October has arrived and with it the pumpkin spiced drinks, the falling of leaves and and a crisp wind blowing hard enough to make you turn your collar up. It’s also the month of spooky goings-on, so with darker nights and Hallowe’en approaching, we want to suggest the perfect book for you to curl up in your cosy, warm space and still manage to get chills down your spine.
What better book to recommend in October than the classic story of Dracula by Bram Stoker? You may know basics of the story from the many movie adaptations and modern takes on vampires, but if you’ve never read the book then you’re missing out big time! Don’t worry there’s no sparkling vampires within the pages of this novel.
Written as a collection of letters, telegrams and diary entries, several different POVs weave a tale of the terrifying monster, Count Dracula, that leaves his castle in Transylvania and makes it to the shores of England to start feeding on innocent people. An unlikely selection of people (including the famous Dr Van Helsing) band together and connect the dots to work out Dracula’s plan to make the streets of London his own, and work on stopping him before he creates more vampires to join his monstrous "family".
We love that the characters in Dracula aren’t so dense that they miss the most obvious of clues, like so many modern protagonists are inclined to do, and that they all write with such detail that it manages to evoke the feelings of fear and helplessness within us that the characters are feeling. Everytime night falls in the novel, we feel uneasy as we wonder what will our heros have to face while Dracula is at his strongest?
We don’t want to spoil the ending for you (even if the book was published in the 1890’s) so why don’t you pick up a copy of Dracula to experience the story for yourself in it's original form? Or download an audio book if you’re brave enough?
Sorry, but we can’t promise that it won’t bite...