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thewlisian_afer) wrote2008-10-20 10:50 pm
thewlisian_afer) wrote2008-10-20 10:50 pm
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[REVIEWS] Book: Dracula by Bram Stoker
Dracula by Bram Stoker
I'm not sure why I'd never read Dracula before now. I've owned a copy for as long as I can remember. I just never actually picked it up. It was the beginning of July when I first cracked it open and gave it a shot. Unfortunately, I'd just read a long stretch of contemporary fiction and couldn't automatically get into the way this was written. Also, I kept picturing Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker, and that made the little lolme in my head go, "lulz! stfu, tool!" which makes it very hard to take anything seriously. I kept trying for a few days but I couldn't get far enough into it in one sitting to become engaged and to get used to the writing style. I wound up setting it aside and reading a bunch of plays, a dozen or so Goosebumps books, some graphic novels, the Twilight series, and a few other things instead.
Then, after about three months, I listened to the first two chapters in audio book form. (Hooray for LibriVox.org!) That did the trick! I was used to the style of the novel and I was hearing a voice other than Keanu's! (I'd never realized exactly what horrible casting that was until actually reading the book. What the hell were they thinking?) I fell in love pretty much instantly, as I always suspected would happen. So much is glossed over in film versions (which I also love, in their own way). There weren't really characters that I didn't like, which is amazing. Most of the time, the characters that I dislike far outnumber the ones that I care for. Lucy was the only one here that I wanted to go away. And that was mostly because the story couldn't really move forward until she died but she kept freakin' holding on! I did rather dislike her before that, though. What a twit.
During a business visit to Count Dracula's castle in Transylvania, young English solicitor Jonathan Harker soon finds himself at the center of a series of horrifying incidents -- he is attacked by three phantom women, observes with horror the count's transformation from human to bat form, and is shocked to discover, on his own neck, puncture wounds that seem to have been made by teeth.
Managing to escape the count's grim fortress, Harker returns to England, where he learns from his fiancée of a strange malady afflicting her friend Lucy, whose sleepwalking, inexplicable blood loss, and mysterious throat wounds lead Harker and others on a frantic vampire hunt.
I'm not sure why I'd never read Dracula before now. I've owned a copy for as long as I can remember. I just never actually picked it up. It was the beginning of July when I first cracked it open and gave it a shot. Unfortunately, I'd just read a long stretch of contemporary fiction and couldn't automatically get into the way this was written. Also, I kept picturing Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker, and that made the little lolme in my head go, "lulz! stfu, tool!" which makes it very hard to take anything seriously. I kept trying for a few days but I couldn't get far enough into it in one sitting to become engaged and to get used to the writing style. I wound up setting it aside and reading a bunch of plays, a dozen or so Goosebumps books, some graphic novels, the Twilight series, and a few other things instead.
Then, after about three months, I listened to the first two chapters in audio book form. (Hooray for LibriVox.org!) That did the trick! I was used to the style of the novel and I was hearing a voice other than Keanu's! (I'd never realized exactly what horrible casting that was until actually reading the book. What the hell were they thinking?) I fell in love pretty much instantly, as I always suspected would happen. So much is glossed over in film versions (which I also love, in their own way). There weren't really characters that I didn't like, which is amazing. Most of the time, the characters that I dislike far outnumber the ones that I care for. Lucy was the only one here that I wanted to go away. And that was mostly because the story couldn't really move forward until she died but she kept freakin' holding on! I did rather dislike her before that, though. What a twit.