And for your reading pleasure, reviews of some of the books I've read lately.
To start with, Dracula, by Bram Stoker. I quite enjoyed this, but I have to say I found it pretty heavy going. It started off very well, with the section about Jonathan in Dracula's castle in Transylvania. It was genuinely scary and exciting and the plot advanced at a good pace, and I liked the way it was done in journal form. But then there seemed to a very long section where not much happened, concerning the girls in Whitby, and for me things didn't really pick up again until quite late in the book. The story also seemed to have a few too many characters. There were five men fighting Dracula at the end when I'm sure three would have been quite enough for the writer's purposes. A couple of them seemed pretty redundant really. One thing that surprised me was how religious the book was. I don't really tend to associate horror and religion in my mind, but the characters were all asking God to have mercy on them every couple of lines. It was also interesting to see that the grand tradition of the characters in horror stories being stupid started so long ago. I couldn't believe how long it took them to work out that Mina was being bitten by Dracula. It was also fascinating to see how the modern perception of Dracula is rather different from the original. The book describes Dracula as having heavy eye brows and a big moustache. Holywood clearly had something against facial hair. And modern readers all know that Dracula can turn into a bat, but no one seems to know that he can also turn into other animals and also control wolves, rats etc. And everyone knows he sleeps in a coffin, but Hollywood seems to have left out the bit about him needing special soil from home, which is a pretty big part of the plot, really. And I learned a few things about the English language. For example, apparently the phrase "to take no chances" is an americanism. Who knew? All in all, I enjoyed the book, but it was hard work sometimes.
Next up, Vile Bodies, by Evelyn Waugh. I picked this up in a charity shop because I loved Brideshead Revisited. I must say it was rather different. It lacked the poetry and melancholy of Brideshead. It was much more light-hearted and trivial. There also seemed to be a lack of any sort of plot, and there were about a million characters and I had no idea at all who most of them were. In fact, there seemed to be no point whatsoever to this book. I enjoyed it immensely. It was well written, satirical and silly, with some very amusing episodes. Very readable indeed.
And finally, Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson. I occasionally like to re-read an old childhood favorite and remember how good it was. This is another book I'm sure a lot of people have read, but for those who haven't, it's about a young boy called Jess growing up with four sisters in rural America in the 70s. He becomes best friends with his new neighbour Leslie, a girl from a very different background. Together they invent Terabithia, their own magical kingdom. At the end of the book Leslie drowns in the creek, while crossing it, trying to go to Terabithia. Even at age 26 this book still made cry like a baby. What's special about this book is the richness of the description of Jess's everyday life; the hardships he endures, and the special things that make his life worth living. Though speaking personally, I would like to see the same sort of richness in the parts concerning Terabithia and the childrens' imaginations. For me that would make the book complete.
