3/5 stars

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Highs and Lows, but Still the Original

So it turns out Count Dracula never actually says “I vant to suck your blood!” Huh.

He does do everything else, however. Turns into a bat. Sleeps in a coffin during the day. Only has powers at night. Hates garlic and crosses. Is immortal–unless beheaded and stabbed through the heart with a stake, of course. There are even hints that vampires are permanently young and beautiful. Oh, but he most definitely does NOT sparkle in the sunlight.

So now you know.

The first half was pretty fun. The second half was quite boring, expect for the few parts where they were either being attacked by a vampire or killing a vampire. The problem is that every time they developed a plan to do something, there were pages and pages of scratch-your-eyes-out boring monologuing…which I suppose is what the Count would have wanted. So maybe that was intentional. But I doubt it.

The fun in reading such a classic is getting a view into the life and ideas in 1897 when it was published. I imagine in a world with out snopes.com or myth busters, reading Dracula would have caused you to question your sanity when you heard things scratching at your window at night!

Overall fun and worth my time, but I did skip over some of the boring parts.