Dracula

In May we read Bram Stoker's Dracula. Dracula is a classic horror novel, and we're all familiar with the character if not the novel. Written in 1897 this novel is quite old (there's a whole century between us), but it is still a fairly easy read. This is a horror novel in the format of journals, diaries (what is the difference between those anyway?), news cuttings and letters. I found it quite entertaining that they talk about assembling these different sources and turning them into a manuscript as the story progresses, so meta. That said I'm not the biggest fan of epistolary story telling, as the structure can turn a story quite cringe worthy and/or boring depending on who it's handled. In this case it is a pretty effective way to have several characters seeing things from very different points of view and coming up with a multifaceted narrative that works very well at times. There are boring parts though, where things are repeated without adding new insights.

The first part of the novel is Jonathan Harker, travelling to Count Dracula in his castle in the middle of nowhere, Transylvania. I find Jonathan to be much less bright than the rest of the characters in this novel, and also quite annoying. He really is slow to understand that something isn't right with the count ( I get that he didn't know about vampires and was 100 years to early for Buffy, but it was pretty obvious that something was up with the count) and he's also very sedate about it until he screws up and then allows himself to panic (which incidentally is when he manages to do something about his situation). Both castle and count is well written and satisfyingly creepy though! Jonathan Harker has a knack for descriptions, if nothing else.

What I found when I started reading Dracula was that I knew the story much better than I thought I did. I have seen movies, and read an illustrated children's version of the novel, but I didn't quite realise how familiar I am with the story as a whole, specially the beginning, which is probably why I noticed the writing the most here, and there really are some great descriptions in this novel.

All the characters have good and bad traits, and they all ended up annoying me somewhat. Van Helsing and his stupid exclamations of friendship and adoration (honestly, you'd think he'd never met a person before), and Mina's heartfelt speeches that showed just how good and godly she was. Very boring. Also the fact that later in the novel when Mina is so tired no light goes on in anyone's brain. YOU'VE JUST BEEN THROUGH THIS! I felt like shaking them all so very badly.

The pacing of the story could also have been better. It starts off well with Jonathan's journal, then it jumps to Mina's (who explains that she is practicing shorthand for her future husband so she can be a good lawyers wife, and otherwise wouldn't be journaling) who is spending her time with her mysteriously ill friend Lucy, and this part felt like it was too long. I understand that it was a set up, and that Lucy was so dearly loved by everyone (three men, friends even, asked for her hand in marriage on the same day, she's also Mina's BFF) waists away and nobody knows how to stop it (at leat not until Dr. Van Helsing does some research). This waisting illness is of course Dracula, who in the shape of a bat (mostly) sucks at Lucy's neck. At one point Mina finds her on a bench with a crature with red glowing eyes bent over her. I'm sure you know the gist of the scene (it's eerie and quite good). I found Lucy's drainage period lasted too long, at least proportioned against the later hunting of Dracula, which was, in the end, very anticlimactic.

To sum up, I'd like the focus to have been a little different (and thus the pacing to have been a little different) and there was just not enough Dracula. I'd have loved to learn more of Dracula's thinking. I know Van Helsing describes his brain as a child-brain, but one that has developed for a long time and that Dracula was a very clever man when he was alive, and so he must be when he is dead, even if his brain isn't fully developed in his vampire state. What drives Dracula? Why does he have three female vampires running around his castle? Why does he go after Lucy? Then Mina (revenge I guess)? I'd have liked to see a little of his reasoning (this is what fanfiction is for I guess... And there is a lot of it).

There is a also the aspect of reading this in 2014 and the "themes" that stick out to me, the gender roles (or sexim as we call it today, ack, I wanted to punch someone, and Mina was really quite progressive at the start), the religious aspect (Dracula is referred to as a devil, while our heroes are strong in the faith of God etc.), science vs superstition, and the foreignness of Dracula and the primitiveness of the people in his lands (when Jonathan travels people become more and more superstitions and less and less "modern" as he journeys towards Dracula's castle).

The horror story itself is really creepy and really good though, so despite all my issues with it I did love it, and you know I do love a good vampire story, and this is one of the most famous (I'm going to tackle Carmilla soon!) ones and for good reason. Dracula is delicously evil, and fascinating in how he can transform into bats, rats and effing mists! He also controls the wind you know (in a small radious). He literally creates storms and eats entire ship's crews!

June reads!

In June we will be reading and hopefully enjoying Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, in addition we'll try to read  Freezer: The complete horror series by J. Joseph Wright. The latter we got for free as an ebook from amazon a while ago (via http://www.dailyfreebooks.com/), so we have no hopes or expectations of that being particularly good, but it is about a cursed freezer. Yes, you read that right, a cursed freezer. We hope that it is funny and stuff, also a bit of a contrast to the main read.

Fangirl is our main pick and the one we have to read. We've diverted from the type of book we normally choose because we wanted something light and summery, and this promises to be totally adorable and a fast read. The story is about Cath who is a major fangirl, she lives, eats and breathes fandom (her fandom is Simon Snow, which as I understand it, has a lot in common with a wizard boy we're probably all familiar with...) and she's close to her twin sister, but then college happens and change is inevitable. 

