Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

For the dead travel fast

Dracula by Bram Stoker, Tavia Gilbert (Narrator), J.P. Guimont (Narrator)

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The story that Stoker tells, via letters, diary entries, telegrams, and even a few newspaper articles, is about what happens when the undead Count Dracula travels to London and how his activities (mainly bloodsucking and general bad vibes vampire business) interact with the protagonists of the novel. This isn’t my first encounter with the Count; I read a children’s version as a child and then delved into the actual text during high school. Since then, I’ve consumed numerous other adaptations of this tale. My decision […]

Some Legends Don’t Withstand the Test of Time

Bram Stoker's Dracula by Bram Stoker, Edited by Jan Needle

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Full disclosure, I had no idea I’d ordered the edited and abridged version from the library, but I decided to give it a go anyway since the abridged version was still some 400 pages. I never had to read “Dracula” in school, and while, like most people, I’m aware of the general premise of the story, my goal of reading at least one classic a year put this on my spooky-reads list for Halloween. Long story short, A real estate agent, Jonathan Harker, goes to […]

If you’re patient it’s not a bad read.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

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Dracula as a phenomenon has pretty much taken on a life of its own to the point where I thought I knew all about it.I mean, Dracula is Dracula right?! Turns out I don’t! Dracula isn’t at all what I expected. It is told through a collection of diary entries, letters, notes and telegrams following various people through the novel. The story opens with Jonathan Harker traveling from London to the estate of Dracula in Transylvania. It’s all very spooky and mysterious, Dracula doesn’t eat, […]

“How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.”

Dracula by Bram Stoker

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I don’t have the time or energy to write as much or as deeply as I would like to about this strange, 100+ year old book, so I’m just going to settle with posting some brief thoughts below. Somehow I managed to make it out of years and years of schooling, with two English degrees, without reading this book. Which is right up my alley! All that discussion of monsters and things that are taboo swathed in metaphor. I love that shit. When I first […]

Sorely Lacking Keanu Reeves. One Star.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

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The year is 1897 and Bram Stoker is a bored businessmen who boosts his income by writing pulpy novels. The most famous of these, simply titled Dracula, was not an immediate hit, but would turn out to define Stoker’s legacy. This isn’t entirely undeserved, but outside of its snug historical pocket the novel doesn’t come across all that well. The story is well-known to nearly everyone, and I was quite surprised at how closely, at first, it follows the 1993 movie. And yet this film, […]

A healthy dose of indifference and melancholy

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So these two books round out my catching up on lost reviews. I feel like I’ve read a hundred books that I’ve had to force myself to review, because I either didn’t like them enough to form opinions, or couldn’t organize my thoughts well enough to fairly elucidate them. But, now that the pressure of playing catch-up is over, maybe I’ll do a better job going forward. 11. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (3 stars) Merricat Blackwood, her older sister Constance, […]



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