Potential new least favorite book?

I just read the most heinous book. 

OH MY GOD, I literally can't even talk about how much I LOATHED this book. It was the most vapid, insipid, stupid, brainless waste of paper I've ever had the utter displeasure of reading. 

Not true. Heart of Darkness is still my least favorite book, but this book actually insulted me as a fan of Austen and an educated human being. 

What I hate most about this book is that it masquerades itself as some kind of almighty tribute to Austen, who is probably my favorite author, when really, it's so trite and STUPID that it's insulting to insinuate that you are glorifying her by reading or writing this book, and it's insulting to people who have actually READ all of her books to tout this as some kind of tribute. 

It. Was. TERRIBLE. 

The main girl is a sad, Darcy-obsessed, single woman who wins a trip to Austenland, a place where you can go and literally pretend to be in a Jane Austen book alongside trained actors and everything. Of course, she falls in love with the Darcy character, but without the intrigue and intelligence of the ACTUAL Pride and Prejudice romance. 

Also, Hale repeatedly bashes Northanger Abbey, one of my favorites, and lauds SuckMansfield Park, the only of Austen's novels I actively dislike. 

It was just infuriating to me. I had to question if she'd ever actually read any of Austen's book, because this is the kind of dialogue, book, characters, and scenarios that Austen SNARKED IN HER OWN BOOKS. If you're going to write some kind of tribute novel, AT LEAST TRY, DAMMIT. 

Luckily, I've read other works by Shannon Hale and I know she's a good author, but it's like she got a prescription for stupid pills, popped them all, and birthed this monstrosity. 

I was so pissed off with this book that I literally felt my blood pressure rising as I was finishing it. If you were born with only half a brain, or you hate Austen, or you love really poor storytelling, go ahead and read this book. Everyone else, go read an actual Austen book. Or Sherlock Holmes, who would probably have injected cocaine, overdosed, gone on a crazy chemistry spree and poisoned every single person in this book, and then successfully framed Charles Augustus Milverton. Which would have been a really suitable alternate ending. 

ALL THE REACTION GIF's

While reading: 

Afterward:

 Summary of the book: 

Happy Independence Day!

Credit

Just wanted to wish everyone a Happy 4th of July, and thank everyone who's given of themselves to make this the greatest country in the world. I am so blessed and grateful and proud to be an American. 

And now, enjoy a favorite poem of mine. 

"Suddenly she was...drowsing asleep at dawn with the beads and chiffon of an evening dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor beside her bed."

The Great Gatsby by insidemypumpkin


I mean, the fashion was so decadent, how could I not?

It's awesome how much 20's-inspired stuff is out there right now, btw. I love when literature inspires fashion. And this movie's clothes (women's AND men's) were just so pretty to look at! Enjoy! 

Literary moms.

I wanted to do a list of my favorite mothers/mother figures from literature, but decided to do a picture collage instead.

August Boatwright, The Secret Life of Bees; Charlotte, Charlotte's Web; Mrs. Bennett, Pride and Prejudice; the entire Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood; Marilla Cuthbert, Anne of Green Gables; Catherine Earnshaw, Wuthering Heights; Lily Potter, Molly Weasley, and Narcissa Malfoy, Harry Potter. 

Happy Mother's Day to all of the moms, grandmoms, aunts, dog-moms, moms-to-be, and moms-who-aren't-actually-biologically-related-but-might-as-well-be! 

"...among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars."

So this movie. 

I don't even care that it only got 44% on Rotten Tomatoes. I loved it. 

Of course, as to be expected, it was visually stunning. I mean, dazzling. I think Moulin Rouge was more opulent, but this was no less amazing to look at. Sometimes it felt like it was being overdone, but I can forgive them that. 

As far as "was it an accurate representation of the book," well, yes and no. I mean, the executive producer was Jay-Z for God's sake. Of course it wasn't entirely accurate. It wasn't like the BBC set out to do a straight-from-the-pages adaptation. But I do commend Baz Luhrmann for managing to capture the tone of the novel. There's the frenetic, glittering energy of the parties that compliments and foils the emotional detachment of the characters. One of the complaints reviewers had, btw, was that there was no emotional depth. These reviewers had obviously not read the book. The whole thing is emotionally detached. All of the characters are so numb to what's going on around them, and that's what makes it such an extraordinary story. If the story had happened in 2013, the women would be like, crying and throwing vases and vomitting and the men would be doing lines of coke off of toilet seats in a Burger King. But it didn't, and the characters deal with their remarkable circumstances in such a cool, aloof manner. It allows the audience to feel the emotions for themselves, and by not transferring emotions through the film, I think every viewer gets a slightly different, personalized reaction. 

The casting was good--Leo was, actually, the perfect Gatsby. Carey Mulligan was so pretty as Daisy Buchanan that it was almost painful to look at her, dripping in Tiffany jewels with her perfectly bobbed hair. And she managed to balance Daisy's inner turmoil with her outer cynicism and carelessness, so she gets major props. Isla Fisher, and the people who played Tom Buchanan and Jordan Baker were perfectly cast, too. Tobey Maguire was an odd choice, and I'm not 100% sure I liked it, but he was fine. 

I really liked the juxtaposition of modern music with the story--typical of Luhrmann, but it worked to awesome effect here. I mean, rap is about money and swag, and this film is dripping with swag. There is just so much swag.

