Dracula

So, it's around 3am and I just finished Dracula.
Awesome book.
I have to say, however, that it has that weird, Victorian kind of gothic melodrama that makes so many of those books impossible to translate into movies.
For one thing, you may not be aware that the entire book is told through diary entries and newspaper clippings. Lets be honest with each other, when there was nothing to do but read books or watch plays, when entertainment was literally standing around in a parlor or whatever and listening politely to someone play the piano, this sort of cumbersome device is just fine. But if you have anything at all to do with your day other than read, it makes the novel heavy on the brain.
You can't really do an action packed diary entry. Just doesn't work.
However, the book is still rad. For started, Dracula is way, way more sinister than he is in any of the movies. Like, for reals, he's a monster, the old fashioned kind that you aren't supposed to feel sympathy for, who doesn't have some emo tragedy in his past driving him to evil.
He's evil because he does evil shit, because he traffics with the devil and sorcery and he studied at the Scholomance. He was bad way before he was dead, and when he died he just got worse.
So, also in gothic, melodramatic victorian fashion, the book is aptly named. It's about Dracula really, and maintaining the right distance from this central figure is what really makes him fascinating.
I should also mention Professor Van Helsing.
They made a horrible, horrible action movie, that is technically unwatchable, called "Van Helsing", and this dude in the book has nothing in common with it.
Professor Van Helsing, for one thing, is dutch. And he talks, in the book, in his memoranda, in all his dialogue, with a thin but noticeably distorted dutch accent. He refers to objects, ideas, and incidents as 'him' like its another person, which at first is really annoying but once you figure out wtf is going on its totally rad.
He's this like, old dutch dude who specializes in brain diseases, right, but for whatever bizarre reason, he knows all about vampires. Go figure. He's supremely good, prays all the time, and motivates these weepy english dudes (and one american dude who talks like an english dude) to do good things, and not be retarded when they go to fight the vampire.
But, theres like, no fighting. They chase a lot. Theres a lot of talk about what to do. Theres a lot of figuring out what properties the Count owns exactly, and detecting just how he chartered a ship or a coach or whatever.
Its actually pretty boring...
You can tell that Stoker was more of a playwright than a novelist. Lots of dialogue where there could be action. This device of the diary entries. The gratuitous use of that weird thing they used to do where they say 'oh!' in the middle of a sentence, and sometimes repeat the exact word that comes before 'oh!', and also the overuse of the exact combination 'poor, dear, sweet', or any combination thereof: 'oh! you poor, sweet, dear man!'; 'oh! my dear, poor, sweet Mina!', and suchlike for 320 pages.

Anyway.
I put Dracula to bed, and it was a long time coming.