Dracula

"How these madmen give themselves away! The real God taketh heed lest a sparrow fall; but the God created from human vanity sees no difference between an eagle and a sparrow. Oh, if men only knew!" - Dr. John Seward

What a frustrating novel to read. Very interesting, very well written, great characters, but goddamn was Stoker paid by the word. The opening with Jonathan Harker and Mina's journals are genuinely interesting and horrifying, and Renfield's character is interesting to read in his madness, but the "learned men" of Dr. Seward and Dr. Van Helsing are truly painful to read. Dr. Seward is insufferable, and Dr. Van Helsing is worse.

Helsing keeps acting like the aloof know-it-all, but won't tell anyone what he's thinking or why he's doing the weird arcane things he's doing until it's too late and a woman dies. But it brings everyone together and they finally share everything they know, and now they're going to strike at monster. Great! Here's what we know about the monster Dracula:

1. He is extremely powerful, but has weaknesses
2. He can only move about at night, not during the day
3. He can only enter a building he's been invited into.

So what better thing to do then attack him at night, leaving Mina in the asylum where one of Dracula's associates lives. And then, to make matters worse, they come home to find her pale, and she complains of dreams in her journal in which is attacked at night, and none of these geniuses can put two and two together.

Did not finish, but I can see how it inspired future and better works.