So yeah, I liked the music. And you try listening to "No Church in the Wild" without it getting stuck in your head. 

As for people who are like, "Omg, F. Scott Fitzgerald would be rolling in his grave," I politely disagree. I mean, no, I don't think the movie captures all the depth the book has--film adaptations never do (Harry Potter, anyone?). But I think Fitzgerald would've been okay with the casting, and the aesthetic and probably would've been like, "Can Zelda and I come to that roaring great party?" 

It was really good. My only complaint was the non-cannon way they framed the narrative (I won't give details in case of SPOILERS), but that's forgivable. It was a good interpretation of a great story, and I highly recommend it. 

Beautiful book haul!

If you couldn't tell by now, I love books (seriously, if you didn't know that, GET OUT). More than almost anything, except possibly animals. Almost certainly more than I love most people ("most" being the key word). 

Well, as every book lover knows, the quote by Erasmus is 100 million percent accurate: “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.”

I was browsing Etsy for some pretty, antique books to add to my collection (old books excite me more than they should), and I stumbled upon a couple of treasures from BittyBJoy. I tracked their shipping feverishly, but it was so expedient I only had to wait 3 DAYS! 

You can imagine my excitement when I came home to a package this afternoon. But then I opened it, and my elation was boundless. 

They came wrapped in these beautiful vintage handkerchiefs, with cheery orange ribbon! So pretty, and such a lovely surprise! Now I own HANKIES in addition to beautiful books!

The books I ordered were Essays of Elia and Last Essays by Charles Lamb, and Under the Sign of Jupiter by Susan Sontag. 

The one I was really excited about was the Charles Lamb book, which I'll admit I've wanted to read since I read about it in my beloved The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I ordered the other one, honestly, because I liked the cover art (I feel a bit shallow admitting this, but I REGRET NOTHING).

It's so pretty! I love the vintage cover art. It's an ex-library book, so I love that it's been held in so many hands before mine. It has all the quaint library stamps, too. And it's small enough that it can easily be toted around with me for when I get bored, or stuck in a line, etc!

Love, love, LOVE this book! So excited to add it to my collection!

And can we all just take a minute to examine the purely freaking majestic artwork of this book?

Not only is it royal purple, but it's a gentleman who appears to be observing a giant pocketwatch (or time itself?) slip into the ocean...all beneath the watch of SATURN. It's a book of essays on film criticism, which I'm afraid is a topic I know very little about, but I'm going to attempt to read it. If the inside does nothing for me, I'll either keep it just to look at or pass it along to someone who'd appreciate the content and not just the cover. 

I just had  to share my treasures with you. If you're into pretty, unique, or antique books, check  BittyBJoy out! It's an awesome and delightful shop, and it was such a pleasure to do business with them. 

"Be not afeared, the Isle is full of noises."

So, I thought I should share my thoughts about the Olympic opening ceremony. 

Actually, I think I feel about it the way the Queen looks. 

(Btw, I wish everyone would back off about her looking so pissed off. Let's be real. She had been up since the crack of dawn meeting foreign dignitaries, attending luncheons and giving speeches all day. Then it's late at night, and she's EIGHTY FREAKING SIX. I'm 23 and that's how I look at 10 at night. So cut her some slack.)

I just expected it to be more...traditional, I guess. I would've loved to see a Scottish Tattoo or some Irish step-dancing (because let's be real: mass amounts of people synchronized in tap shoes with no arm movements is totally mesemerizing)--things that are unique to the U.K. Or even if they'd done a history of sport in the U.K., starting with the Celts riding horses in blue paint, then moving on to the Scottish games (caber tossing, anyone?), and knights and archery and jousting, and Renaissance dance (and Regency dance because let's face it, that Austen stuff is way sexier than today's dancing), and traditional English fox hunting and then ending with football/soccer and the Olympics.

OR they could've gone literary, starting with Beowulf and Chaucer, moving on to Shakespeare (um, duh?), Jonathan Swift, then Dickens, Austen, Carroll, Wilde, and of course, ending with Gaiman and Rowling. Although, I was pleased that they mentioned Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter and Mary Poppins. And actually HAD J.K. Rowling there to read from Peter Pan. Swoon!

ALSO: while I am thrilled that there was basically a worldwide sing-a-long for "Hey Jude" (I might actually have died if I'd been present), I'd like to point out that England produced a LOT of other musicians. I mean, Ringo is still out there! It would've been so cool to have a British rock medley, and have Ozzy, Bowie, Siouxsie, whoever's left of the Sex Pistols or the Ramones, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney, and anybody else who cares to join in do a joint concert. Would've been SO BADASS. 

Not to mention British actors, but we just won't even go there.

I did like the Industrial Revolution bit, however, it was a little theatrical for me.

I don't know. The whole show just felt too artistic for me. It felt like...if Les Miserables and Blue Man Group had a lovechild, it would've been the London Opening Ceremonies. I don't know. If that had been an American Opening Ceremony, I would've been like, "Oh, of course." But there are so many things that are unique to the history and culture of the U.K., and I guess I just wanted to see more of that. 

The lines Kenneth Branagh read from "The Tempest" fit perfectly, so A+ on that, England!

