Dracula by Bram Stoker

Finally, this book has been on my list practically forever, I finally got to it! Can you believe that although I've heard of Dracula of course, I'd never seen the films so I didn't actually know the story? Seriously, you'd think I've been living under a rock or something.

The main thing that I didn't expect from Bram Stoker's Dracula was that it wasn't about Dracula, in that it wasn't a story told from his perspective. I kind of assumed that it would be. So I was surprised at how many other characters were involved and that it was a tale of a whole bunch of people.

Once I got used to that, I really, really liked it. I liked the historical side of it and I enjoyed the pretty-society-meets-vampire aspect of it. I loved that it was written as a series of journal entries by various characters and that it had things like letters and newspaper clipping thrown in as well.

I didn't find it spooky, but I imagine that the films took care of that. :-) It's an interesting classic that I wasn't expecting to enjoy as much as I did.

Oh, but just like in Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband, the attitude towards women sometimes really made me angry. Every time a woman made progress in the case or came up with a brilliant idea (which was often), the men would think things like 'She thinks like a man'. How did we ever manage to overcome such widely spread prejudice? Did we overcome it at all?

Bram Stoker is another author who I didn't know was Irish. I feel like I'm being led towards Irish authors lately, I'm not sure why. The other author I recently read and didn't know was Irish was Oscar Wilde - Stoker and Wilde knew each other too, which I think is a really bizarre coincidence in my recent reading.

Challenges: R.I.P. Challenge, 1% Well-Read Challenge

Let the Right One In

I can't remember who recommended John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let the Right One In to me, but it was certainly one of you, someone in the blogosphere who shares their thoughts on books with the rest of us. In any case, thanks whoever you were, as I probably would not have picked this up otherwise. There are so many vampire stories these days that you really need a personal recommendation, I think... This Swedish take on vampire stories is great.

Let the Right One In is the story of Oskar, a twelve-year-old boy with a life that I'm sure is not out of the ordinary. He lives with his mother in a mediocre apartment building, his alcoholic father unable to break his habit long enough to form a proper relationship with him. He is badly bullied at school and becomes obssessed with stories of murderers, as they inspire scenes of revenge in his mind. He is a pretty regular bored kid.

Until he meets Eli, a 200-year-old vampire who looks like a girl about his age. They strike up a friendship and pretty much start to love each other. You can imagine that this does not have positive consequences, life becomes even more complicated for young Oskar.

Their relationship grows amid mysterious ritual murders, unexplained events and the tedium of the dreary housing estate they live on. The story never stagnates, even though I suppose it's not that eleborate, as stories go.

The characters, however, shine. The author has a way of making fictional people come to life and he gives personal information on even the most secondary of characters. Really, the richness of the people living in this story makes the book worth reading.

Challenges: R.I.P. IV, Genre Challenge, 999 Challenge, 2010 Countdown Challenge