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Dracula
Dracula
Dracula
Audiobook17 hours

Dracula

Written by Bram Stoker

Narrated by B.J. Harrison

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

About this audiobook

Dracula is a Transylvanian monarch planning on purchasing a ruined castle in England. Before he knows it, Jonathan is trapped inside Dracula's castle as a prisoner. Taken from a collection of journal entries, letters, telegrams, and newspaper clippings, Dracula is the grand sire of all vampire tales. Discover the nefarious means Dracula uses to enter England and wreak his hellish havoc. Who can stop the lord of the undead? Only the Dutch scientist Van Helsing can persuade the disbelieving to believe the reality that there are creatures of the night beyond our ken - things that suck the blood of the living, transform into mist, and flee to the safety of their coffins before the rising of the sun.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 28, 2015
ISBN9781509403578
Author

Bram Stoker

Abraham Stoker was born near Dublin in 1847. He was virtually bedridden with an unidentified illness until the age of seven. After graduating from Trinity College, he followed his father into a career as a civil servant in Dublin castle, writing journalism and short stories in his spare time. In 1876 he met the actor Henry Irving and two years later became manager of Irving's Lyceum Theatre in London. Through Oscar Wilde's parents, Stoker met his wife Florence Balcombe. He wrote many books of which only Dracula (1897) is widely remembered. He died in 1912.

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Reviews for Dracula

Rating: 3.9811621072887986 out of 5 stars
4/5

6,901 ratings288 reviews

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    B.J. Harrison is an excellent narrator for this book. Lots of emotion that I probably couldn’t have interpreted if I had read it myself! The story was not what I had expected at all, but I enjoyed it still. In response to another reviewer, rolby, the genre is horror, but of course it’s not scary. We live in the age of jumpscares and horror movies. This book was written in the 19th century, when women could probably faint at the sight of a mouse. Of course their standards were different than ours, and you have to take that into consideration before starting.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Dracula is barely in this book but it's still so good
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Great narration of a literary classic. You could almost say this was an early horror comedy with its extremes of both the high hilarity of some of the lesser characters to the pure horror of the blood beast himself.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Absolutely beautifully told and read with reality and passion. Being taken away to simpler times with all of the delights and fear, being read this story with talent and the art of a great tale it was quite the journey. Thank you B. J. Harrison. Job well done.