So anyway, that's how it would've gone down if I'd been in charge. Which obviously, I was not.

Book Review: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

I promised you (like, two lifetimes ago) a book review on this book. First of all, can we just talk about how delightfully eccentric this title is? It's up there with Ella Minnow Pea. The title is important. I always envy people who can title things well, because it's one of my weakest points in writing. Such perfection! 

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society focuses on young writer, Juliet Ashton, as she exits her post as a satirical WWII columnist and attempts, along with European society at large, to move on with her life post-war. One day, Juliet receives a letter from Guernsey resident (and member of the Literary Society) Dawsey Adams, a man who has come into possession of a book that used to belong to her via used bookstore. He found her name and address in the booksleeve and decided to write to her to discuss the book. Thus began Juliet's correspondence with the island of Guernsey. The book is entirely epistolary (which I love! Dracula anyone?) and focuses on Juliet's letters to and from the residents of Guernsey as she tries, unhappily, to continue her life as an author in London. Her friendship blossoms and deepens with the members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society until she feels that she has to go visit them. Her time on the island changes her life forever, and gives her the long sought-after topic of her next book. 

This book is so...divine. I haven't enjoyed a book as much as I enjoyed this one in a LONG time. It's all about people who love books. There's something so intrinsically important about the written word, and the printed word, and this book captures that love. The characters are engrossing. I couldn't stop thinking about them! I found myself wishing they were real, and that I could take a boat to Guernsey and join them in their book discussions and general shenanigans. The story is constructed beautifully, too. There's not a single bit that's in there that shouldn't be, and meaning would be lost if anything was removed. Every word is perfectly placed, like pieces of a puzzle, and they come together to form something absolutely breathtaking. Though it deals with gritty topics like Nazi occupation and concentration camps, it maintains a loving, pleasant feel about it.

I wanted to share a couple of quotes. How could I not? 

“That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.” 

“Men are more interesting in books than they are in real life.”  

“I love seeing the bookshops and meeting the booksellers-- booksellers really are a special breed. No one in their right mind would take up clerking in a bookstore for the salary, and no one in his right mind would want to own one-- the margin of profit is too small. So, it has to be a love of readers and reading that makes them do it-- along with first dibs on the new books.” 

“Thinking to comfort me, they said, "Life goes on." What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on; Ian is dead now and will be dead tomorrow and the next year and forever. There is no end to that, but perhaps there will be an end to the sorrow of it.” 

“I don't want to be married just to be married. I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with.”  

“After all, what's good enough for Austen ought to be good enough for anyone.”  

Gosh, I could quote the whole book here. Any book with quotes like that has to be worth reading, right? This is one of those books whose spine will be creased, and the pages well-worn with re-readings. I cannot recommend it highly enough. To everyone. ALL THE TIME.

In short: I laughed, I cried. It was perfect.

"If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden."

"One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one's head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one's heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun--which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in some one's eyes."

-Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

Just finished this book for the second time. It's such a beautiful story, and goes far deeper than just "a little girl discovers a secret garden." It's a story of health, redemption, new life, and the powers of positivity and nature. So good...I can't recommend it enough.

 

I am tired.

What I've been doing and reading.

I started this post out as a book review, but then I was like, "omg, all I do is talk about BOOKS." So now I've decided to give you all a general life update. "You all" being like, the three people who still read my blog. ;)

-My job is going well! I started in October as an associate and by New Year's was the store manager. Yeah, I got promoted again (albeit unintentionally). So now I'm in charge of more stuff. I'm enjoying it, actually. And we (the store) have some exciting news in the not-too-distant future, so stay tuned!
-My grandma is doing pretty well. She's moving out of the nursing facility and into an assisted living/retirement apartment later this week. It's the perfect combination of having help on hand and enabling her to retain some independence, which is exactly what she needs at this point. We're blessed and happy that she seems to be doing better and that she's out of the woods in NC and closer to us. It's been so much fun decorating her new apartment, too! Even though I secretly wish I was decorating an apartment for myself...it's good practice, though!
-Accurate:

-I don't miss school at all. I thought I'd be weeping every morning and like, sniffing the inside of my backpack to jog my schoolish memories, but no. I hear my coworkers talk about parking and registration and I'm like:

-I still haven't really had any luck in the search for a "career job," but see point #1. I'm definitely getting by at this point in my life.
-I miss my friends. Most of them live kind of sizable distances away from me, and I wish I had people I could call up on the fly and be like, "We're hanging out now," and have that be okay.

Friends are just really important, and I miss mine.

So on that depressing note, I thought I'd show you a couple of books I started reading then hated and stopped reading (BECAUSE I CAN DO THAT NOW!!! It's such a novel concept to me that I don't actually have to finish a book if I don't want to!), and then a couple that I actually liked.


Books I Couldn't Bring Myself to Finish


The Girl Who Chased the Moon, by Sarah Addison Allen
To be fair, I'm not sure I gave this book enough of a chance, but it just didn't captivate me in the way Allen's other two books I've read did. With those ones, I couldn't put them down and I didn't want to. This one I was like, thinking of other stuff to do while I was reading it. Which I don't really take as a good sign. I love to be engrossed while I'm reading. So if I get desperate or in a book rut, I may go back and try this one again, but for now, I feel like there are SO MANY THINGS to read!


