Dracula: Reviews by 2019 Reading Challengers

[Winter, Group Reads]

Tell us what you thought of the book! You can leave your review here. Even if you read the book outside of the group, please feel free to let us know what you thought of it.

Please make sure to mark your spoilers by typing "[spoiler]" at the start and [/spoiler] at the end but replacing the []s with <>s.

[Marc *Dark Reader with a Thousand Young! Iä!*]

I tried, I really did, but after struggling to finish 40 pages in 4 days I had to call it. DNF at 20%.

There are multiple reasons why I abandoned this book. For one, it was clear that there would be no surprises. Even having never read the book, I knew everything that was going to happen, because I have been alive in Western civilization for a decent chunk of the last 122 years. I was into horror movies and monsters as a kid; was in a play based on Dracula in high school; have seen Fright Night, all of Buffy (including the season 8 comics - nerd!), the Keanu Reeves movie, Willem Dafoe in Noseferatu, the list goes on and on, so (view spoiler)[Vlad, Mina, Lucy, Dr. Seward, Renfield, the sexy vampire girls, coffins, soil from the native land, stakes... (hide spoiler)] I got it.

Next, the writing was not that great. It was okay, I guess, but I have read plenty more compelling classics. I expect that I would have no trouble re-reading Frankenstein. I have no issue with the format of novel-through-letters/journals/whatever that was the norm back then. This simply failed to draw me in. I tried to read on the bus but my attention kept drifting away. I tried to read at home but just fell asleep. The only part that started to grab my attention was the first scene with the vampiress trio, which was tantalizing. But, shortly thereafter, the narrative shifts to Mina and Lucy's letters, and oh boy, was that ever a pitiful display of weeping and internalizing the idea of "the weaker sex". "Oh, I'm Lucy, and I feel so for the young men who proposed to me and I had to turn down, I'm going to cry just writing to my best friend about it, pardon the tears on this paper!" Pbbbttthhhtt. The final nail was the attempt to portray dialects and accents in the friends' letters. The Texan speech was absurd, as were the following undefinable accents.

Last, I just wasn't in the mood to try and slog through it. You should know that it is extremely rare that I don't finish a book once started. I really should have done this more often in the past year; two instances that stick in my mind are Mercedes Lackey and co-author's This Scepter'd Isle, which was infinitely boring, but I kept reading because it was a buddy read of sorts. I also should have DNF'd Donald Stephenson's Lord Foul's Bane, which was vile on so many levels, but I did not because it often holds place in accounts of fantasy publishing history and I have been trying to experience such for myself. With Dracula, I attempted to manufacture similar motivation (classic/foundational vampire story) but given my overall poor mood during the days that I tried to read it and my preceding experiences, I chose to experience joy instead.

May this be the first of many DNF's in the future! I am now reading Joe Hill's Full Throttle and having an infinitely better time of it. Life's too short to not enjoy one's book.

Still, I appreciate this pick for the Group Read this month (I love the variety in this group's picks) and hope others enjoy it more than I did.

[Megan]

Just finished Dracula by Bram Stoker. I enjoyed this much more than I expected! I really liked the writing and found the descriptions to serve the ultimate purpose of the novel. I enjoyed the stitching together of journal entries and letters to tell the story. I did not enjoy the dated view of women; I know it was 1897, and the novel actually seems to be ahead of its time on the view of women, but still, ugh. Also, I found the ultimate ending to be rather rushed and a little anticlimactic. Overall, definitely worth reading! 4 stars

[Trisha]

There is nothing that beats my love for old classics, I repeat - nothing! And then I came across this overhyped piece of work. Now I obviously know that this book was written in 1897 and was ahead of its time (Was it? Wasn’t Frankenstein written in 1818?), however, I do not feel that it deserves all the appreciation it has garnered over a few centuries. The concept of Vampirism was brand new at that time and considering the fact that Stoker had spent seven years intensively researching the European folklore and Vampires before he wrote down this book, I agree that this work spearheads all Vampire tales written later. BUT, oh! the drama, the repetition of facts, the extremely slow pace of the book, the blabbering of the characters and not to forget, the climax which felt rushed and left no stone unturned to ruin the story. Also, the biggest drawback of all is the absence of action from the central character - Count Dracula who is the least used character in the book, despite the book being named on him. Except for the first 3 chapters, we don’t see him doing anything at all. Why would you write a book on a character that’s mostly MIA? Why, oh why? (In Mina’s dramatic voice).

For the love of Dracula, I will never recommend this book to anyone.
3/5🌟.

[Woman Reading]

Finished it today & here's my review:

Www.goodreads.com/review/show/3026291500

[Amy]

This one was tough to get through. I think I only finished it because I am stubborn. It did have a few things going for it though. First, it did not depict women as weak or stupid, which is a nice surprise given the era it was written in. Second, it did pick up a bit towards the middle. Third, it was better than Frankenstein (barely).