Tonight I'm gonna start reading either Dracula or The Shining. I haven't decided yet and I haven't read either before. I've also been meaning to read my copy of War of the Worlds.
This is my copy of
Dracula:
I am a gigantic whore for beautiful annotated books in general. I am an extremely lazy reader and don't tend to read many 'classics' so many references tend to go right past me. This edition of
Dracula is lovely, and the annotations done to an almost obsessive level, but when Klinger wrote them, he used what he called 'a gentle fiction' writing as if the story depicted in
Dracula was true, and the characters real people. I have very mixed feelings about it, I have to say.
After
Dracula, I highly recommend you read
Carmilla by Le Fanu. It's a gorgeous story and better than
Dracula, which it inspired. There are many annotated editions of it, although the particular volume I have appears to be out of print.
The Shining I found very disappointing, but tbh I generally find King disappointing in general. He has amazing ideas and concepts but he doesn't really pull them off all that well.
This is my copy of
War of the Worlds:
It looks like it's out of print too, which is a great shame. It has the original recording of the 1938 broadcast, and a shitload of notes. The first time I read it I was a little nonplussed, because I didn't realise how much it varied from the story in
Jeff Wayne's Musical War of the Worlds. (Also highly recommended.) Once I settled down and got into it, I found it to be an excellent read. Often when the old influential novels were written, they were lauded for their new concepts and ideas, but weren't that great when compared to the following stories that drew and expanded on those ideas.
War of the Worlds, however, remains a cracking great read and is also highly recommended.
mangakakalot.so