The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, by Patricia A. McKillip
I love fantasy/fairy tale novels. I always have, and I know I always will. So while I was at the library one day, I saw this book (and another by the same author, The Tower at Stony Wood) and was absolutely convinced I needed to try and read it because the writing seemed "literary." And a lot of fairy tales tend to get a little too childish and I was like, "BEHOLD! I am a literature major! I cannot read riff-raff! My fairy tales must be LITERARY!"

Utter. Crap.

I got like, halfway through this book and I honestly had NO idea what was happening. This was like living in Miracle Max's hut while eating shrooms and sniffing noxious fumes in the 1960's, all set to a soundtrack by the Cocteau Twins. It was just WEIRD. And the story wasn't that good. Nor were the characters. I don't know. I've had enough of having to interpret the words that I'm reading. I'm reading now to be entertained. This felt like hard work dressed up like funtimes. NOT COOL.




The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doily's freaking Doily offspring.
I should've known from the title of this book that it was going to be a failure. That and the fact that Doily's son wrote it. *sigh* For those of you who don't know, I have a love/hate relationship with Arthur Conan Doyle. The man wrote Sherlock Holmes, so I can't actually hate him. But he hated Holmes, killed him, BROUGHT HIM BACK, and then wrote him so lackadaisically that it's embarrassing. But without him, Sherlock Holmes wouldn't exist. And I love Sherlock Holmes.

So naturally, I was excited when I saw this book because Watson frequently mentions cases in his narratives of which we don't actually have any record. The whole idea is that Doily's son found the names of all those unwritten cases and made up stories about them. Except he like, didn't make them up. He stole them from his dad. One of the stories I read dealt with a guy smashing every clock he came into contact with. Well, okay, that's fantastic...unless you've read "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons." Which basically had the same premise, same problem, and same resolution. Not cool. Also...it was a shame, because you could tell that he was trying SO HARD to write in the same style as his father. It's so incredibly difficult to emulate someone else's style of writing. It's like doing successful impersonations--it's just hard to do. And Doily Jr. fell short. He tried too hard to be his father as opposed to building off his father's creations and doing it his way. Maybe if he'd tried to write like Adrian instead of Arthur it would've been easier for me to get through. As it is, it was a painful caricature, like reading about wax figures of Holmes and Watson trying to be as clever and vivacious as their original doppelgangers.



I think the problem right now is that I'm not sure what to read. Now that I'm not being told, "You have to read this by Friday and then this book by next Friday," I have no idea what to actually read. So I'm just looking for stuff that is similar to things I've enjoyed before and trying to go from there. Sometimes it's successful, but mostly, I think, it's not.

However:

A Book That I DID Finish

Picture the Dead, by Adele Griffin and Lisa Brown
I got this book because it was supposedly romantic and creepy--both good, right?? I started to read it Saturday night, and I only intended to read like five chapters, but I ended up finishing it. And I'm still not sure if that was because I was intrigued or if it was just a simple read.

This book is a YA book, which is kind of a genre I like to dislike. But I thought, "what the hey, I'll give it a try." It's basically a Civil War ghost story/romance, but it's also part graphic novel. The story is told from the point of view of Jennie Lovell and her scrapbook. But the cool this is that the illustrator actually based all her drawings on actual period photographs. If you go to the book's website, you can see the pictures she based her illustrations on (she's also married to Lemony Snicket, so winning). The story is essentially a southern gothic mystery. However, having read every Sherlock Holmes story and many of the later pastiches, I called the end of the story about a third of the way through. You all probably could, too.

So was it mysterious? Not exactly. Creepy? Yes, but not as scary as I thought it would be or as it could have been. However, when it comes to scariness, I'd rather be left wanting. Romantic? NO. NOT AT ALL. It really bothers me! The protagonist came off as shallow and flighty and I didn't like that at all. In fact, my favorite characters were dead, if that tells you anything. Overall, I think it was a highly forgettable novel, but if you're into any of the aforementioned stuff, yes, I'd recommend it.


I also read Ron Paul's book, Liberty Defined. I don't like being overly political, but if you're not sure who to vote for and you don't want to vote Obama, I suggest you check it out. Just do it.


This has gone on long enough, now. Just like, yeah. That's what I do.

Dracula, Part III: Hang on to Your Crosses, Boys!

I just got a 98 on my Dracula paper!

So to celebrate, I'm gonna finish my synopsis. And if any of you need to know about the relationship between technology and tradition, hit me up. ;)



Okay, so we left off with the extremely violent and off-puttingly gruesome death of Lucy Westenra, and the Good Team (or "The Team For Light" as lit critics like to call them...) all chilling out in Dr. Seward's asylum. Because a bed and breakfast is too mainstream for Stoker.



During this time, Mina unseals Jonathan's diary and reads it, and is shocked and horrified to find out that he encountered the same beastie that killed Lucy. However, she has hope that Van Helsing can help them defeat him, so she meets secretly with Van Helsing and gives him Jonathan's diary to read.
No, but seriously, it helps tremendously with the case and Van Helsing assures her he will help them kill Dracula.


So they're all back in the madhouse, reading each other's diaries and trying to figure out some clues as to how they can catch Dracula when Mina has the brilliant idea of typing everyone's various notes and extremely detailed diaries into one chronological document so they can actually SEE the series of events. Point 1 for Team Woman.

