College Students! discussion

Please use this thread to talk about the book as a whole after you have finished.

Did you like or dislike the book? Did you like the ending? Favorite characters? Favorite quotes? Did you like the author's style? Were you confused by anything in the book? etc.

Did any of you who have read this book have to read it for school? Do you think it was helpful to have read it in class versus on your own? I've heard opinions both ways. Some people found it valuable to learn about it and discuss it and others didn't enjoy it as much because they were dissecting it.

I vaguely remember reading this in school. I'll probably end up reading again. I hate when I can't remember a book.

I've read a lot of books that are meant to be frightening, this one was by far the creepiest. Perfect for reading on a dark, stormy night, curled up by a fireplace all alone.

there is no way in hell i could read this book on a dark, stormy night alone!! i didn't think that a whole lot of the book was scary but the parts that were really freaked me out! I remember being in the bathroom brushing my teeth and i kept looking behind me cuz vampires don't have reflections!!

I love this book. I first read it in a college course about Gothic literature (which was awesome in itself). It has also proved invaluable to me in my studies of teen vampire literature. I think this would be great to listen to on CD--has anyone done this yet?

I also found a graphic novel edition in the kids' section of B&N, and of course I bought it. It's actually remarkably close to the novel, and the illustrations make it that much better. They are a bit cartoonish but I definitely enjoyed them.

Since the discussion has met something of a standstill, I'm going to be fun and suggest we talk about certain sexual scenes that my professor loved to talk about.

1) Who remembers the "nursing" scene? You know, when Dracula cuts open his chest and makes Mina drink his blood?

2) Let's talk about Lucy's vampire death, when her fiance had to ram a stake through her heart (PENETRATION, anyone??). That was a big moment in the slaying, but then they kind of glossed over the rest of it. You know, the part when they cut off her head and stuffed her mouth full of garlic.

And I know I'm being silly here, but they are pretty common interpretations of the scenes.

There are, I read it eariler this year and I must say that this is one of my favorite vampire books. There were alot of parts of the book that I thought had to much explaination and then there were others like Tahleen said that were just glossed over. I do have to say that there was alot more sexual content in it than I was expecting, but I thought this books was fantastic.

I suggest that anyone that loved Dracula, that they should read the
The Historian. It is a long book, but it is fantastic and it is centered around Dracula! It is on the top of my list for books that I have read!

I finished a little while ago, but thought I would share my thoughts. I loved the book. I wasn't required to read it in school but had always thought it would be a really creepy great read.
I wasn't creeped out, and I didn't see any of the "overly sexualized scenes" that so many people talk about. I actually found it to be much less erotic that I expected the "original" vampire book to be.
A few things that made me go Hmmmm.....
1. Van Helsing the doctor. Didn't a movie come out awhile back called Van Helsing and the title character fought vampires? Funny.
2. The Count controlled wolves, and they were his followers. Normally wolves are explained as being the enemies of vampires, so that really surprised me. (and no, not just in Twilight)
3. I was wondering the reason for including Quincey. His character didn't really fit with the others.
4. My sister used to watch the movie all the time, and I think I may have sat through it once, but I couldn't get Keanu Reeves face out of my head when I read the parts of Jonathan. :)

Side note: the other day at the toy store, I noticed a book called Dracula, the Un-Dead and was written by Dacre Stoker a direct decendent of Bram and a "dracula historian". It said it was a sequel to the original. Has anyone read it? Heard good or bad?

Tami, there was a movie called Van Helsing and it was based on the same character, but the movie was ridiculously different from the original character.

As for the sexualized scenes, I'm pretty sure I talked about them earlier in the thread. They're not racy, but there is a lot of subtext and symbolism.

I just read it! I was pretty excited to read it, and started back in February a few days before my second semester started (so I only picked it up again a couple of days ago). The first 100 pages of so didn't really interest me - Jonathan's diary frustrated me, because how could he not see something was very wrong? And then the letters telling how many men had proposed to Lucy didn't quite make sense to me. Then it really started to get interesting, and I was barely able to put it down. The whole part about Lucy was the most engaging, imo, and it didn't make me expect the ending to be such a lackluster.

I have to agree with Candace - this really IS creepy. I'll admit to be a bit too impressionable, and as I read it every night before going to bed... I too was afraid to fall asleep! Silly, I know.

Tami - I don't understand what was with Quincey either. Ok, so they needed someone who was good at "action"? They could have given that characteristic to Arthur, he didn't do much except for being engaged to Lucy.
Remfield confused me too because I couldn't quite connect him with Dracula; I don't even understand how they drew the conclusion that they were connected, maybe I should have read it more attentively.
And I didn't get why Dracula met them in daylight once? What was the purpose in that meeting? I also would have liked to know why he went to London in first place, and thought it more interesting when he was present (Lucy, etc) than later parts of the book when the party was looking for them.

A really good book nevertheless.

I really had no desire to read this for a long time because I thought it was supposed to be scary. But I didn't find it scary at all. I listened to the audio and absolutely LOVED it! There were a few parts that were pretty intense, mostly when Johnathon was at Dracula's castle.

I guess I missed much of the sexual innuendo but now thinking back, I can see some of it.

I'm definitely going to echo some of the thoughts others have had on this - I loved Dracula. Honestly, I was really surprised I liked it as much as I did! Even more, I was really surprised how much I didn't know about the story going in. What happens in the first few chapters is what I always had thought of as being the whole Dracula story. There was so much more to it though, and like other shave said, so scary! The ending was so good, I couldn't stop reading. I was very, very pleasantly surprised to find it so engaging :)