Dracula by Bram Stoker
Jonathan Harker, a young solicitor, is sent on business to Transylvania in order to meet with a client who has bought a house in London.
He arrives in the region of the Carpathians where the locals try to dissuade him from meeting Count Dracula, the buyer of the London residence. At first Harker thinks that they are just very superstitious people, but in a very short time, he wishes he had taken their advice and had never made the acquaintance of the Count or even seen his castle.
‘…every known superstition in the world is gathered in the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some imaginative vortex.’
I’ve had this book for a few years and along with War & Peace was a book I planned to read this year. It’s a Gothic ‘horror’ novel and although there were a few gory details, the story overall was really interesting and not horrible.
I was surprised that there were so many Biblical allusions and that essentially the story was one of good vs evil.
Descriptive and beautifully written, it is told through diary entries as well as letters exchanged between characters which gives everything an immediacy – as with an omniscient perspective.
“Up to now I never quite knew what Shakespeare meant when he made Hamlet say: -
My tablets! quick, my tablets!
‘Tis meet that I put it down, etc.,
for now, feeling as though my own brain were unhinged or as if the shock had come which must end in its undoing, I turn to my diary for repose. The habit of entering accurately must help to soothe me.”
‘The Un-dead…when they become such, there comes with the change the curse of immortality; they cannot die, but must go on age after age adding new victims and multiplying the evils of the world; for all that die from the preying of the Un-dead become themselves Un-dead, and prey on their kind.’
An interesting medical sideline - one character received three emergency blood transfusions at home from three different people unrelated to her. In 1818 the first successful blood transfusion of human blood was given to treat postpartum haemorrhage. In 1900 the first three human blood groups, A, B and O were discovered and in 1907 blood typing and cross matching between donors and patients was attempted to improve the safety of transfusions. Bram Stoker’s book was published in 1897.
War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy
I have two translations of this book: Anthony Briggs (2005) and Constance Garnett (1904) and I decided to read the former.
My 19-year-old daughter asked me for some book suggestions tonight. I’ve arranged all my Russian authored books on a shelf and she looked at those and said, “But not a Russian book,” and then showed me this:
I love Russian literature despite just about everyone dying.
Anyhow, back to War & Peace. I started this late last year and read a few chapters most days until I got to the Epilogue and I think that almost took me longer to read that than the rest of the book. Apart from that, I loved the story. Anthony Briggs explains just how I feel about War & Peace in his Introduction:
‘The strength of War & Peace is in the weakness of its characters. The novel is a detailed casebook of human inadequacy and imperfection; so many avoidable errors are made that it will be a long time before contentment and equilibrium start to emerge, and for some of the characters new insight comes too late.’
Princess Marya – destined to remain at home looking after her father whose attitude was often quite cruel to her at times, it seemed that her life was going to be more of the same, despite the fact that she really desired to be married. When an opportunity presented itself she refused to marry the man – and for good reasons.
‘The gawky, graceless princess spoke with a selfless sorrow of such ineffable beauty…’
Anatole Kuragin – her handsome, rejected suitor was an amoral jerk who saw that a marriage into the princesses’ family would be of great financial benefit. A narcissist of the highest degree, he tried another woman with good family connections and fortune and nearly destroyed her.
‘He had no capacity for reflecting on how his actions might affect other people, or what the consequences of this or that action might be.’
Napoleon – Tolstoy spent many words on describing Napoleon’s actions and person. He believed Napoleon was spoilt, had fantasies of greatness, and was cruel and inhuman. Another narcissist.
‘And this would not be the only hour or day of his life when darkness afflicted the mind and conscience of this man, who had assumed more responsibility for what was going on than any other participant, though he never, to the end of his days, had the slightest understanding of goodness, beauty, truth or the insignificance of his own deeds, which were far too removed from truth and goodness, too remote from anything human for him to be able to grasp their significance. Unable to renounce his own deeds, which were highly praised by half the world, he was forced to repudiate truth, goodness and everything human.’
I definitely need to reread Dracula. I'm afraid I did not digest it thoroughly enough. But W&P I did. I believe I read the Garnett translation. And I love the meme! Do you mind if I borrow it?