So she does this and they analyze a bunch of stuff. They have a meeting and decide the men need to go be manly and do stuff while Mina should stay home. Alone. Unprotected. In an insane asylum. Where we KNOW Dracula is visiting one of the patients (Renfield). But this is a legit idea, because she might be endangered if she came out vampire hunting with them.

Point retraction for Team Woman.

So the men all take off and start scouring London for traces of the Count. Because Harker sold him his house, he knows where he lives. And Arthur (aka: Lord Godalming) uses his money and newly inherited title to get stuff done.

Meanwhile, Mina starts having bad dreams and a creeping mist keeps coming into her bedroom and she starts getting tired and pale and sleeping all the time. AND NO ONE FINDS THIS SUSPICIOUS.

So basically, in order for Dracula to live in London, he had to have 50 boxes of consecrated soil shipped over from his chapel in Transylvania. He needs these to rest in or else, I dunno, he starts sparkling or something. So the men decide that tracking the whereabouts of the boxes will lead them to Dracula. They do some sneaking and breaking and entering, and manage to eventually locate most of the boxes. Apart from one.

During this time, Mina has visited Renfield in an attempt to discover anything about the count. Nothing much happened. The men (except for Harker, who stayed home that day for some reason) come home one day to find Renfield lying in a pool of his own blood. He admits to Van Helsing that Dracula has been visiting him regularly and promising him "life" (or blood) to feed him in return for his obedience. Though why Dracula picked a mental patient with a fly-eating fetish, I'll never know. He also tells them that Dracula's been feeding off Mina, too. He dies and no one cares.

They rush upstairs to the Harker's room and find the door locked. They bust it down (LIKE A BOSS) and see a hideous scene. Jonathan is lying by the window unconscious, and Dracula is in the room, holding Mina to an open wound on his chest and forcing her to drink his blood. She's in a trance, and her whole front is covered in blood, and she has open neck wounds too, implying that he's fed from her. Van Helsing whips out his trusty communion wafers and the Count retreats. They later discover he ransacked their papers, but luckily for them they had the foresight to keep duplicate copies in a safe (what.).

So this is horrible because now Mina is like, well on her way to becoming a vampire. She and Jonathan share some very lengthy proclamations of eternal love and a lot of very sad and meaningful glances. Van Helsing attempts to bless Mina with a communion wafer, but it burns her skin and she runs around hysterically for a while calling herself "unclean."

The men find all the boxes and put communion wafers in them so Dracula can't rest in them any more. They're only missing one. Also, I don't know where Van Helsing gets this endless supply of consecrated hosts. Does he ROB churches? Does he have a friend who's a priest with sweet hookups? I don't get it.

So anyway, they realize eventually that Dracula has packed up the remaining box and is shipping it (and himself, inside it) back to Transylvania. They realize this because Dracula has infected Mina's subconscious, so if she gets Van Helsing to hypnotize her, they can access Dracula's thoughts.

Just when you thought this book couldn't get any weirder.

So everyone decides to board a ship and go to Transylvania. They get there way ahead of the Count's ship (Arthur the Lord keeps bugging all the shipping ports to give him progress reports of the Count's ship's progress. Bro, please. They didn't have cell phones! What do you think this, the freaking 21st century??) and decide to stalk the box all the way back to the castle until they get an opportunity to get him. Because he's in the box, and they have crucifixes and communion wafers and they can keep him in there until they decapitate him and stab a massive stake through his heart.

My reaction to the method of killing vampires:



So anyway, eventually the box arrives, but it's surrounded by people, so they decide to bide their time and split up. The box is transported to Castle Dracula via river. Seward and Quincey go down one side of the river on horseback, and Jonathan and Harker rent a boat. Mina and Van Helsing go to the castle in a carriage to destroy the brides of Dracula.

Only Harker and Arthur screw up royally and wreck the boat, so they end up going on horseback, too.

Meanwhile, while these other bozos are out getting saddle sores and wrecking entire steamboats, Van Helsing single-handedly kills the three vampire brides. But not before almost succumbing to their tempting beauty. But he doesn't. Because he's a BAMF.


Mina and Van Helsing are really close to the castle now, and so is the box of earth and Dracula. It's started snowing, so Van Helsing puts Mina in a cave for shelter. She watches from a distance as the box and its small army of gypsies transporting it arrives. It's being stalked by the men, who reunited on the way. She watches as they ambush the caravan and a lot of fighting goes on, but it's extremely anticlimactic. Quincey is injured, but he and Harker perform incredible feats of strength and get to the box, pry it open and Quincey gets Dracula in the heart while Harker simultaneously decapitates him.

Then it's over. Quincey dies of his injuries, and Mina and Jonathan reveal in the epilogue that they named their son after him.

So like, ALL OF THAT leads up to literally two pages of climax, falling action and conclusion. Oh, Stoker. You so silly.


Anyway, that concludes the Dracula synopsis. Snark and stupid graphics and gif's aside, it's really an awesome book...I can't recommend it enough.

{Part I.}
{Part II.}

I have a couple Christmassy posts planned, so stay tuned!

Dracula Part II: Meanwhile, in Merry Old England...

I wanted to repost my dream cast, because this is where it gets a little more confusing character-wise.

