Ok, I think we were supposed to blog whilst reading, so I shall......
My first thoughts when I started the book were, to be honest, ones of apprehension...
Seeing as I watched Nosferatu, and therefore pretty much know the story from beginning to end, I thought it might be a little boring to read the full story as I already knew what would happen. However, I was immediately pleasantly surprised by the style of writing, in the form of letters/newspapers/diary entries. I've never read anything written like that before and I thought it made the book really interesting- I really felt drawn into the plot by all the different opinions and findings of each different narrator.
Half way through, I realised that the word vampires hadn't actually been mentioned until page 167! I thought that was really interesting for some reason- I wonder why Stoker decided not to include it until later? Maybe he wanted the word to be a sort of taboo in the reader's mind....
I really enjoyed this example of scary Gothic description of setting (page 233):
'Never did tombs look so ghastly white; never did cypress, yew or juniper so seem the embodiment of funereal doom; never did tree or grass wave or rustle so ominously; never did bough creak so mysteriously; and never did the far-away howling of dogs send such a woeful presage through the night.'
Anyway, I'm now about four fifths of the way through and looking forward to the rest of it :)