Freezer is a book both Katastrofekat and I got for free it they sounded funny (but we're not delusional, free books are often crap), it is not free right now so purchase at your own risk. It's a bit of an alternative pick, that should contrast a lot from our main book!

There you have it, we'll (hopefully) do a google hangout at the end of the month, chatting about the book(s)! You can also (as always) join us on goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/87004-the-cat-s-tale

Books I bought in May

I've made a video, and I can't speak properly.

Thanks for watching!

The Books (affiliate links):
Pirate Latitudes: http://www.bookdepository.com/Pirate-Latitudes-Michael-Crichton/9780061967702/?a_aid=catstale
Fangirl: http://www.bookdepository.com/Fangirl-Rainbow-Rowell/9781447263227/?a_aid=catstale
Blackbirds: http://www.bookdepository.com/Blackbirds-Chuck-Wendig/9780857662309/?a_aid=catstale

And finally a link to my TBR series-of-posts that you can find here somewhere. I post these the first friday of the month, so there'll be a new one the 6th of June if everything happens as it normally does: http://catstalebookclub.blogspot.no/search/label/Kiwie%27s%20TBR%20pile

Tipsy booktalk: Veronica Mars, Thousand dollar tan line

Hope you enjoy this video and let us know if this is something you would like to see us do again.

Kiwie's TBR #4: May

Hello, it's May already. April was endless, yet suddenly over. April was also a good reading month for me. I did NOT buy any physical books that needed to be put into any TBR pile. I did get that ebook humble bundle though (this month they've got comics), so I am actually 10 (!) books (or bookish documents) richer... Nevermind that though, because this is primarily about the physical TBR pile that got out of control and that I paid lots of money for (really, books are pricey in Norway and that pile is mostly the result of me just buying stuff when I was younger and had money).

I read a lot in April. I, of course, read The Thousand Dollar Tanline (we did film a video, it's coming sometime) as that was the book we read togheter here. The Evolution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin was everything I wanted it to be and more, I absolutely loved it. I listened to Jim Butcher's Dresden Files a lot, I heard both Fools Moon and Grave Peril. I like this series a lot, it's fun. I also went to the library and checked out another urban fantasy book Something from the Nightside by Simon R. Green, read and liked it enough to go back and borrow the next two in the series (there are 12 in total). So I'm definitely on an urban fantasy binge, but that isn't all that I read. Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld was also a book that I read. I liked it, but tought it was too long and the way the last pages were just made the whole thing in front a bit meh. It was a good book, and I really liked some parts, but other times I felt it was uninteresting. Maybe it was too long? Don't know. I've somehow misplaced the Norwegian contemporary I was reading (I took it to the cabin for easter, and I know I took it back down with me, but I don't know where I put it when I unpacked!) so that I didn't finish. I hope it turns up soon.

Last month's TBR to the left and this month's to the right:

I had already removed Dracula from the pile when I took the May photo (from the back pile, you can see it in the April photo, it's the blue one that is mid-pile), so the photo is a bit of a liar, but not that much. There is actually space above A Clash of Kings now, there wasn't before (well there isn't now either, but that's because the cover clearly has some size issues). So today I can happily declare progress. Huzzah!

Since I've taken to reading the Nightside series the pile probably won't shrink much in May (I also have an exam and am stressing madly about getting a job! HELP!). For my immediate TBR I am mostly finishing stuff I've already started, one of which I pulled from my minimalist hipster TBR-jar:

World War Z was actually a book we were supposed to read for the Cat's Tale last summer, but I never finished it and so when I made my jar I put it in there (along with a bunch of other books I just didn't finish for some reason or other). I have this as an audio book and I have listened to parts of it and I did like it, I just wasn't in the mood for audio last time, but I've been listening a lot this year so I think we'll be compatible this time around.

The rest of my TBR pile looks like this:

There's Dracula our monthly pick (which Kat gave to me as part of a gift once, because she's awesome) and Nightingale's Lament by Simon R. Green (book #3 of Nightside) and the thing on the bottom is my Kindle where I've started Mogworld by Yahtzee Croshaw, which was one of the ebooks from the Humble Bundle I bought.

Book review of Doctor Who: The Sleep of Reason

At long last, here is my review of The Sleep of Reason!



Keep a look out for a tipsy book talk with both me and Kiwie, where we discuss the Veronica Mars book The Thousand Dollar Tan Line

Come what May: Dracula

In May we decided to read a classic (apparently that's a thing for us, because last May we went for Lolita, which is also part of the western canon as it stands today) and this May we are going for Dracula, another horrifying tale (albeit for different reasons).

Bram Stoker's Dracula is told through letters and diary entries (and more I believe) from various characters' point of view, that together tell the story of a strange count, a wasting illness and death. I don't think the story needs further introduction. You would think we had already read it. We love horror. We love vampires. We really should have read it, and we have, but not in its original/full form. I've read an illustrated, shortened children's version, and of course, seen numerous versions in TV and film, sometimes the whole story, sometimes just characters thrown into something else (Dracula did show up in Buffy once, right?). Some good, some bad and some deliciously so.

So, in May we will flip our way through Dracula, and hopefully we won't be disappointed, or should I say that hopefully we won't be bored seeing as we know the story so well already.


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