Okay, so we left off with poor Jonathan Harker coming across leechified Dracula and attempting a daring escape plan.

MEANWHILE, back in England, his fiancee, Mina Murray, is visiting her wealthy, pretty and totally virginal bff, Lucy. Lucy is all aflutter because she's had THREE marriage proposals in like, as many days. The first guy to propose is Dr. Seward. He runs a mental assylum and is like, old enough to be Lucy's dad. The second guy is Quincey Morris, your token American cowboy badass. He speaks slang, so you know he's a cool cat. And the third guy is a wealthy ponce, Arthur Holmwood. He's handsome and enamored with Lucy. But who isn't enamored with her, apparently? It's because she's so incredibly virginal. Lucy says yes to Arthur.

So she and Mina are hanging out and walking by the sea and doing what polite Englishwomen do, when all of a sudden Lucy's childhood habit of sleepwalking returns. It's not a big deal until one night when Mina wakes up and finds Lucy gone. She looks all over the house and can't find her, but the door's open, so she knows that Lucy's gone outside. IN HER NIGHTGOWN. AND BAREFOOT. Which is totally scandalous. Since she's such a virgin and all.

So Mina grabs a cloak and goes up to her favorite bench by the sea because she thinks Lucy might be there. So she's racing through the town looking for her when lo and behold, Lucy IS indeed at the bench. BUT SHE'S NOT ALONE--a tall, dark figure is bent over her in what looks like some kind of scandalous caress! So Mina starts in that direction, and by the time she gets there, the guy-shape-thing is gone. Lucy is unconscious...or like, barely conscious, I can't remember. But she's clutching her throat, and Mina wraps her cloak around her to cover her up since she's out in her nightgown, which is, as aforementioned, scandalous. Mina realizes Lucy has a little wound on her neck, and thinks she's just stabbed Lucy with a pin while fastening the cloak. They return home.

I forgot to mention that a few days earlier there was a massive storm (like hurricane levels), and the storm washed up an abandoned ship onshore. There was a super cryptic captain's log though, wherein all the crew members started dying off one by one of unknown causes. When the ship came ashore, the Captain was tied to the mast by a rosary, and a massive dog leapt off and went bounding off, never to be seen again. It was sufficiently creepy but no one thought anything of it. WELL, THEY SHOULD HAVE.

Over the next few days, Lucy gets sick. She doesn't have a lot of symptoms, but she has nightmares and refuses to eat and gets ungodly pale. Everyone is worried. Arthur, Quincey and Seward all take turns visiting her and praying and discovering that nothing is making her better. Being a medical man, Dr. Seward has mad connections and sweet hookups, so he calls his bro, Professor Van Helsing, from Amsterdam.

We need to talk about Van Helsing for a minute. Van Helsing is a BAMF. He is probably the biggest literary BAMF ever, up there with Robin Hood and Severus Snape. He's dripping in awesome. He's a doctor, metaphysicist, professor, and leader in the fields of the supernatural. WHAT A GUY.

So he comes by railway ASAP because everyone thinks Lucy's gonna die, and since the whole male population of the earth is in love with her (did I mention she's a virgin? Because she is), we can't have her dying.

Somewhere around here, Mina gets a letter that Jonathan showed up in Budapest absolutely out of his mind. They call this "brain fever," but it basically means, "batshit crazy." So Mina packs up to go help nurse Jonathan back to health. She's an orphan, so she doesn't have any parents or anything. She goes, and Jonathan is all weak and haggard, and totally spooked out about something, but he won't say what. He gives his diary to Mina, and says she can read it if she feels she must, but he would rather spare her. She wraps it in a ribbon and seals it, and makes it a symbol of their trust. It's very Victorian and very sweet. Then they get married while Jonathan is in the hospital, because they don't ever want to be apart. IT'S SO CUTE.

Meanwhile, Van Helsing is all like, "Ya ya, I know exactly vhat is ze matter. She has ze blood loss." So he performs a super sketchy blood transfusion, using Dr. Seward as a donor. This is the world's worst transfusion, because I'm pretty sure blood transfusions were discovered like 4 days prior to this scene. He takes a giant tube and basically just shoves it into Seward's arm, and then does the same thing to Lucy. And he takes like WAYY too much, so Seward is all like, pale and puny and has to lie down and have brandy and stuff. It's so shady. Van Helsing is awesome, but do not let him give you a transfusion.

Lucy perks up after she gets more blood, and starts looking better. Somewhere in here, btw, there's a freaking MASSIVE bat that keeps scratching at her window at night. But that's whatever. Van Helsing goes out and comes back with like 200 tons of garlic. He makes a wreath of garlic for Lucy to wear around her neck whilst sleeping, strings it up over the doors, chimney, window, and headboard, and then smears crushed garlic all around all the doorjambs and windowpanes. It's epic. Then Lucy goes to sleep and wakes up all refreshed and stuff.

