Reading Update: October 10, 2010

Stone Cross Draculas Castle - Bran Castle Transylvania Romania

It’s 10/10/10! Such dates only occur about nine times each millennium, according to my friend Roger’s research.

I found the image above on Flickr. It’s a cross outside Bran Castle in Transylvania—Dracula’s castle. I’m still reading and very much enjoying Syrie James’s Dracula, My Love. I read Dracula last year (read my review here) as part of the R.I.P. Challenge, although I didn’t finish it in time to count it (November 8). And now I’m reading Dracula paraliterature for this year’s challenge! One of the things I wondered about was whether Stoker’s choice to tell the story in an epistolary fashion would have altered if he’d chosen a character from whose point of view to tell it. I like James’s choice of Mina Harker. The novel has been great so far! I haven’t caught any departures from Stoker’s novel aside from the ways in which point of view always alters the story. Syrie James’s Dracula is much more seductive—more like our current school of thought on vampires (Lestat, Louis de Pointe du Lac, Edward Cullen, and the like) than Nosferatu. I do enjoy how James turns Professor Van Helsing into something of an ass. That’s fun.

Aside from Syrie James’s take on Dracula, I haven’t read much. I have been enormously busy at work and grad school. It’s not that I don’t have time to read—I do—it’s just that with all the extra work, the time I do have is often at the end of the day when I’m tired.

I still haven’t started Jamaica Inn. If I don’t start that one soon, there’s no way I can count it toward the R.I.P. Challenge, although when I finish Dracula, My Love, I will have completed four books, so anything else I read is gravy.

Isn’t the R.I.P. Challenge is the best way to spend October every year? September never really feels like fall in Georgia, but starting the R.I.P. Challenge gets me into the spirit, so to speak. However, by October, when our leaves are changing and temperatures are falling, reading creepy books feel great. Thanks so much Carl for hosting it every year and always making it such a highlight in terms of reading experiences.

Some of my blogging peers are talking about the big readathon this weekend. I can’t participate in that kind of thing during the school year, or I will be dead come Monday. And I can’t be dead and teach teenagers how to appreciate Geoffrey Chaucer and Arthur Miller. However, I really want to try one over the summer. Anyone know of one? Or do we just need to throw that shindig ourselves?

In other completely unrelated news, I got a haircut (click to embiggen, as Wil Wheaton always says):

Dana's New Haircut

photo credit: VSELLIS

Katherine Howe and Me

Re-Reading The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

Katherine Howe and MeAfter my trip to Salem in July, I have been reading books set there, and I just finished a re-read of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane. I found the book as enjoyable the second time as I did the first. I’d really like to read some more books set in Salem, but aside from The House of Seven Gables, I don’t have any on hand. I decided to go forward with the Everything Austen Challenge and read Syrie James’s The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen. I’m looking forward to reading her newest book, Dracula, My Love. Anyone reading that one?

My students seemed interested to hear about my trip to Salem. Many of them had read The Crucible last year, and they remembered the characters. I told them I had seen Judge Hathorne’s grave and all the memorials for each of the people who were executed. I think I’ll have a lot of fun teaching The Crucible this year.

I think I’ll try to start both The House of Seven Gables and The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen tonight.

Dracula

While I didn’t finish Dracula in time to meet the deadline of the R.I.P. Challenge, I did finish it within days of the end of the novel’s action on November 6 of some indeterminate year. One of the things I’ve noticed about reading a book like Dracula, around which a cottage industry of adaptations, homages, and even an entire genre have sprung, is that the story in the actual book becomes altered to the point that the reader had different expectations. For instance, I had the idea that the character of Renfield had a much larger role and was a servant of Dracula’s. I didn’t realize the Count came to England, and I was surprised by Dracula’s small role in the actual novel.

The novel holds up well as a gothic tale. I wonder how it might have fared had Stoker chosen to tell it with a straight narrative rather than as a series of journals. He is constricted by what his characters are able to report. I don’t know enough about vampire tradition to know if Stoker originated some of the aspects we have come to associate with vampire narratives: the fear of garlic and Christian artifacts such as crosses, crucifixes, and the communion host; the inability to rise during the day and activity at night; and superhuman strength that grows more powerful over the ages. On the other hand, I was surprised to discover that sunlight didn’t necessarily seem to be harmful to the vampires in this novel. They avoided it, but when coffins were opened during the day to look on them, they didn’t disintegrate into dust as Anne Rice’s vampires do (and hers are not afraid of crucifixes).

I am glad I read Dracula. It is a great read for anyone interested in how the literary craving for vampires came to be, but you won’t find the seductive and charming Louis de Pointe du Lacs, Lestat de Lioncourts, or even Edward Cullens in this novel. Dracula is just a monster, and there’s nothing attractive or seductive about it.

I read Dracula with the iPhone app Classics. I usually have one book going in DailyLit, one paper book, and one iPhone book. I haven’t decided which book I’ll read next on the iPhone, but I haven’t finished Crime and Punishment on DailyLit, nor have I finished We Have Always Lived in the Castle in print.

A short update on NaNoWriMo: I am a little behind the wordcount. By the end of the day yesterday, I should have reached 11,667 words, and I am currently at 9,304. It might not seem bad to be behind by 2,363 words, especially compared with some folks who are working with larger discrepancies than that, but it also means that in order to be caught up by the end of the day today, I need to write 4,030 words. And that is a lot for one day. I’m not sure it’s going to happen, particularly as I have two grad school assignments due. But we shall see. The writing is not coming as quickly or easily as it did at first, I think because I really did sort of know how to start off. Cross your fingers for me that things pick up. I’d really like to win NaNo this year.

R.I.P. and NaNoWriMo Update

R.I.P. ChallengeI am not doing well with the R.I.P. Challenge. Despite a strong start in which I finished half the challenge in short order, I have stalled toward the end and have not been reading much. I am blaming my iPhone. I have too many cool apps now, such as the Scrabble app, which have taken me away from reading. I am not at all certain I can finish my remaining two books, Dracula and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, without some serious focus over the last week. I’m reading Dracula on the iPhone, and judging from the progress bar along the top, I’m nearly 2/3 through the book. I have only read two chapters of We Have Always Lived in the Castle though.

Another distraction from reading has been my planning for NaNoWriMo. You can see my profile here. I am excited about my project, but I’m kind of at a loss as to what my plot will be. I think I know who my main characters are. I have worked up a plan that includes helpful websites, character maps, inspirational pictures and music, and possible plot ideas in Curio, but I don’t know what my “conflict” is. I don’t know what my story will be. Some ideas I’m playing with include:

  • a retelling of a Shakespearean play (leaning toward Macbeth or Cymbeline—and of the two, leaning more toward the latter) in the Kentucky coal fields
  • feuding families embroiled in murder
  • the hero’s journey
  • Greek tragedy in KY coal fields
  • unfounded murder accusation and imprisonment

The retelling idea is intriguing, but ambitious, and I’m not sure I am up for it. If I go with feuding families or murder, what is the story? Why am I telling the story? So I am not feeling really ready, and it starts in about a week.