Everything I discuss here is based on the publicly known details about Dracula, so I’m not marking it for spoilers, but proceed with caution if you know nothing about who Dracula is. Also, please keep in mind the lack of a spoiler tag when responding!

I can’t help but think about how our experience reading this today, even if we know nothing about the actual story, is forever altered by the lore and legends built over time after this book came out. You’d probably be hard pressed to find someone nowadays who doesn’t already know that Dracula is a vampire. And obviously, if you read the blurb for the book on here, you’d learn that before reading as well.

That makes this reading experience so fundamentally different when compared to that of someone who read it shortly after its release. My basic understanding is that while this certainly wasn’t the first vampire story, it also wasn’t widely known that Dracula was a vampire until you actually read the book. So I’m curious to know what the experience must have been like to learn with Harker (and I assume the other characters later in the book) what Dracula is. Instead, we go into this with more information than the narrator and I don’t think that was the original intent. I definitely could be wrong though haha

I’ll be researching this as I read more I think and come back to update, but for any Dracula lovers or English majors out there, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

”It pains me to know that an old growth forest is worth far more as lumber than as the lungs of the earth. And yet I’m harnessed to this economy in ways large and small, yolked to pervasive extraction.”

!!!!!!!! This is THE quote to illustrate how asinine our complete avoidance to do ANYTHING about climate change is. Why are we continuing to burn through our natural resources when we have viable renewable sources? Investing in renewables is an investment in not just our future, but the entire planet's future.

I already have SO MANY THOUGHTS

1. I without a doubt believe this is exactly what would happen if we somehow could no longer eat animals. People are so anti vegan/vegetarian they aren’t even willing to try foods with those labels. It’s actually so easy (and many times cheaper) to eat a meatless diet in the US nowadays but we’re so meat focused here, people would absolutely turn to eating humans before just eliminating meat from their diet. (Not judging anyone I literally could not care less what people eat lol; also I know this is not a US based book)

2. The talk about sanitized language is so relevant, especially on social media. Sanitized language does nothing but benefit the people in power. Can’t talk about murder, assassinations, rape, etc online? Great! Now it’s 10x easier to do those things because no one can talk about it without being banned 🫠 You (as in the social media company) can’t claim to be protecting people online when your actions are directly leading to the erasure of major atrocities around the world.

I think that’s all for now, I’m glad I picked this book up