The Mysterious Affair at Styles

by Agatha Christie

This is one of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot mysteries. It's light and fluffy and full of twists and red herrings in the classic Agatha Christie style. Certainly not a novel to change the world but it's a nice light book to curl up with on a summer afternoon. Considering I downloaded it to my PDA from Project Gutenberg (for free of course), I feel I got more than my money's worth.

Dracula

by Bram Stoker

The classic vampire thriller. Not the first vampire tale ever written but certainly the most influential. I was actually quite surprised by how entertaining and captivating the story is. It's certainly not an example of the world's greatest literature; it's basically a pulp adventure story; but still, it's an exciting tale that is reasonably well written and I found myself reluctant to put it down.

As is true of most Victorian horror stories, the original book is not nearly as scary as the forms that followed it, but it's definitely more chilling than Frankenstein was. There isn't nearly as much of an overt message in this story but there are some interesting themes that lie beneath the surface. Still, this isn't a story that you read for deep thinking, it's just a fun adventure.

I didn't think that I would enjoy this as much as I did but I was quite pleasantly surprised. This was a very enjoyable read.

Incidentally, if you like this story, there is a very good board game that is quite true to the book called Fury of Dracula. One of the reasons I picked up the book was because I had recently played this game and I was curious to know how true to the original book it was. I'm pleased to report that the game follows the spirit of the book very closely, particularly the latter half where Van Helsing and friends are hunting the count like hounds at a fox hunt.