Versione didattica con CD e note di vocabolario, grammatica e lettura. Quest'opera appartiene allo stage 4 (media difficoltà)

A classic that I finally got around to reading/listening to, although I probably saw the movie a bunch of times -- along with all the Frankenstein-inspired movies (okay, I admit it: Young Frankenstein is my favorite comedy of all times - lol). I decided to read this because I have the new book by Don Zancanella called A Storm in the Stars, which is historical fiction about the summer Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, and I figured there might be references that I would understand better if I read the underlying work. I read along and listened to the Audible version that was released earlier this year. The readers were terrific. I particularly got into it when it was stormy outside, and I was all cozy in my reading chair with a cup of tea. I struggled a bit at the beginning getting pulled into the story, but I think that is more a function of the more formal patterns of speech attributed to the characters, which is probably very accurate for the time period (it was published first in 1818, and then revised in 1831). Once I was immersed, it was terrific.

I already knew that Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, an eighteenth-century feminist who penned The Vindication of the Rights of Women and died shortly after giving birth to her daughter), Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and John Polidori were sitting around the fire by Lake Geneva on a night much like I was reading last night, rainy, and made a bet with each other who could write a scarier ghost story than the “penny dreadful” writers of the day. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus was Mary's ghost story. ( )

Lido em janeiro 24 ( )

This is another classic I've had forever, but never read.....one I promised myself I'd read before the year ended. Well, I partially succeeded.....I started in 2023, but with the festivities of the holidays keeping me busy, I didn't finish it before the New Year. Ok...thats not entirely true.....the holidays served as a great excuse to avoid a boring book.

The truth is...I kinda wish I hadn't read it.....I kinda wish I could still have the belief that Frankenstein is the wonderful horror classic everyone professes it to be.

I was completely shocked at how different this was than every single adaption ever made. Yet, I understand those creative liberties......the actual story would make an awfully boring watch.

The only positive take away I have from this book......its impressive that Mary Shelley authored this at a mear 18 yrs old....in a time when women didn't write " horror".

The bad......where do I start?......the victimization of a deranged monster.......his long drawn out diatribes ....Shelley's attempt at gaining pity for the vengeful ogre......the unrealistic events that rely solely on chance and happenstance......the suspension of realistic thinking asked of the reader to believe the monster achieved such elegant dialect from a few months of listening to the cottages read.......the ridiculous expectations put on the cottagers......Shelley's insinuation that everyone but the monster carried the blame for his nefarious acts......the exasperation I felt everytime the story got the least bit interesting, then quickly returned to the same boring cadence.....I could go on.....but, I'll stop here.

Suffice to say....I did not enjoy this at all......I would only recommend this to those interested in reading classics for the sake of doing so. ( )

Prior to reading this, I was sure I'd read it before. I suspect, now, that what I read was a 'kids' version, which was significantly less forthright about the horrors that were going on.

It is an incredibly well written book, and I can see why it has lasted as it has. Having said that, it is bleak, and the story moves along very slowly at times. I also felt very little sympathy for the viewpoint character, the mad scientist, Frankenstein. Which at times made it a chore to read, as he vacillated between doing and not doing. And I respect that I am not intended to like Frankenstein, but it really does help keep me in a book.

I suspect, if I had known less of the story, then it would have gone better. The entire storyline on how the created person had learned to speak had gone past me previously, although the scene with the blind man was not new. Trying to work out how the patchwork of story I knew fitted with this was distracting, and distanced me from the story. ( )