Van Helsing leaves for a couple days to go back to Amsterdam. He comes back and he asks Lucy's mother how she's progressing. The Mom's like, "Oh, doctor! She slept so soundly! I was so worried about her, so I went to see her in the night, and she was sleeping like a baby! But lord, doctor, the smell was so oppressive! So I threw out all those rubbish garlic things." Van Helsing's like:

So he goes back into Lucy's room and sure enough, she's all pale and sickly again. And the wound on her throat is like, really grody and infected and nasty. So they have more transfusions, this time using Quincey, Van Helsing, and ultimately Arthur. They do all this stuff, and she gets a little better, but it becomes apparent to Seward and Van Helsing that she's gonna die and they can't keep transfusing more blood into her. Van Helsing says though that if she were just going to DIE, it wouldn't be that big of a deal, but she's in for a fate worse than death.


Van Helsing totally knows what's going on at this point. He has realized that the bat is Dracula and that he's been feeding on Lucy at night and that's why she's so weak. He also knows, from his extensive research on the subject of vampires, that they can turn into big hulking wolf-dogs. KINDA LIKE THE ONE THAT RAN OFF THE WRECKED SHIP. So yeah, he's got it all together. He hasn't told Arthur or Quincey though, and he's hinted to Seward, but Seward thinks he's crazy, so he bides his time. Like a boss. Also, Lucy's mother is one surprise away from dying in some kind of cardiovascular fit, so she has no idea any of this is going on.

Okay, so, something happens with a missed telegram and Dracula manages to possess a wolf (he can do that, too, y'know) and attack Lucy and her mother. The shock kills her mother and Lucy gets fed on to the point where she's near death. All the men come in and find this horrid scene (with shattered glass and the mom's corpse and Lucy being pretty much a corpse), and Van Helsing is like, "She vill die soon." Arthur wants to kiss her goodbye but Van Helsing is like, adamantly against it.

I totally forgot to mention that one of the symptoms of her illness was that Lucy's canine teeth got like crazy long and her gums receded. It's super gross.

Anyway, all the guys who love her are there and she dies. They have a funeral and bury her. La dee da.

Within the next week or so, children around the town are ending up in the hospital with bizarre neck wounds LIKE BITES, so Van Helsing is like, "I KNEW IT." He knows that Lucy is now a vampire and is wandering around at night eating all the kids' blood. So he decides to take Seward and the gang there one night to prove to them that vampires are FACT.

While he's preparing the guys to go down to Lucy's grave, he makes them promise to do whatever is necessary. Of course, no one actually knows what he means by that is "drive a stake through your dead beloved's heart, then cut off her head." But they all agree to it anyway because Van Helsing is such a cool guy.

So they get to her grave and find that it's all like, open. And the coffin is empty. They're all shocked and horrified and then they turn around and Lucy is there, holding the body of a child she's just fed from. And she is definitely NOT acting virginal. She's like a supersexualized version of herself and she starts begging Arthur to come to her like a wanton slut. He's like, "YEAH ALL RIGHT!" and Van Helsing stops him. He drives Lucy back to her grave with a communion wafer, and then gives Arthur the stake and tells him to kill her so that her soul can go to heaven. Arthur does and it's really gross, and then Seward and Van Helsing decapitate her, which is a precautionary measure necessary to ensure that she doesn't come back from the dead again. After she's dead, she returns to looking like normal, pretty, virginal, normally-gummed Lucy. Van Helsing assures them that Lucy's soul has gone to heaven, and they all go back to Seward's asylum to mourn for a while.

Three things that happen during all this:
1. Arthur's father also dies, which makes him Lord Godalming. It's so confusing because now Arthur has two names he goes by, but whatever, I will still call him Arthur.
2. Seward has a patient in his asylum called Renfield, who is totally creepy. Renfield eats animals. Alive. He starts with flies. Then he catches spiders who eat the flies. And he eats the spiders. Then he catches sparrows to eat the spiders who eat the flies. And he eats the sparrows. He begs Seward for a kitten, but he's like, "hell no." During all this, he goes through manic episodes where he talks about his master and his master's approach and basically runs around screaming, "THE BLOOD IS THE LIFE!" He's really gross and creepy, and not actually all that important in the grand scheme of things, but he gets a lot of print, so I thought it was worth mentioning.
3. The blood transfusions are metaphors for sex, so sexy-virgin Lucy actually exchanged bodily fluids with four different men. Which is gross. And also part of the theme of Dracula corrupting the pure sexuality and mother role of Victorian women. BACK TO THE STORY...

Once she hears about Lucy's death (via, I think, letters from Seward), Mina is distraught and she and Harker come home to England.


That's all for now, but the third part will be up soon. THIS BOOK IS SO CRAZY, GO READ IT.
:)

{Part I.}
{Part III.}

Dracula, Part I: When in Transylvania...

So, I finished my last novel EVER required for my B.A. I'm pretty excited, but I'm also a little sad, because now I don't know what to read. I've been told what to read for the last four and a half years...I'm afraid I don't really know what I like to read anymore. I have a general idea, but it'll take me a while to get into a reading niche now that it's not obscure novels from the 1700's.

Anyway, the very last book I had to read was Dracula, which is so perfect and I think it's a great ending to the journey of getting my lit degree. Anyway, I absolutely love this book. I read it for the first time in high school and was enamored with it then, but reading it with four years of lit crit under my belt made it THAT much better.

And there is no good movie version of this to watch. I've seen the BBC version from like, 1979, and it is heinously corny. I also attempted to watch the 1992 version with Gary Oldman, which was, admittedly, extremely accurate to the book. However, it was also extremely gory, so I only ended up being able to watch about an hour total of it (I jumped around a lot). But what I saw was good. They got the tone right, and actually, Gary Oldman totally looks like Dracula in the book...at least in the beginning with the white bun hair and hairy palms.

