From the Bookshelf of The Reading Challenge Group…

Dracula

Bram Stoker

Start date: October 1, 2014

Finish date: October 31, 2014

Discussion: Group Read Archive 2014-16

Discussion leader: Renee M

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Showing 2 of 139 topics — 2,834 comments total

Group Read Archive 2014-16

Genre Group Read (Humour) - December 2016 - You Are Not So Smart
By Allison , Quest Hound · 11 posts · 30 views

last updated Dec 28, 2016 04:05PM

Alternate Group Read (Classics) - December 2016 - Mansfield Park
By Allison , Quest Hound · 5 posts · 18 views

last updated Dec 04, 2016 09:34AM

showing 10 of 49 topics view all »

What Members Thought

Jun 20, 2012 Faye rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy-scifi, british-literature, all-time-faves

I would ask "Where has this book been all my life??", but I know exactly where it's been - right at the bottom of my to-read list. I am not a vampire fan. I do not find vampires sexy. (Seriously, if a monster drinking human blood is sexy, then so is a human eating a pig's rump. Which it isn't.) I only picked it up to read it because I'd given Frankenstein a shot earlier this year and was pleasantly surprised, so I thought it was only fair that I'd give Dracula a shot, even though I was positive I would ask "Where has this book been all my life??", but I know exactly where it's been - right at the bottom of my to-read list. I am not a vampire fan. I do not find vampires sexy. (Seriously, if a monster drinking human blood is sexy, then so is a human eating a pig's rump. Which it isn't.) I only picked it up to read it because I'd given Frankenstein a shot earlier this year and was pleasantly surprised, so I thought it was only fair that I'd give Dracula a shot, even though I was positive that I would hate it. I thought this was a book about sexy vampires! Boy was I wrong.

Having never seen a Dracula movie, here's what I thought I knew - there was this vampire named Count Dracula who lived in Transylvania. There was this guy named Jonathan Harker who was in love with Mina. Dracula was in love with Mina, too, and wanted her all to himself. Much bitter rivalry and swooning and hissing and vahnting-to-suck-your-blahd occurred. Somehow the good guys made the undead dead. The end.

How could my information on this book have been so wrong? Why didn't anyone tell me that there was TEAM in this book?? That "little band of men" (and non-swooning Mina!) who pledged to have each other's backs as they walked right into the face of certain death armed with faith and courage and sharp knives and Winchester rifles and came out triumphant! This is not a book about vampires. Much less is it a book about a vampire who falls in love. This is a book about good people who never give up their fight against evil.

I loved that it was written as nightly diary entries. It made it creepier somehow that these people weren't able to put the clues together while you the reader could see the big picture, and you never knew from one entry to the next whether they were going to live to write another one. I loved every single one of the characters - Jonathan, Mina, Lucy, Dr Seward and his crazy fly-eating patient, Van Helsing, Arthur, Quincey, even many of the side-characters that they interviewed or crossed paths with. And Dracula himself wasn't cheesy or cliche! That was the biggest surprise for me of all. He was hardly even in this book.

Bram Stoker was an incredible writer and storyteller, and there were times when I honestly could not put this book down. I still don't like vampires, and I still don't find vampirism sexy - but I love a good monster hunt and to see good, God-fearing folk saving the day. And that, to me, is what Dracula is all about. ...more

7 likes · Like · see review

Jul 29, 2019 Chinook rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001

I can’t believe I waited so long to read this because it was so amazing. How did I skip over it back during my vampire phase in Korea? So much fun! I listened to the audiobook read by a British man who did an amazing job of all the accents and I was so into the narration that I was happy to do more housework as an excuse to listen to it. I was surprised to find how well the diary entries and letters format worked. The thing that amused me the most was that everyone was all best buds and madly in ...more

3 likes · Like · see review