208. Dracula

Dracula
Bram Stoker
1897
Around 400 pages

I am subverting expectations by posting this post-October, and it has nothing to do with my unwillingness to read and finish Quo Vadis in a timely manner.  Anyway, this is an old favorite of mine, and I wish epistolary novels were still popular, despite the whole "not making sense anymore" thing.

Do I need to give a plot description for this novel? If you don't know by now, you're staying ignorant on purpose, and it's obnoxious. But I'll indulge you just this once. Jonathan Harker is an English solicitor visiting Count Dracula in Transylvania about a real estate transaction.  Dracula really wants to move to England, because who doesn't, and Jonathan is stuck in a castle with a trio of vampiric hotties.

This novel has been dissected to AfterDeath, so I don't really have anything fresh to contribute. Some of the scholarly theories are really out there, my favorite being that Dracula is an indictment of Oscar Wilde. For me and most normies, it is just a thrilling story and a pleasure to read.

I love reading, but I'll admit, many classics are a slog to get through, especially if the author's name rhymes with Benry Hames. But this is pure fun and a great Thanksgiving read. So today, instead of talking to family members, ignore everybody and read Dracula. Claim you are looking for ideas.

RATING: *****

Interesting Facts:

Bram Stoker never enjoyed any financial success from the novel and died poor.  But Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote him a letter telling him how much he enjoyed it, which is better than dying happy and well-cared for.

UP NEXT: What Maisie Knew by Henry James. Henry James gets six novels on this List, which seems...excessive.

207. Quo Vadis

Quo Vadis
Henryk Sienkiewicz
1896
Around 600 pages

I recently had to get bone surgery again (what can I say? I crave the attention). This didn't give me quite as much reading time as I hoped, namely because reading contributes to my post-surgical nausea. So yes, Quo Vadis literally made me want to puke. I was able to finish the novel this morning though, and even without my vomitives (or as my doctor calls them, "painkillers") I hated this book.

Vinicius, a brutal Roman soldier, falls in love with Lygia, a beautiful slave who is secretly a Christian. Vinicius becomes obsessed with possessing her and...some historical stuff happens. God, this was a yawn. Um, Christianity is good, heathens are bad.

I actually expected to like this, despite knowing from the onset that it would be heavy-handed in its pro Christian message. I really liked Ben-Hur and expected this to be similar but...Lew Wallace is a much better storyteller than Sienkiewicz. Perhaps this was a fault of the translation, but I found the prose to be almost unbearably dull. Did people ever actually beat their breast in anguish, or is that something that writers invented? Given the setting of the story, women in this novel are reduced to useless objects worshipped for their purity and beauty, and men are just the crazed rapists chasing them around the vomitorium.

Definitely skippable, and I could do without Polish authors for awhile. It's okay for me to say that because I'm Polish, right?

RATING: **---

Interesting Facts:

Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term "genocide," wrote that he first conceived of the idea when reading Quo Vadis as a young boy.

UP NEXT: Dracula by Bram Stoker. Too bad I couldn't get my act together to post this one for October. An old favorite, so should be posted shortly!