2024 the best novels of all time review

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(as of Nov 25, 2024 21:39:15 UTC - Details)

A thirst for blood, nocturnal debauchery, hypnotic trances ... this is Dracula. 

Jonathan Harker is travelling to Castle Dracula to see the Transylvanian noble, Count Dracula. He is begged by locals not to go there, because on the eve of St. George's Day, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will come full sway. But business must be done, so Jonathan makes his way to the Castle - and then his nightmare begins. His beloved wife Meena and other lost souls have fallen under the Count's horrifying spell. Dracula must be destroyed.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Puffin Books (August 25, 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 512 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593203380
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593203385
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 12 years and up
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 990L
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 7 - 9
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.19 x 1.58 x 9.31 inches
Reviewer: James M. Rawley
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Oxford World's Classics Luckhurst DRACULA on Kindle is by far the best edition
Review: The Oxford World's Classics DRACULA edited by Roger Luckhurst has the best introduction and the best notes to DRACULA I've ever seen. It outclasses THE ESSENTIAL DRACULA, whose notes push the reader around one way or another. It explains more and it also, wisely, keeps quiet more, letting the book weave its own spell.The introduction shows how DRACULA is a wonderful mix of almost every kind of evil the Victorian English could think of. The vampire has evil features from anti-Catholic prejudice, from anti-Semitic prejudice, from prejudice against Islam, Middle Europe, the unscientific past -- about the only un-English thing that gets a good word is garlic. As the introducer points out, Dracula is in part based on the "real" Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, but is also based on so many other evil rulers and monsters, real and fictional, that no single source for our monster can be cited or believed in.In other words, Stoker got together a lot of reference works and then made Dracula up, and what a stunning, wonderful job he did.The Luckhurst Oxford World Classics edition is available on Kindle for a small price that's well worth its wonderful notes and analysis. Amazon, in its curiously mysterious way, will not show you the book if you just type in DRACULA. You have to type in something like DRACULA OXFORD instead, and I very much suggest you do that. Doing without notes of one kind or another seems out of the question to me. There are passages in a messed-up seaside-town dialect Stoker made up from a reference book, and I contend NO ONE can read these passages without notes. Luckhurst also fits all the superstitions together, to the degree that Stoker lets him, and I think you need that kind of help too.As for Stoker's DRACULA itself, it came across to me in this reading better than it ever had before. I'd read it two or three times in the past, but I'd been overexposed to NOSFERATU and the Lugosi movie, so I misremembered the book, made it cruder in my recollection than it actually was. Two main points I had forgotten (I'm afraid deep DRACULA readers won't think much of me after these admissions -- and watch out, because some of them are mild S-P-O-I-L-E-R-S):1) Jonathan Harker, Dracula's helpless victim throughout the first fifth of the book, not only survives but gets a pat on the back for his manliness from the rest of the novel's many heroes. That was a relief, and unified the book for me. You can't keep a good man down.2) Renfield, the crazy guy who eats flies and spiders, is a good reasoner from a high social class (Luckhurst's annotations make this quite clear, and the way Renfield talks tells the reader the same thing). In movie versions, he's creepy and that's about it. In the novel, he's a philosopher, and some of the most important points about vampire philosophy in general come to us from him.Put these two things together, and the book comes out more intelligent than I remembered, and less pure senseless horror. As pure senseless horror it's just a bit silly. The intelligence and strength of Harker and Renfield save it from that silliness.Lots of people who don't like the book point out that the opening section, where Harker and Dracula face off against one another, is as horrifying as anybody who likes nineteenth century thrillers could possibly want ... but then the book seems to go soft suddenly, focusing on a shallow woman and seeming, for quite a while, like a dull romance novel.Luckhurst's notes, again, helped me get over this impression of slowdown. The nature of manliness and womanliness is tremendously important to Stoker's world-view. As Luckhurst points out, all the novel's manly men break down at one point or another, and are braced up by their need to care for weak, helpless women. All the clichés about masculinity and femininity are dragged out -- and all of them are subverted in the most interesting, and horrifying, possible way.Mina, for example, is a strong, capable woman. Furthermore, she's practically indispensable to the vampire-hunt. The tough doctor, Seward, keeps a diary on phonograph cylinders. He's totally up-to-date, but he forgets even to write a summary of what the cylinders are about, so he can't find anything he told his recorded diary! All he can do is paw helplessly through a drawer full of phonograph cylinders. Mina types them up for him, so that at last the good guys can start tracking Dracula down.But the good guys' decision to keep her out of the rest of their activities, and inform her of nothing as they start sharpening their stakes, makes her immediately fall into Dracula's clutches.In other words, if only they trusted women more, their women wouldn't get hurt so much.Stranger than Dracula himself. But the book has lots of this kind of strangeness. We find out what vampires are bit by bit and bite by bite, but when we're all done, strangely enough, we still don't know what we've really been dealing with: a middle-European monster, or our own monstrous views of how life should go.I never had more fun than with this DRACULA.

