It's hard to believe I have lived to this ripe old age and never read this book. As I mentioned in this post, I signed up for Dracula Daily in 2022 - a fun free service that sends emails of book excerpts on the day in which they take place in the book. This was a great way to get into the book but ultimately it made me want to read more in a single sitting than 1 email can provide so I decided to get myself a copy for December gift-giving purposes. This was another hit from Mr. K - check this beauty out:
Yes, this book has illustrations by the wonderful Edward Gorey. It's hard to see in the photo, but there are also bats printed on the pages too. The red portion of the cover is a velvet type material - all in all, a great presentation for a (if not the) classic vampire novel.
To be honest, while I enjoyed the book overall, the writing could be hit or miss for me. At times it got too repetitive for my taste. I realize this is a feature of the writing of this time period, but it's still sort of annoying to this modern reader. When the writing is on, though, it works really well - the scene setting is well done and the atmosphere is suitably creepy. I can imagine this being a huge hit when it was initially released and it's easy to see why, and also easy to see why it is such an inspiration for vampire stories even today.
No comments:
Post a Comment