It's the tenth!

[eleanoreader]

Once a month book_memes demands to know: What are you reading?

What book are you currently reading?
How far in are you?
What's it about?
Are you enjoying it?


[my answers in comments]

Comments

[eleanoreader]

What book are you currently reading?
Dracula by Bram Stoker

How far in are you?
About a third

What's it about?
Count Dracula leaves Transylvania and comes to London to nibble people.

Are you enjoying it?
Far, far more than I expected to. It's told in diary excerpts, letters, articles, etc which keeps the point of view changing and tells a wonderfully layered story. It's thoroughly unnerving in places, and the vampire horror canon (bats, wolves, garlic, scaling walls upside down etc.) doesn't even read as cliché, which really surprises me.

[travelingmonkey]

It doesn't read as cliché because it started it. There was no cliché at the time, there were only 3 real vampire stories in existence then and two of them were very short. Dracula and Varney the Vampire were what "made" vampires. But yeah, I felt the same way when I read it. I had thought it might be a little dull/slow, like so much classic stuff from that period tended to be, but it was a highly enjoyable read. The only thing that bothered me was the view of women as frail helpless creatures with lesser intelligence. But it's hardly Stoker's fault, it was the view of the time.

[eleanoreader]

*coughs politely* I was careful to use the word 'canon' so as to avoid the impression that the potential for cliché was anything other than retroactive.

I with you on the degree of womanly helplessness... and male anxiety on their behalf... but I've been on a classic-fiction reading kick for a few months (and sci-fi before that, don't get me started) so I'm both noticing it more, and letting it intrude on the story less.

[travelingmonkey]

Oh I didn't let it get to me when reading the story either, just kinda groaned at each "Wow she is such a remarkable woman! She actually uses her brain (and has one to use, even!) and figured this out!!" thing and shoved it to the back of my head. Most things like that I try to just shove off while reading (people being able to do stuff they very likely wouldn't have, etc), so long as the story itself is good. But when reviewing afterwards, it tends to leave some kind of impression, depending on just how much it was done. And he definitely did it tons in Dracula, lol. It's kind of amusing though, because he really thinks he's being flattering; Mina is such a gem of a woman! She can think, figure stuff out, make reasonable suggestions, doesn't fall into a dead faint at the drop of a hat, like omg, she must be the best woman EVAR! LoL

[queen_ypolita]

I picked Dracula for my book group a couple of years ago mostly out of "it's a classic, I should read it", and found myself enjoying it far more than I had expected, the structure and use of different text types in particular.