You'll be amazed at how different the story is from the movie! Stoker's writing is wonderfully descriptive.
Child's book of Vampires.
Beware Count Dracula. He has been dead for certuries...yet still he walks the earth. He is a vampire-brilliant, bloodthirsty, and cruel. He hides from the light of day and emerges at night to search for his next victims. His Transylvania castle is a dark and mysterious place, where terror is constant and survival is rare. Visitors are always welcome...to a fate worse than death.
this was good. interesting. i'm glad i read this, the only "version" i'd read before was the movie tie-in and now i see how much of the story they re-wrote so it would follow the films story-line. as another pbs-er would say, phooey on re-writing the story. because it's written as a series of letters and journal entries it doesn't develop a good rhythm and flow like most novels, but that's part of its charm.
A well written, frightening story. Not the kind of frightening that will keep you up at night, but enough to keep you reading. Written in 19th century "language", you really feel transported back to a different time. This was our book club's October read; we found all sorts of things to talk about!
Abridged on two cassettes. Nice reading by Richard E. Grant (who played Dr. Seward in the movie)!
I had heard so many great reviews on this book. But it just wasn't for me. I made myself finish it.
The full original version. Excellent reading
The original unabridged classic Vampire story by Bram Stoker.
Nosferatu, vrolok, demon---For centuries he has ruled armies of wolves, hordes of rats, legions of walking undead. He becomes a bat, a shadow, a moonbeam. He corrupts the pure and destroys the innocent. He enters dreams and torments minds. Now he means to take our world and feast forever on our blood.
But six people have faced his horror--and lived! Six mortals desperate enough to hunt him, to dare his evil. Mina Harker, whose coruage saved her husband from madness; lawyer Jonathan Harker, who unwittingly set him loose; millionaire adventurer Quincey Morris, Lord Godalming, and Dr. John Seward, who were forced to kill the woman they all loved . . . twice.
And Van Helsing, Professor Abraham Van Helsing, who alone knows his immortal ways, who knows the true danger to the hunters' lives and souls, who alone knows what it means to challenge the evil of DRACULA!
Forget "Twilight." This is THE original vampire tale, in all its gothic, overly-dramatic glory. The Count's forbidden love of a mortal and her eventual succumbing to him is beautifully told in this book. See where all the hype began by reading this. If you can get past the flowery language, you'll be hooked!
I loved reading this legendary story!
Bram Stoker's 1897 classic was a wonderful Halloween reading treat. Told through journal entries, letters, and newspaper clippings, the tale of Count Dracula takes some abrupt twists and turns, especially as Transylvania segues to the shores of England and the quest to destroy the Undead nears its end. I found the plot pleasantly suspenseful (and it would have been even more so if the story had not permeated the popular imagination), and the characters exude a sense of camaraderie. Beyond a good Gothic story, those interested in gender roles, Victorian nationalistic tensions, science versus superstition, and madness will find the story ripe for analysis.
A classic novel-a must read for fans of vampire stories.
Horror
Of the many admiring reviews Bram Stokers Dracula received when it first appeared in 1897, the most astute praise came from the author's mother, who wrote her son: 'It is splendid. No book since Mrs. Shelley's Frankenstein or indeed any other at all has come near yours in originality, or terror.' A popular bestseller in Victorian England, Stoker's hypnotic tale of the bloodthirsty Count Dracula, whose nocturnal atrocities are symbolic of an evil ages old yet forever new, endures as the quintessential story of suspense and horror. The unbridled lusts and desires, the diabolical cravings that Stoker dramatized with such mythical force, render Dracula resonant and unsettling a century later.
