I loved this book! However, I’m sure a large part of my exuberance is due to reading it as a travel experience. (Always read locally as you travel! Reading parts of “The Little Prince” to my children in a Parisian apartment...literary heaven!) I bought “Dracula” in a bookstore in Dublin, and read a great deal of it paired with a pint (maybe 2) of Guinness. The ubiquitous double-decker tour bus guide mentioned “Bram Stoker” as we drove through his childhood neighborhood, stating that he was sickly as a child and was often read to from a book about the lives of church martyrs, developing a foundation in the macabre.

Outside of Dublin, I relished the Victorianism of the book. The clash of Old World superstitions with the scientific attempts of the bored gentlemen class are all upstaged by the infantilized female character that’s both prone to manipulation by her inferior mental fortitude, and the most systematic and technologically advanced of the group.