Random rant about Dracula...
OK, so I've got my Lit exam coming up soon (as well as a bunch of others) so I'm having a last minute re-read of Bram Stoker's Dracula to make sure I haven't missed out on any good quotes (we have to remember quotes because it's a closed book exam!) or ideas in the story. Anyway, I didn't like it the first time I read it and I really really don't like reading it this time around!
I mean the women don't really do anything, the men somehow seem to always end up crying or calling the women 'sweet' or 'dear' or something like that and they always refer to each other as 'my friends'. I was actually looking forward to reading it the first time, but then I realised that Dracula is hardly in it and it's just basically a load of diary entries that consist of 'I did this...then I did that...Van Helsing said this...' and then Stoker seems to have a fascination with writing different dialects so precisely that some parts are impossible to read.
OK so it's a classic, and I suppose there are some good things about it - but I wanted to know how Dracula came to be Un-dead... I wanted fighting and when people died I wanted to feel sad. Instead, I got a lot of people talking about how to kill him and why he needed to be killed, rather than action.
I suppose I'm a bit biased, because I had to read this book, then I found out that one of my teachers would have actually preferred to do Paradise Lost (which I think would have been much more interesting). It's also really difficult to find quotes quickly and remember them. I've also read a lot of books like Twilight, House of Night and Vampire Academy so I have a different view towards vampires than the readers in Stoker's time...
Anyway, I'm posting this because I'm annoyed that I have to read what I think is a really boring book instead of editing my fic which I wanted to post tonight. It feels good to rant, and I've actually realised in writing this that the only reason I can properly give for disliking the novel is that I just don't like it... and maybe because the "good" characters are all too "good" (yes they have flaws, but they don't have any don't have any darker sides buried deep down inside them that they are guilty about).
Well, rant over - it's time to read my allotted 60 pages for tonight :(
alucinor-dream
(I've just realised how much of a cow I sound - I don't usually act like this - honest)