Dracula (Penguin Classics)

Definitely a classic for a reason. I love the Harkers so much, Mina the most. If you know anything about Bram Stoker outside of his fiction writings, his opinions jump out at you, but if not, it is easy to overlook. Warning: he does use slurs that were common at the time but definitely made me jump in shock for a second.

i like the epistolary nature but i get why some don't

I enjoyed the beginning and the end, but the middle was a bit of slog. I enjoyed the epistolary format and how it allowed for the viewpoint of various characters.

There's two reasons as to why I've given this 3 stars instead of 2:
1- The first 200 pages were the most entertaining out of the whole book.
2- its a classic and I do respect it.

Now the problem was the writing itself, a first person journal entries, thats what basically is but
the first 200 pages was it bearable and at times it was certainly very enjoyable to read, but after that
It ends up taking too long, the characters are so cartoon-y, their emotions are so unrealistic and
cartoon-y, they ramble on and on and on (specially Van Helsing, my god does he ever shut up?
when he talks he rambles for about 2 pages about nothing). after it hits the 200 pages mark, it starts
to to get tedious and hard to get through, so much rambling and little to nothing done.

The writing itself is very bland, boring, the journal entries start to get annoying, and you start to notice the flaws the more you read it.
I really wanted to DnF this but I just wanted to get it done with to rate it fairly.
It should have been a 300 pages book at best.

Now what bothers me the most that I really wanted to know was:
How did Jonathan even manage to escape from the castle?

He did explain that it was impossible, even if he found a key to unlock the door, or escape through
the windows the wolves were waiting for him since they were controlled by Dracula and it was far
away! theres no way from him to run away safely without starving and getting tired, we never got
to know how did his great escape even happen.

How could Dracula even let him escape!

Dracula was an idiot, he had no real plan and it was so easy to kill him, all he was doing throughout the whole story is suck women's blood and thats it, why did he even come to london! if he wanted to
have his own harem of women he could easily do it! but he just never did anything!
so much for the oh so great count Dracula.

So I decided to listen to this because I didn't read it in high school or college, as I never had the chance. After listening to it now - thank god it wasn't assigned in high school. BORING! Hollywood has taken the Dracula character and made him interesting. He's barely in the book and is basically an elusive creature - much like a vampire would be. He's certainly not scary. Nothing is scary in this book. The various points of view that the narrator pops around to made my head spin.
There are plenty of themes that could be discussed in a book group or classroom setting - the dangers of modernity, female sexuality in the Victorian era, fear of outsiders, christian salvation...I wanted to like this classic, but I found it to be just okay.