Achievement?

[flemmings]

I pumped my bicycle's tires today.

And because incandescens is talking about Dracula, and I have never read Dracula, so I have no notion who everyone is, I rescued the coverless copy of Dracula from the Weefree Library across the street. It's also missing the end pages as well, but from context I deduce that Dracula has been dealt with by that point.

Comments

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

It's a rather good story, for stories from that era.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

And at least it's epistolary, not narrative.

[incandescens]

I remember it was on my reading list of "classic books" in my early teens imposed by my parents after I'd been reading nothing but trashy sword and sorcery / sci-fi / Doctor Who novelisations. Probably to sweeten the pot a bit, but even so.

It also features a female character making a major contribution to plot resolution by actually compiling other people's narratives and doing secretarial/organisational work. For all the modern versions of the narrative which try to cast Mina as "saving the day by virtue of her true love", she does a lot more here to save the day by office work.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

(amused) Your parents were kinder than Crommy, then.

Archivists for the win! Almost as good as a librarian!

[incandescens]

The list was a mixed bag. Dickens, Marco Polo, Herodotus, Thucydides, Dracula, Frankenstein...

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Argh-not-Thucydides. Herodotus is on-crack fun, though a *trifle* heavy for a young teenager; but Thucydides is just grim.

[incandescens]

I do remember bogging down in Thucydides. Herodotus was much more interesting.

Though when we were actually translating Greek at school years later, I actually quite liked him (he was one of the set texts) - his sentence construction and grammar were reasonably straightforward, as I remember it.