Reviewer: Wumpus55
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Great Story!
Review: The story is well developed and written. I really enjoyed the reading. I do not know why the movies cannot simply following the story of the book!

Reviewer: CleoB
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: print on pages a little too small
Review: the edition is attractive, with great black & white spooky illustrations. However, the first paragraph of chapters is in normal size type, but after that very small. the story itself is riveting

Reviewer: MichelleBookAddict
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: The Archetype Vampire
Review: Dracula by Bram Stoker 4.5 stars★Audio on iTunes narrated by Christopher Saul 4.5★DraculaKindle book edition: Dracula (Illustrated) (Top Five Classics) Stoker, Bram 4★Dracula (Illustrated) (Top Five Classics)Start date of journals: May 3rd. End Date of journals: Nov. 6 and Note: Nov. 13th.This is definitely the best vampire story I've read. It's written in journal and memorandum entries, which creates an even closer first person point of view. The people making the entries repeatedly note that they wish to transcribe everything that has happened. I think that has brought more feeling and suspense to the story. A lot more suspense. I thought it interesting that a lot of characters were Doctors or men of the law. It had me thinking who I'd believe if I was there in that time line. I would no doubt be like Quincy, who would believe something only after seeing it for themselves. I don't think I'd believe Renfield, the insane person in the asylum, who proclaimed that his Master (Count Dracula) has come for him. I may believe Mina, but then, she too needed to study the evidence of who Dracula was in order to believe.I read this while listening to the audiobook on my iPod (narrated by Christopher Saul). My book was a kindle illustrated version, meaning it had little maps. Christopher did a good job with the accents. I really liked the accent for Van Helsing's. The kindle edition was pretty good.As for the story. This was pretty good. I am very glad that I read this. When I told my mom I was reading this, she just rolled her eyes. I could understand, as the paranormal isn't my usual choice. But I found this to be good. And even a little more than just about vampires and other paranormal stuff. The Doctors were all scientists of the mind. So their evaluations of the matter was a little interesting. Some a little chauvinist and ego driven. Like Van Helsing's thoughts of Dracula's "child-brain" and their "man-brain" being better to cope with death and violence than a "woman's mind". And then the contrast between Mina and Lucy. Lucy, the not-so-angelic woman and there by more easily persuaded by Dracula. And then Mina, who all the men thought was the most angelic creature.I think my favorite characters are Mina and Renfield. I don't think I would've been able to endure reading the slow middle portion of this story without them. I knocked the star rating down a bit because of the slow middle. It had a climatic start and finish which I really liked. This is certainly a favorite of mine.'The Blood is the Life."

Reviewer: Justin
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Good quality book
Review: Wanted a paperback version of the book to go along with my hard cover copy. The cover art drew me into getting this one and there’s also art included in the book, which I was not expecting, but I was happy to see it. Nice illustrations.

Reviewer: Erin
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Whomever printed this book made some interesting choices.
Review: I bought this book on a whim because I was really interested in reading it and didn’t want to wait forever for it to come in. Do I regret being impatient? A little. Firstly, the text is SO SMALL. Most copies of Dracula are between 418 and 550 pages long. This one has so much text crammed onto every page that there are only 230 pages. Secondly, there are all of there weird, seemingly unrelated, anime-esque pictures in this book that I did not ask for. At first I thought maybe they were a part of the original story, but I asked others who had read the book (not this specific copy) in the past and that is not the case. I am not sure why the pictures were included and I'm not a fan. Otherwise, this copy is fine. It served its purpose.

Reviewer: Lucas Ferreira da Silva Miranda
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Livro sensacional

Reviewer: Dennis Dafoe
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Well written, neat style of journals, beautiful character's, and amazing / complicated villian. My daughter read next amd loved it too!

Reviewer: Diego
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Buena opción para practicar el idioma inglés mediante la lectura

Reviewer: Adriaan
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: This book came in perfect condition with fast delivery (ordered 4pm and was delivered 10am the very next morning)Now if you're wondering if the book (the writing, story, etc.) is any good, it defiantly is.If you like the gothic horror genre, then I strongly recommend.The book isn't written in a normal style, it's written in journal entries and letters written to other characters of the book which makes it really unique and realistic compared to other horror books.

Reviewer: Emily Helal
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: An immortal masterpiece that has lost none of its popularity since its first publication in 1897.