Bram Stoker's Dracula pt 1

While I have taken several American Literature classes, I still have major gaps in my readings of classic American literature. However, I don't have enough time to read long novels. Instead, I found an online resource that offers several classic works in both ebook form and audio book. It's called Lit2Go, https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/books/.

After browsing their immense catalog, I finally decided to give Dracula by Bram Stoker a shot. While I know of the character Dracula, I have not read the book, nor have I seen the 1930's film staring Bela Lugosi, or the 1990's film with Gary Oldman. The Dracula that shows up in Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 5, is a character that I did not like. But after recently trying to read Mary Shelly's Frankenstien, and stopping after a few chapters, I thought maybe I should give Dracula a shot. My ultimate goal would be to read all of the books, that the Universal Studios monster movies are based on. Then watch the original films.

So, going into Dracula, I did not know what really to expect. I didn't know any of the characters, or what their encounters with Dracula would be like. While, I am still early on in the book, I'll say that I really enjoyed the first 3 chapters, telling Jonathan Harker's story of traveling to Castle Dracula and meeting the count. He slowly figures out there is something wrong, and puts all of the clues together. The first few chapters do a great job of building the mystery and suspense of Count Dracula. It sets an eerie atmosphere around the castle, and kept me quite intrigued. However, once the story shifted to Mina Harker's journal, I began to lose interest. Not sure what Dr. Seward, Renfield and Lucy have to do with the rest of the main story. Perhaps it will all be revealed later on, but for now, it doesn't captivate me. I did enjoy the story about the ghost ship, I thought it was eerie and tense. Would love to follow up with that story again. Since, I listening to the audio version, I do find the constant change of characters to be a bit confusing. The introduction of Van Helsing, I got mixed up with the Count, since the accent the reader uses for both sound similar. I know of the Van Helsing character, so I'm curious to see how he factors in with Dracula.

Seeing as this book is over century old, I do not mind if the story gets spoiled for me, so if anyone has read Dracula and can tell me whether or not the stuff in Mina's journal will have relevance later on in the book, I would like to know. I'll continue on, but hope that it picks the pace back up with Count Dracula. If you have read the book, feel free to tell me your thoughts on it. What did you like most? Do you enjoy the characters? Leave your comments below.