Dracula - Way more scary than I thought it would be

I've been trying to mix in some of the "classics" to my reading list, or at least what I consider to be genre classics. I've found most of these books didn't live up to the hype I saw surrounding them. The main problem was that I knew the basic plot and ideas presented in the books before I even open them, so they don't contain the impact they would have if I had read them when the were originally produced.

1984 for example was a good book, but considering I already knew about Big Brother, doublespeak, and constant surveillance in the book from references to it in popular culture and more modern books, it didn't have the same effect on me as it probably did to the first generation that read it.

But then I read Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Warning: some spoilers

First off, the book is way more scary than I thought it would be. The book is written from journal entries from the main characters, always after the day's events, and them speculating on what will happen to them later that night. Nothing is in the moment, it really draws a really good picture of the fear and uncertainty of the character's interactions with Dracula. It allows for a strange multi-perspective first person narration that you don't get too often in books.

Secondly, I thought I knew the plot of Dracula from movies and other books. I did not. The first maybe fifth of the book takes place in Dracula's castle, I thought the vast majority of the book would be there. There are other characters I didn't even know about, like an insane asylum patient named Renfield, a man who traps flies in his room using his leftover food, to feed to spiders, to feed to birds, and so on, so he can eat the final animal in order to consume as many lives as possible at the same time. Truly creepy stuff.

Lastly, the restraint from professor Van Helsing after he already knows the danger they're all in, but has to ease them into the idea that something supernatural might possibly be real, and that he's not another madman spouting gibberish is just fantastic writing. In fact a good majority of the book is about characters attempting to subtly read the actions and intentions of the other characters, something I know felt really relatable to me while reading, it drew me into the situations, even the benign ones discussing trival matters.

There book starts and ends with action but the suspense exists the whole way through, if you're a fan of horror, I highly suggest to check this out.