Classics Reviews

Dracula

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The book Dracula is nothing like any of the movies or TV shows that try to depict him. There are no capes, unnaturally pointed faces or strangely coiffed hair, and no one ever says, “I vant to suck your blood!” Dracula is actually a fairly handsome gentleman with good manners (to a point) that does everything he can to appear as a normal human being: fashionable mode of dress, normal hair, polite conversation and if he is a little pale and his teeth just the slightly bit pointed, what of it? His good manners extend even to the point of entertaining his guests with jokes and stories that keep them laughing and listening well into the small hours of the morning. To his advantage.

If you take everything you ever heard or have seen about Dracula from modern media and toss it aside, the book Dracula is actually a fairly creepy tome in it’s own right, and with it’s own unique nature actually can be construed as even scarier. The best of the technology they had on hand seemed to do nothing to stop him and old wives tales and primitive treatments were their only protection in a war that no respectable person would have believed they were fighting. The insane that did believe them had their own ends for their belief, and I believe the lunatic in the novel was one of the freakiest literary characters I’ve ever come across, Dracula and his brides not withstanding. This was one of the original horror novels, upon which all others are today based.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

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The first time I read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes would have been in the summer between fifth and sixth grade. My parents had gotten me a boxed set of classics and this particular one was my favorite. I had always loved mysteries whether in the form of Clue or The Boxcar Children and these seemed so much more polished, not to mention were much harder to guess out how it was going to end to my eleven year old mind. I read them again in the seventh grade when I had to take a bus to school for the first time and the novel acted like the proverbial security blanket as I sat and read it every morning in the increasing cold temperatures in the strange environment.

Some time before I moved out I gave away 90% of my book collection (some 100+ books) so that when I left home it was only with a mere handful of ten or twelve. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was one of the books to go. I have since thunked my head on my desk many times wishing to have many of those books back. My parents repurchased The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes for me in far more adult binding then the lovingly tattered paperback I had before and I sat and re-read these beloved stories to my husband. He tended to fall asleep during them, but I quite enjoyed the trip down memory lane.