"Reading"

Since Dracula is on my reading list, and I haven't read it for a few years (no, I didn't read it for the Victorian class I audited last year 'cause I wasn't going to be at those classes anyway), I figure I should read it. What a better way to read it than the way it was written - by the day?

So I've been reading along on the Dracula Blogged site. It's not only an interesting way to experience the book - following along as the story unfolds day after day - but it's also really interesting to read a Victorian novel as a blog. [Dracula arrives in England next week, so the action will really start heating up soon!]

Blog reading is different than reading a novel (it's one of the topics for discussion with my students when we do the weblog sequence), in part because of its chronological nature. You read entries in reverse chronology, so the first time you reach a site, you read the newest posts first, eventually working your way back in time. Of course you can jump around in the archives, but that's another feature of the weblog that's different from novels. You could read a novel by jumping around from chapter to chapter, but it might not make sense, and a mystery novel will be entirely ruined by reading it this way, whereas the posts of a blog are discreet entries, even when they refer to earlier posts (whether directly linked or simply as parts of the story that the reader should already know).

The hyperlinks and division into posts make it possible for the reader to 'create' the text during the act of reading by selecting which parts of the blog to read, or which links to follow, but the reader also has the opportunity of creating the blog by responding to it in the comments section. In Dracula Blogged, there's also a comments section, which includes not only the blogger's comments on the book, but other's comments about the action of the story. There have been some interesting discussions of Dracula's sexuality, character motivations, and even close textual reading that reveals (or doesn't) the reactions of characters. I find the comments section, while sometimes not revealing anything I wasn't aware of, is an interesting pedagogical tool in this case, with the blogger drawing attention to details that will later be important, or playing devil's advocate about received criticism about the book, or even posing questions for other commenters to respond to.

It's definitely a different way to read a Victorian novel!