This part? NOT SO MUCH. Creative license, ftw.

Actually, there was a lot of creative license taken. Which is frustrating, because the storyline and whatnot was pretty accurate. Curse you, Hollywood and Coppola.

Also, it's hard to watch Dracula when you're thinking of Sirius Black the entire time. I digress.

Anyway, omg, if you haven't ever read Dracula, wtf are you doing. Get off my blog, go to the library, and read it over Christmas. There's snow in it. So it's a Christmas story now.




I know none of you will actually do this, so I'm going to summarize the story. There are a lot of characters, so it helps to visualize them. Here's my dream cast of who I pictured in my head when reading Dracula.

Okay, so these are the people I pictured almost exactly. I think if Keauea Reeves and Adrien Brody had a lovechild, he could play Jonathan Harker (well done, casting dept. of the '92 Dracula movie). Also, I try not to picture Renfield because he's totally gross, but someone like Crispin Glover or Robert Carlyle would do well with the alternating between manic and civilized. And there is no one on earth creepy enough to play Dracula. So just picture whoever you want. As long as it's not R-Patz.

OKAY. Enough of that.

So. The story starts with Jonathan Harker going to Transylvania to help finalize the sale of some property in England to one Count Dracula. On his way over, all the Romanian gypsies keep throwing crucifixes at him and telling him to wear them. He's just like, "whatever, supersitious peasants, for I am a Protestant and have no need for such iconography." But he keeps one anyway. GOOD THING, TOO.

So, at night (because why on earth would any sane Englishman travel during the day?), a carriage comes to pick him up and take him to Castle Dracula. The driver doesn't speak, but he can control wolves, so that's kind of creepy. Oh, and the carriage drives through pillars of blue flame. And he drives like a maniac. So Jonathan is creeped out but remains incredibly stoic and English through the whole thing.

Then the carriage stops at the castle door, lets him out, then goes driving off. Then, a few minutes later, the door opens and it's Count Dracula. Now, Dracula in the book does not look like Bela Lugosi. He's like, old, with a white moustache and white hair and hairy palms and no complexion and super white teeth. He does sound like Bela Lugosi, though, so that's cool.

Anyway, he's all like, polite and old aristocracy and invites Harker in and feeds him this super fantastic meal. But he begs off eating because he ate earlier. Ah ah ah. Then he shows Harker to his room and goes to bed. It's like 5 in the morning at this point.

So over the next couple of days, Harker and the Count finalize the purchase of the Count's English property and they study English together and all that. Then the Count is like, "Write to everyone you love and tell them you'll be here a month. I need to brush up on my English." And Harker's like, "Wtf, bro, your English is perfect." And the Count insists. So Dracula forces him to write these letters, and he does.

Then, when he's shaving, Harker cuts himself and Dracula flips a biscuit and locks him in his bedroom. Jonathan now realizes this isn't your normal stay at a Transylvanian B&B. He understands he's a prisoner now. He looks out the window and sees the Count sidling down the wall like a lizard.

And the stiff upper lip goes out the window.

So does his condemnation of crucifixes. He starts wearing his and hanging it over his bed.

Everyone in this book keeps magnificent diaries, btw. It's an epistolary novel, which is cool, because it's told through letters, diaries and newspaper articles.

So after his little Spiderman stunt, the Count comes back to feed Jonathan, and then tells him not to fall asleep anywhere in the castle except for his room, because otherwise he might have a bad dream. Deciding a bad dream isn't so bad, Harker goes exploring and finds a dusty old girls' room and falls asleep. And there, he's accosted by Dracula's three vampire brides. This scene gets over-sexualized a lot in movies, but it really is a very smutty scene...for the 1800's and all. So they come and writhe around and want to bite him and come like *this* close to doing so when the Count comes back and banishes them. Oh, he does feed them an infant though. Which is gross. Harker awakens in his room and bemoans the fact that he'll probably die there. He writes sad letters to his fiancee, Mina Murray, in shorthand. And the Count, even though he intercepts all of Harker's letters, can't read the shorthand. Baller.

So like, a month passes and Harker's going insane being locked up and realizing that Dracula and his three sexy brides are eating up all the village's children. So he breaks out of his room one day and goes to the church's chapel, where he finds Dracula's coffin. He opens it, and inside is the Count and he's like, GORGED with blood. Stoker describes it so wickedly:
"The cheeks were fuller, and the white skin seemed ruby-red underneath. The mouth was redder than ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which trickled from the corners of the mouth and ran down over the chin and neck. Even the deep, burning eyes seemed set amongst swollen flesh, for the lids and pouches underneath were bloated. It seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood. He lay like a filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion."
EWWW!!!

So then some more unimportant but sufficiently creepy stuff happens and Harker decides he's getting the hell out of dodge, or he's gonna die trying.



I'm going to finish this in 3 parts, because no one's actually going to sit here and read the whole thing. BUT IT'S GOOD and worth summarizing. So look for parts 2 (Meanwhile, in Merry Old England) and 3 (Hang on to Your Crosses, Boys!) within the next couple of days. :)

{Part II.}
{Part III.}