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Old 11-02-2022, 10:11 AM   #511
topleybird
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Nearly finished reading Dracula for the first time. The writing is not great! The whole back half is just five or six guys obsessing over Mina's purity/ruined purity and repeatedly pledging their lives to protecting her and calling her a good, good woman, an angel, etc. So fucking creepy.

What's interesting to me is the stuff about Mr. Dracula that I haven't really seen carried over into the vampire stories that have followed. There's minor stuff like how a vine of wild rose, placed on the lid of his coffin when he's inside, will trap him. That's a cool little bit of lore! There's slightly bigger stuff like how he can shrink himself or even flatten himself — there's a part where they're trying to prevent a woman he's turned from getting back into her tomb, and she squeezes through the door a millisecond before they finish slamming it shut. Weird but also cool! I keep picturing one of those octopuses in zoos that manage to get out of their tanks through a not-quite-sealed lid.

And then there's the really bigger stuff about how Dracula is basically an animal acting on instinct, or sort of a zombie who can grow smarter over time. Van Helsing figures it took Drac hundreds of years to reach the point of being able to think of leaving his home and coming to London, and even that's remarkable for a vamp, I think because he was so smart and cunning and strong-willed when he was alive. It's like vampires retain some memories of being alive, and can speak and act with a small amount of cunning, but they're not really... smart. Van Helsing is constantly referring to Dracula's "child brain." He hasn't said it to Dracula's face yet but I've got a chapter or two to go.

 
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Old 11-11-2022, 03:53 PM   #512
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this new cormac mccarthy is insane. it's so good.

 
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Old 11-11-2022, 03:53 PM   #513
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i'm a chapter raptor

 
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Old 03-08-2023, 08:42 PM   #514
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Leonid Andreyev
Harry Crews

 
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Old 03-08-2023, 08:44 PM   #515
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ordered short story collections from

Larry Brown
William Gay
J.G. Ballard

 
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Old 03-08-2023, 08:46 PM   #516
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embracing it

 
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Old 03-08-2023, 08:56 PM   #517
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read some marilynne robinson. started wise blood by whatshername. flannery oconnor. has some tight sentences and imagery but i don't know if i'll finish it yet.

 
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Old 03-09-2023, 11:22 AM   #518
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Quote:
Originally Posted by topleybird View Post
Just finished a second reading of this, because I bought the new sequel, Don't Fear the Reaper, and quickly found it has zero interest in the reminding-you-of-stuff-from-the-last-book thing. You know? Like when Jim shows up it's not "It was Jim, her old coworker," it's just "It was Jim." Or "Jim limped to the door," not "Jim limped to the door. That shattered leg from his fall off the tower had never healed right." So I got lost pretty quickly.

Anyway Chainsaw fuckin' ruled, again, and now I'm back to the new one and it also fuckin' rules

 
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