    2 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I liked it but not nearly as much as I thought I would. There were some parts that were very intense and I'm certainly happy that I picked it up and read it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Told through letters and journal entries, young lawyer Jonathan Harker goes to visit a new client in very remote eastern Europe and things get weird. When he finally returns home to England, things get weird there, too. 19th century travel takes a long time.I did it! I read Dracula! I’m glad I’ve read it, but I didn’t love it. I enjoyed Mina a lot but the rest of the characters were just okay. I read the sections in chronological order, instead of in the order they appear in the book, which makes a big difference in the first part but no difference for the rest.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Good horror story. I remember being scared in my bedroom while I read it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Reading Dracula for the first time makes me realize that I didn't know Dracula at all!  The film adaptations have never quite captured the book.  I read this as part of Dracula Daily which sends out each diary entry, letter, and news article on the date that each entry is given in the novel.  For about seven months, along with thousands of other readers on Tumblr, it's been like a giant book club as we slowly read this book a bit each day.  It's a fun way to read a book since I gained a lot of insights from other readers' observations and memes.  Oh the memes!The novel's format is very interesting, allowing perspectives from several characters (and some we don't get to hear from at all). And the characters are really great too, especially the two women.  Lucy Westenra is Dracula's first victim upon arriving in England, and Mina Harker around whom a team of vampire hunters coalesce.  In fact, Mina is given credit for assembling and transcribing all the diaries and letters, so Stoker essentially gives her authorship.  All the men are interesting too, from Mina's gentle but determined husband Jonathan to the Dutch polymath Abraham Van Helsing to the American cowboy Quincey Morris.It's a really interesting narrative with a lot of twists and turns and quite different than Nosferatu and Dracula, and other adaptations.  There's a basic wholesomeness to love and friendship among the Harkers and their friends that I just didn't expect from a 19th century novel or a vampire story.  Anyhow, now that I've read it once, I'll definitely want to read it again.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Dracula was the first "big book" or adult reading level book that I read. I remember looking through the Scholastic catalog at school and being surprised to see there was actually a book called Dracula. I loved vampire movies and thought since all of the adults in my life were pestering me to read more that I'd give it a try. I LOVED it. For days I hung out on the hammock in our yard and read that book. I remember loving the detail--the stuff that could never be captured in a movie. After that I read Stephen King's Salem's Lot and a slew of really good and not so good vampire novels. I firmly believe that I own my reading life to Bram Stoker. That burst of enthusiastic reading made the stuff I was reading for school much more palatable. I fondly remember reading The Pearl and The Good Earth from around this time period.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Very familiar story. Told in journal entries and letters. Each section starts with telling you whose journal we are reading. Lucy's attack and death happens when Mina is away. For a big part of the middle section all of Dracula's action take place off the page.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Interactive, very enjoyable. I wouldn't have thought I'd be interested enough to read through an old book like this, but I did, thanks in part to the interactive features.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This worked well as an audio book for me. It did wrap up a little too quickly at the end, I thought. But all in all, a joy to listen to.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Una vez más puedo decir que los clásicos no son lo mío. Son mil veces mejores todas las interpretaciones y adaptaciones de este clásico que el mismo clásico.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Stoker is remembered for Dracula for a reason. This book does not envelope many of his political views. They are there...but the story is more of a story.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was my first time reading Dracula, and I was impressed by how readable it was. The horror vibe is fantastic, the characters well-done (including a brilliant woman protagonist), and the technical telling through diaries, articles, and other media is innovative even now. I was pleasantly surprised by the entire book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I loved the themes within this story. Stoker could have done so much more with the brides (they were only in two scenes of the story).
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    While the novel itself is certainly spellbinding, this audio version has to be superior to the print book. Narrated by the great Simon Vance, his superb performance enhances the already scary tale into one of unspeakable terror. You may think you know the story of Dracula, but until you read the original one penned by Bram Stoker, you will not have experienced the true horror of the beast. The danger is subtle at first, sneaking up on you, and you may not even realize the depth of the disaster headed your way. Until it’s too late to save yourself.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Dracula is one of those stories you think you know because it has become part of popular culture - with a billion spin offs. But in fact you don't. I hadn't intended to read it but had a book scheduled which was related so felt I needed to read it first. I found it a real mixture - some parts were really good and interesting and some bits were deadly slow and I was reading as fast as possible to get past them. And I didn't know the actual story as it turned out. I didn't love it but it was good enough most of the way to get an average score from me. And all the tiny bits which people have used to create their own stories were fun to spot.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The horror elements (especially compared to modern horror stories) are charming rather than scary. Actually, the whole book is. From the lovable character caricatures to the diary/letter/log entry etc. conceit.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Was not even scary
    It started very promising. Jonathan Harker is stuck in a castle and finds out his host is evil. Dracula knows that Jonathan knows that he has sinister plans, but he still acts like he's a really nice guy. I thought that was really scary. Especially the part where Jonathan is shaving and Dracula suddenly comes up without being visible in the mirror really gave me the chills. If it kept going on like that, this book would be great.

    For some reason the author decided to turn the book into a story about a few men simping for a girl until she dies. Then they want to take revenge on Dracula, thus it turns into an adventure story. A book really isn't scary when it's about five men who can't be hurt by the enemy because they know its weaknesses and you already know they're going to win. Which they also did, though very underwhelmingly.

    Dracula is also very stupid. He doesn't even know about the consequences of his own superpowers, while the professor somehow does. And last but not least, the professor is supposed to be very smart, but he doesnt't speak proper English. Dutch and English are very similar, so I would have expected him to know how to construct grammatically correct sentences. He also speaks German and not Dutch in the book, which is kinda weird?
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Liked the start then it quickly droned on and on. I have never seen a Dracula film and so this was an introduction of sorts. I think when it came out it must have been brilliant but as the years have rolled by it is now quite dull and somewhat tedious to read
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Listened in preparation for trip to Eastern Europe which was cancelled due to Covid-19 epidemic
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This Audible edition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula has many narrators:
    Alan Cumming, Tim Curry, Simon Vance, Katherine Kellgren, Susan Duerden, John Lee, Graeme Malcom, and Steven Crossley.
    It was shear pleasure to listen to a few of my all-time favorite actors, and one of my favorite narrators, involved in this audiobook. Their voices were sublime, and completely worth it.
    The novel on the other hand, tended to drudge on in some parts. I grew bored at times, until people stopped talking and actually did something.
    Still, the Audible version of this novel was well worth the slightly boring parts, in order to hear my favorite narrators.
    **Be warned: this novel is only somewhat like the 1992 Coppola movie. Some parts are quite the same, and of course many parts were changed - and some completely, in order to make a “better movie”. And while I adore the movie (the acting talents of Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves not withstanding), it was a bit of a jolt to have the audiobook not follow the movie completely.....and why I expected this, I’ll never know! I know better, I swear.....!

    3.5 stars, but more like 4 stars for the narrators. Recommended for hard core classics lovers, etc.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I believe this was my third read of this book, but the only time I've listened to it on audio. This was a full cast performance and it was excellent. I highly recommend it to horror fans that dislike reading in epistolary form, the voicing here really brings the diary entries and letters to life.

