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Frank W. Abegnale and Stan Redding – Catch Me if You Can | Review

Author: Frank W. Abegnale and Stan Redding

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 224

Rating: 4/5

If you’ve seen the movie of this then you pretty much know what to expect. This is basically Abegnale’s account of when he was a conman, posing variously as a pilot, a doctor and a lawyer, amongst other things.

It’s funny because when I first picked this one up, I didn’t think I was going to like it. In fact, I didn’t really get too interested until I was about forty pages in, after I’d put it down for a year or so and then picked it back up again when I was running out of books to read on my owned TBR and I was trying to cut down the number of owned but unread books that I have.

This one turned out to be a success, and it was fascinating to read about how Frank was able to get away with everything that he did. He might have been a high school dropout and a con man, but he was also highly intelligent and more than willing to put the hours in at a library to learn a new subject if he thought it would help him with a con. Fascinating.

Click here to buy Catch Me if You Can.

Bram Stoker – Dracula | Review

Title: Dracula

Author: Bram Stoker

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 394

Rating: 8/10

Bram Stoker – Dracula

I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting from Dracula, but it certainly lived up to any expectations that I started out with. It’s a long old read, and you have to concentrate on it, but that shouldn’t put you off – it’s a true classic, and Stoker’s writing style really grows on you. In fact, I’ve since read a number of his other novels, and I’m still yet to be disappointed by his work.

Most people already know the basic story line, but I’ll touch upon it loosely anyway – basically, a young lawyer called Jonathan Harker travels to a castle to meet a Transylvanian prince. Once there, he quickly discovers that something strange is going on. As the story line progresses, Harker is hit with the dawning realisation that his client is a vampire, and he seeks the help of a number of other characters, including the iconic Van Helsing, to hunt down Dracula and to put an end to the evil.

I won’t go any further than that, because I don’t want to ruin the story for you and because I’d recommend checking it out, if you can – suffice to say, though, that it’s an iconic tale of terror, and one which spawned an entire genre. Vampire fiction is now something of a specialism for many writers, and Stoker can be credited with popularising the genre. If you have any interest whatsoever in vampires then you ought to read Dracula, because it’s like going back to the beginning, and seeing how all of the legends started.

Bram Stoker

My one criticism would be that it often feels as though nothing is happening – there are a lot of long scenes that seem to slow it down, although the action scenes are well-written and fast-paced, and the scene at the end in particular. In fact, it almost fell as though the ending was too short and abrupt – it came almost out of nowhere and took me by surprise, but it also seemed to work.

So go out and buy a copy of Dracula, if you don’t have one already – personally, I have a half dozen of Stoker’s books and I’m looking forward to reading more, but it was Dracula that introduced me to him. I’m really glad that it did.