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
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, […]
Officially did not finish list of 2016
So, I’m totally stealing this idea from NTE. These are the books I attempted, but wasn’t able to finish (for one reason or another). I really like the idea of including these books in my Cannonball, if for no other reasons than they still warrant some discussion. In no particular order: Dracula, by Bram Stoker (4 stars) I loved Stoker’s writing, and the book had a beautifully sinister atmosphere to it. It’s not hard to understand, reading this, why the book resonated so strongly with […]
Bite Me
The Historian is like a cross between The Da Vinci Code and Dracula. It’s partially an update of Stoker’s classic tale, utilizing the scarier-than-fiction stories about Vlad “The Impaler” Tepes-the man upon whom Dracula’s legend is based. It’s also about a Robert Langdon-esque race to find priceless historical relics…before the bad guys get to them first. Throw in some father-daughter bonding, centuries-old secret societies waging quiet but brutal war and an old fashioned-love story, and you’ve got a pretty thick book. If that sounds intriguing, […]