    Highly recommended for fans of classic horror stories!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Fantastic!!! Just as cool reading it this second time around. Such a cool book and after reading it, when watching films about Dracula, I love to see what parts are actually taken from the book. I also love the wording in this book, because of the time it was written, people spoke differently and used other words more back then, than they do now.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A re-read of a classic I’ve not touched for many years. A book of this type will always receive mixed reviews. A classic, by definition, is always a book of its time and will jar for a modern reader. Especially for a modern reader who has not read classic literature for most of their life. My childhood books included novels such as Tom Sawyer and Treasure Island so I have no problem with reading this. At such times when Dickens was popular, writers were paid by the word so if any such novels feel padded there’s a reason. This book does feel overlong, and if written/edited now would be much shorter. I’d particularly forgotten the peculiar way Van Helsing speaks which I read with a blend of irritation and amusing pleasure. In the 21st century the book has many faults, much of it reading like Victorian melodrama, and is far from horrifying, but in 1897 Dracula would have been petrifying. It’s almost impossible to review a book of this type so it’s important to understand how this novel was pivotal.Though Stoker did not invent the vampire myth or write the first well-known story, he wrote the crucial novel, bringing us a vampire who would popularise the genre and creating a legend. Like the writing or not this book deserves its pedestal. Stoker touched on the darkest fears, not only of the time, but at the heart of terror, a creature capable of overtaking the human mind, of seducing, of changing shape and appearance, of ‘infiltrating’ the home, the heart, the marriage bond. Horror novels often reflect societal fears of the moment, and Dracula is no different though many of the same fears exist more than a century later. Stoker also puts into the mind unforgettable images — a wild country of superstition, Dracula’s towering castle, Harker’s slow realisation he’s a prisoner, Dracula’s vertical crawl, his intention to take over London, the crazed incredible Renfield, Dr Seward’s asylum. And, perhaps, for women today, the book represents the ultimate equality statement. Lucy and Mina’s story both begin with them represented as something beautiful and fragile, ‘creatures’ who can do nothing without their men and who require protection. The book ends with a gun in Mina’s hand. She has become a far different woman from the shy girl who did nothing more than look forward to a life of marriage. She wishes to protect Jonathan as much as he longs to protect her, perhaps placing Stoker as a realist and/or ahead of his time. Still, there are moments that sit uneasy with me, the worst of which is the historical error that anyone can provide a transfusion without blood-matching, a fact not discovered at the time but which cannot help making even this modern reader wince.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I read this a long time ago and I liked it.
    I used to read a lot of vampire books back in the day.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Bram Stoker’s The Illustrated Dracula features illustrations from Jae Lee, who’s worked on X-Factor, Inhumans, and Fantastic Four: 1234 for Marvel Comics as well as other work for DC and Image Comics. The book itself reprints Stoker’s text, which uses the epistolary novel format that was popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and introduces the reader to Count Dracula, Jonathan and Mina Harker, Renfield, Abraham Van Helsing, and Lucy Westenra. Lee includes multiple black-and-white illustrations throughout the story as well as four full-color illustrations that capture the gothic, dreamlike quality of the narrative. Lee’s portrayal of Dracula appears to borrow from the depiction of Count Orlok in F.W. Murnau’s 1922 film, Nosferatu, rather than Stoker’s own description or the appearance of the historical Vlad Țepeș. Those benefits aside, there are some typographical errors throughout the work. That said, the illustrations and the high-quality materials of which this book is constructed make it a good gift edition for those new to the story or friends in need of a new copy.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I was absolutely captivated by this story from the very beginning and the characters are so well described that I couldn’t stop reading.

    The cinema was my only exposure to this story before now and what can I say but the cinema destroyed these fascinating characters by either sidelining them, not including them or over sexualizing them for the entertainment value. Lucy and Mina are two of the strongest female characters that I have ever seen in literature and their friendship is wonderful. The gentlemen in this story are very courageous and it is amazing how determined they were to see Dracula destroyed because it was the right thing to do and not for revenge.

    My only con is there are times that the author gets a little wordy with some of his side stories and conversations that I almost wanted to skip some of it.

    This is a great performance to listen to. All the actors not only had to act out their main part but also any of the other characters when the story was being told from the journal writer’s point of view. The actors did a great job of maintaining each characters personalities and subtleties no matter which actor was speaking for the character. It is exceptionally well done.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I found the book easily digestible for an older book. The format felt quite modern, being a combination of letters and journal entries from various narrators. The descriptions and emotions were lush and enveloping. The entries written from VanHelsing’s point of view were the only ones I had difficulty getting through- the language choices are meant to portray a highly intelligent person for whom English is not native, but for me it wound up being repetitive and harder to relate to. Also, the portrayal of women was hard to swallow at times. Baring in mind that it was another time, and that it might even hold a hint of satire against chauvinism, it was still at times irking. Overall, glad I finally read this classic and would definitely recommend!