2007

Núria rated it:

'Drácula' me parece un libro con aspectos muy buenos, pero algo irregular. Las dos primeras partes están infinitamente mejor resueltas que el final, que me ha parecido que tardaba en llegar y, por tanto, se acababa matando todo el suspense, y aún así el final-final me ha decepcionado, porque me ha parecido muy anti-climático. La primera parte, con el pobre Jonathan Harker atrapado en el castillo del Conde es lo mejor. Tiene toda la emoción que no tiene el final. Quizás sea la mejor parte porque More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

May 29, 2008

Shaindel rated it:

I hate to admit how many times I've read Dracula; let's just leave it at my first Master's thesis was on Dracula, and let your imagination take it from there. Although Stoker does make errors in the writing of this novel that can make you cringe, it is going to be entertaining, thought-provoking reading until the end of time. No matter what perspective you take it from--feminist, historical, Marxist--it's a brilliant read.

This go-round, I'm thoroughly enjoying thinking about the na More...

15 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 22, 2008

Callie rated it:

I love the way that the story is presented. It consists of journal entries from various characters, so no one but the reader has the full story. I'm not one for murder mysteries or horror novels, but I loved this book! It's a tale that keeps the mind going, while sending chills down your spine.

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Apr 10, 2009

Jesse rated it:

Admire it, certainly, but I can muster up precious little affection for Stoker's famous novel, for despite its reputation as the central progenitor of an enduring mythology I can't but help but find it more as a closing off point than anything else. It discards a lot of the more fascinating elements of vampire mythology that had been developing (I'm thinking specifically of Sheridan le Fanu's Carmilla, read just before), instead establishing precedents that are comparatively dull in their clean More...

7 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jul 05, 2011

Elizabethesaurus rated it:

This is really more of a 4.5-star book, but it didn't quite warrant a full five. The book was basically excellent. I did not think I would enjoy reading a story that was all journal entries and letters, but it worked really well. There were a couple of details that were unclear to me, leaving me confused throughout a great deal of the book whenever those particular issues were discussed, and they were only mostly cleared up by the end of the story. The end seemed quite abrupt after all that More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

S.A. rated it:

I was rather disappointed by this classic. It started out with promise, especially the Jonathan Harker bits. Then all the male characters descended into blubbering worshippers of the two female characters, and by the end of the novel, I was wishing Dracula could snack on all of them and be done with it. I kept having to put it aside and read chapters in between other books, but I managed to finish it at last.

1 comment like (20 people liked it)

Jan 26, 2009

Kristen rated it:

I decided to read Dracula inspired by the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and with the hope that it wouldn't be boring or irrelevant. Luckily, it turned out to be a compelling read, with a solid story and some likable characters (who double as narrators). Dracula also sets in stone much of what we still see in novels, movies, and tv today regarding the vampire myth. And though some things about the novel definitely belonged to another era, it didn't hinder the experience. In fact is was a bit More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Jul 23, 2010

Marion rated it:

I am reading this book in honor of the current rage for vampires. I thought I would go right to the source. I read the four Twilight series books too - one dimensional characters and a really bad female role model. A former student who likes the books told me that she liked Bella a lot better after she became a vampire. It's sad when a girl has to become a vampire in order to gain self esteem. I kept waiting for the books to get better and was only disappointed. There was a lot of potentia More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Nov 06, 2009

Scott rated it:

This is it ... the Necronomicon of vampyrology, a vademecum of quasi-clinical observations concerning what a vampire is, the extent of its powers, and most importantly, how it can be destroyed. And Dracula (1897) is also a wonderfully suspenseful, creepy, and gruesomely good read. Yes, the vampire hunters' expression of devotion to one another can be more sickening than the baptism of blood. Yes, some of the dialect will make you gag. And yes, there's something here to offend just about any mode More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)