Just Finished Reading Dracula by Bram Stoker

The mythos of the vampire monster may have been part of Eastern European folklore for centuries, but when English writer Bram Stoker wrote Dracula in 1897 it forever placed the topic in the setting of a remote Transylvanian castle in Romania, with the Count being an urbane but ultimately predatory and evil bloodsucker, converting his victims into fellow vampires.  A solicitor, Jonathan Harker, is sent to his castle from London to finalize arrangements for Dracula's purchase of a house in the city's outskirts...before long he is deep in danger as three vampire women set their sights (and very sharp teeth) on him...saved from their clutches at first by Dracula and later abandoned to them, the story takes a turn in its setting to the English coastal town of Whitby,  where Harker's friends and associates...along with suitors of a friend of his fiancée's...begin to encounter a strange and unwelcome presence among them.  As the story progresses, a Belgian professor, Abraham Van Helsing, recognizes the signs of vampire activity and joins them in combating Dracula...naturally I left out gobs of plot because I don't want to give away the story.  Let's just say that many of the "rules" governing what vampires can and cannot do are laid out here, as well as how one can finally "kill" them...although in a manner of speaking they are already dead.  The much more recent Stephanie Meyer Twilight series pretty much adopts all of this while making "her" vampires equivalent to humanity in their ability to choose between good and evil: Stoker's Dracula and his ilk, on the other hand, are completely evil and separated from God.  Dracula's narrative is unconventional, consisting of a succession of journal entries and letters written by the various characters involved...beginning with Harker's accounts.  I enjoyed the book, marveling that at my relatively late age I hadn't yet learned the fate of Count Dracula and those involved in the literary story.  In childhood I saw him on the drive-in theater screen in the movies Horror of Dracula (from 1959) and Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966): Christopher Lee played the Count in them, with Peter Cushing as Van Helsing.  Now I'm on to another great old monster classic: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley...