Shadowing Practice: We're Reading Dracula in October - Learn English Speaking with Video
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October belongs to Dracula right here
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so most of you know I host a book club the
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seriously well -read book club it is part of my patreon
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and you will find a link to
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that in the description below it's $20 a month
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but we pick a classic each month we read it we discuss it in detail on Voxer.
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I make private videos that are only available to the Seriously Well Read book club members.
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And since October is not only just Halloween, but also Victober, and Dracula is a Victorian novel,
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what better time to read Dracula, okay?
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And, okay, Dracula, Guinness Book of World Records says that Dracula has been portrayed on screen over 538 times.
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That was 10 years ago.
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So who knows how many times Dracula has been portrayed on screen since then.
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So everybody thinks they know the story, but most people haven't read the original novel.
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If you're one of those, if you haven't read the original novel Dracula, or if you have read it and you want to read it again.
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October is the perfect time to get in on this.
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I'm telling you, it's going to be a blast, okay?
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I'm Randy Ray.
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This is The Literate Texan.
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It's my channel on YouTube where I talk about books and reading, highbrow, lowbrow, everything in between.
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I'm not sure what you would consider Dracula.
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It's old enough that you might think it's highbrow, but it's gothic horror enough that you might think it's lowbrow.
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I don't know whether it's highbrow or lowbrow.
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I just know it's the good stuff and you'll enjoy it.
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And don't think that because it was published in 1897, it's going to be hard to read.
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It is not hard to read.
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You will not have any trouble with the language in it at all.
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We're not reading Shakespeare or Beowulf here or Chaucer.
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It's written in almost contemporary English.
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And so they're, they're just a handful of, of phrasing differences, but yeah, you won't have any trouble at all with Dracula in terms of reading the language.
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Okay.
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So let's talk about the book for just a second, Dracula.
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Most editions are about 400 pages long, but it varies.
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This is my copy.
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This is the Norton critical edition.
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So it's got all kinds of extra stuff in it, but you can usually find a copy of Dracula in like a Signet classic or something like that for next to nothing.
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And actually you can go to standardebooks .com and you can get an ebook version of Dracula completely free.
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I mean it's in the public domain.
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It was originally published in 1897.
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It was written by Bram Stoker.
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Bram Stoker is considered one of the great original gothic horror writers.
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In fact the Horror Writers Association of America.
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Their annual award for fiction is called the Brom Stoker Award, okay?
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Now, I haven't read his other works, but I understand none of them come even close to being as good as Dracula.
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I don't know.
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I've heard different things.
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You know, he also wrote The Jewel of Seven Stars.
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I can't remember the names of them.
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He wrote seven or eight novels, I think, and some short stories.
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One of the short stories that he wrote was called Dracula's Guest.
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And is it Dracula's Guest?
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It might be Dracula's Guest.
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It might be Dracula's daughter.
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I'm not sure which, but I think I'm going to do a read aloud of that one.
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And I'll probably do that for free right here on the YouTube channel, so you won't have to miss out on that.
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But it's a great book.
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The pacing is terrific.
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The characterization is interesting.
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It's an epistolary novel, okay?
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If you don't know what that means, and I didn't until someone explained it to me.
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An epistolary novel is a novel that's told using clips from newspaper clippings,
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diary entries, letters, and that sort of thing.
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Now, you might think that's weird, and you might have trouble understanding that, but you know, you'll be surprised.
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If you've read Carrie by Stephen King, that's also an epistolary novel.
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Epistolary novels are pretty common, actually.
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You don't necessarily know that's what you're reading unless you know about that sort of thing.
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But yeah, Dracula is one of the best examples of an epistolary novel that's out there.
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And it is legitimately scary.
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And there's some fascinating themes going on at work.
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It basically, it asks the question,
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what happens in civilization when ancient evil encroaches upon modern civilization?
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I'm not going to get into too much more detail
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because I don't want to spoil any of the plot for you
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and I'm going to recommend to you if you're not familiar with the novel don't spoil it for yourself.
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Let it do its work on the page because and just forget what you've seen in the movies if you can.
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Don't think about the TV shows.
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Let the novel do its work, because believe me, it's worth it.
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Okay, so why are we reading Dracula today?
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Why now?
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What makes this worth reading now?
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Well, you know, as I already explained, it is Victober, so this does give you an opportunity to read something that was written in Victorian England, okay?
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And this is one of the great Gothic novels.
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If you like Stephen King, if you like Clive Barker, if you like Grady Hendrix, if you like any number of modern horror authors,
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a lot of them are drawing on that tradition, especially if you're reading vampire novels, okay?
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Modern vampire novels like They Thirst by Robert McCammon, which is a favorite of mine, Salem's Lot by Stephen King,
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Live Girls by Ray Garton, you know, a lot of these modern novels draw upon Dracula for their version of vampires.
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They all play with the tropes,
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but basically, modern pop culture and modern pop culture's depictions of vampires are all talking back to Dracula, okay?
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Now, Bram Stoker didn't invent the vampire, okay?
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He didn't invent the vampire story.
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In fact, he was heavily influenced by some other works.
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There's a book called Camilla by Jay Sheridan and Life I Knew, which I think is great extra credit reading.
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And one of the things that I'll do for my book club members is offer extra credit reading, and there'll be plenty of it.
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But, you know, there was Varney the Vampire, which was a penny dreadful that seemed to go on forever.
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It was influential on Dracula, too.
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Dracula, far better book. So, yeah, Dracula, you think you know the story too
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that that's why it's
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so much fun to read in my opinion you think you know the story
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but actually you don't it's full of surprises okay
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and it's fun to think okay how much of our pop culture understanding of vampires
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and Dracula actually come from the original novel
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and where did these pop culture versions of Dracula differ okay
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and you know there was a movie in 1931 starring Bela Lugosi called Dracula, directed by Todd Browning.
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There was a silent film called Nosferatu, which was based on Dracula.
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There was The Horror of Dracula, which was the first of the Hammer series of Dracula movies,
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which starred, you know, Peter Cushion and Christopher Lee, and countless others.
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Those are just some of the most famous versions of Dracula.
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Jack Palance has played Dracula.
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Frank Langella.
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Gary Oldman has played Dracula.
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And it doesn't matter which versions you've seen, you will find stuff in the novel that's going to surprise you, it's going to scare you,
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and it's going to delight you.
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Now, all of my book clubs are read -at -your -own -pace book clubs.
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You don't have to read according to any particular schedule
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but I always provide guidance and I like to do this so that the people participating know
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where they should be to finish in the course of the month
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but also you don't want to spoil things for people who aren't reading as fast as you are
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so if you know where we're at in the discussion
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because we'll have lengthy discussions every Friday but
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if you know where we're at in the book you'll be able to avoid spoiling it for other people
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and I do ask that out of courtesy of the other members of the book club
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that you do that I'm going to put the reading schedule in the description below okay
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but also I'll have the reading schedule posted on patreon .com okay
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and there will be a voxer discussion group voxer for those
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of you who don't know it's just a voicemail instant messaging service
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but it's particularly well suited for discussions of books you just leave a voicemail
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and everybody in the group gets the voicemail or you send a text
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and everybody in the group gets the text I've tried other
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options for hosting discussions voxer works best for me since I'm
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hosting the book club that's the one we're gonna use I know some people prefer discord
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and that's okay they can host a discussion over on Discord if they want to.
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I won't be joining in.
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Discord, it just doesn't work for me.
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I don't know if I'm an old fogey or what.
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But here's the calendar, okay?
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So first of all, i think october 1st
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or october 2nd i think the first friday in october is october 2nd okay
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so we're not going to have a discussion on october 2nd that'll be
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when you start reading it we'll have our first discussion
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and the first video on october the 9th
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and to be caught up to be where we need to be you should have finished with chapter eight
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and i'm not using page numbers because the different editions have different page numbers okay
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and I'm also basing the stomping points around the story arcs okay
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so they're not exactly even
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but they're close okay I think you know one week we're
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reading 100 130 pages one week we're reading 117 pages I think there's another week we're reading 87
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or 90 pages something like that but I mean it's close
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but I'm more concerned with the story beats being natural ending
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points than I am with an arbitrary page number goal each week.
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So October 16th, you should be finished with chapter 16.
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Not starting chapter 16, but finished with chapter 16.
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And then October the 23rd, the third week, you should be finished with chapter 22, it's only six chapters.
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And then on October the 30th, that'll be our grand finale.
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That'll be our final discussion.
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You should be finished with the book by October the 30th.
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That's the reading schedule.
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Like I said, it's going to be posted in the description below.
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It will be posted over on our Patreon site too.
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And also my plan is every Friday on the Patreon site, I'm going to put up a fairly lengthy video discussing Dracula.
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Now, I have had some health problems in the past
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that have prevented me or slowed me down in terms of putting together these videos, but I get so enthusiastic and excited about Dracula
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that it's like there's a whole ain't no stopping me now kind of thing going on here.
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So that's one of the big selling points of the Patreon .com membership are the videos.
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And I want to thank the people who are in my
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Patreon group for being patient with me in the months
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that I haven't been able to fulfill that and get all the videos live that I necessarily were promised.
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Okay, I want to reiterate this again.
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Why are the divisions where I put them?
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Chapter 8, Chapter 16, Chapter 22 two.
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It's not based on number of pages.
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Okay.
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They're roughly equivalent, but they're pretty various.
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It's because they're based on story beats.
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Okay.
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I want, I don't want to end in the middle of one of the mini story arcs
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or one of the plot arcs.
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Okay.
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And like any book, you know, this has multiple story arcs.
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Trust me on this.
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Okay.
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The schedule is the way it is for a reason.
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It's a good schedule.
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And this is not my first time to host a discussion of Dracula or to host a reading of Dracula.
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And trust me, it's just a good schedule.
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Okay, now if this is your first time reading Dracula,
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don't worry if Dracula, the character or the story,
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seems to be different from what you're expecting, okay?
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The first story arc in Dracula, and I'm not spoiling much here,
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concerns Jonathan Harker in Castle Dracula, okay?
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It is different from what you've seen in the movies, okay?
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In a lot of ways, it's more effective and scarier, but it is different don't let
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that throw you off okay
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and then the story arcs you know various movies are faithful to the book in various ways
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but even francis ford coppola who made dracula with gary oldman
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and anthony hopkins great cast by the way even he is not completely faithful to the novel
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so don't worry about that don't worry about the language being too difficult you won't have a problem with it.
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Don't worry about archaic references.
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There's not a lot of that to worry about.
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You don't need a bunch of footnotes.
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This was written in modern day English.
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For example, if you've read the Sherlock Holmes novels, you'll have no trouble with this.
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If you've read Pride and Prejudice, if you've read Charles Dickens,
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you will have no trouble at all understanding Bram Stoker's language in Dracula.
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And I am going to suggest avoiding adaptations of this while we're reading it.
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Once we get towards the end of it, I'll have some adaptations to suggest and some things to look for in those adaptations.
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And I am going to have...
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what i call extra credit assignments or additional things to read
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that are completely 100 % optional yesterday i made a video about literary double features books
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that are good to read back to back
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and one of the ones i suggested was reading dracula back
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to back with salem's lot salem's lot is a stephen king novel from 1978
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and it's marvelous it's absolutely terrific but it stemmed from the idea of what
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if Dracula came to America to a sleepy town in Maine instead of going to London, England.
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That was the springboard for that one.
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But I'm also going to suggest that Dracula was partially the inspiration for the Lord of the Rings.
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A lot of the story beats are the same.
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Gandalf you can see as being a type of Van Helsing character.
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Frodo you can see as being kind of a Jonathan Harker character.
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Sauron, the Dark Lord, is kind of a Dracula character.
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Even Gollum is like Renfield, okay?
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You can draw these parallels, but of course it's different.
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He's working in a secondary world instead of a modern American, or what was then modern day England and Transylvania.
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But, uh, but yeah, so that's another one where it can make for a really entertaining back -to -back read.
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But there are other things too, like Camilla, I've already mentioned by Sheridan Lafaneu, really great.
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There are excerpts from other things,
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but I'll have extra credit stuff that you can read if you're interested that will enhance your enjoyment of Dracula.
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It's one of the perks of belonging to the book club
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okay how can you participate this is part of my patreon
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okay this is a bonus this is what we're doing for
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the month of october for my patreon my patreon is how i support this channel okay
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so it's 20 a month you can start
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and stop at any time you want
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if you want to just join just for dracula
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and then leave that's okay i don't think you should i think you should stick around for all the classics
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that we read there because it's fun
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and you will not find a more interesting
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or interested group of readers than the people who participate in my book club it is a terrific community
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so to participate just go to my patreon sign up there
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look for the posts okay there will be posts there there will be videos there
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and contact me once you sign up for the Patreon.
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Let me know that you're on Voxer
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and I will add you to the Voxer discussion group
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because that's where the discussion is going to take place is in
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that Voxer discussion group and in the comments to those videos.
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That's about how simple it is.
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I mean naturally you'll need to get a copy of Dracula
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and do the reading but if you want to participate that's all you got to do.
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Get a copy of the book, do the reading.
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If you're having trouble finding a copy of the book let
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me know i will help you get a copy of the book okay um
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but yeah this is a patreon only thing
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and you know i've got something free coming up for lone
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star book club members too we're going to be reading the turn of the screw that's free and
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if you're looking for a free option to read something scary
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with me in october you got it the turn of the
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screw is what we're reading as part of the Lone Star Book Club, and I'll make another video about that soon.
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But that's all you need to know about how to participate in the seriously well -read book club's reading of Dracula.
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Sign up over at my Patreon, get a boxer account if you don't already have one, let me know so that I can add you to the discussion group,
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read the book, and participate in the comments of the videos that I post over there at patreon .com.
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So this year, October belongs to Dracula.
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And even if you think you know the story, even if you read Dracula before, but especially if you haven't,
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I think this book and this discussion is going to have a lot to offer you.
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So we're going to start on October the 1st. If you're thinking about joining in, contact me and let me know if you have any questions.
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I include my email address and my Voxer in the description of all my videos, and you're welcome to contact me there anytime.
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You're going to get a faster response if you contact me via Voxer, though, that's for sure.
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And with that, I'm going to let you go.
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I'm just going to ask you to do two things for me before our next video.
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One, stay hydrated.
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It's so much more important than you think.
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And two, please, book two, stay sexy.
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I love you guys.
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Woordenschat en spreektips bij deze les
Deze video bevat 270 zinnen en 3142 woorden om na te spreken. Het gesproken deel duurt 20:09. De spreker praat in een natuurlijk tempo van ongeveer 156 woorden per minuut, dicht bij een alledaags gesprek. 84% van de woorden hoort bij de 3.000 meest gebruikte Engelse woorden; de rest kun je beter vooraf bekijken.
Belangrijke woorden in deze video
15 woorden uit de video die het leren waard zijn, met uitspraak en betekenis:
| Woord | Uitspraak | Betekenis |
|---|---|---|
| participate werkwoord | /pɑːˈtɪs.ɪ.peɪt/ | meedoen, deelnemen |
| horror zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈhɒɹ.ə/ | gruwel |
| arc zelfstandig naamwoord | /ɑɹk/ | boog |
| spoil zelfstandig naamwoord | /spɔɪl/ | buit |
| belong werkwoord | /bɪˈlɒŋ/ | thuishoren, horen |
| scary bijvoeglijk naamwoord | /ˈskɛə.ɹi/ | eng |
| terrific bijvoeglijk naamwoord | geweldig, verschrikkelijk | |
| necessarily bijwoord | /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/ | nodig, noodzakelijk |
| faithful bijvoeglijk naamwoord | /ˈfeɪθ.fl̩/ | getrouw |
| civilization zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/ | beschaving |
| lone bijvoeglijk naamwoord | /loʊn/ | alleen |
| portray werkwoord | /poɹˈtɹeɪ̯/ | portretteren |
| invent werkwoord | /ɪnˈvɛnt/ | uitvinden, uitdenken |
| naturally bijwoord | /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/ | natuurlijk |
| membership zelfstandig naamwoord | lidmaatschap |
Grammatica in deze video
De structuren die de spreker het meest gebruikt, met de exacte woorden uit de video:
| Structuur | In de video |
|---|---|
| Voorwaardelijke zinnen if + zin, will/would + werkwoord — een voorwaarde en het gevolg | if you're interested that will enhance |
| Present perfect have/has + voltooid deelwoord — iets uit het verleden dat nu nog telt | has been portrayed · haven't read · I've heard |
| Lijdende vorm be + voltooid deelwoord — het gaat om wat er gebeurt, niet om wie het doet | has been portrayed · was published · was written |
| Betrekkelijke bijzinnen who / which + zin — extra informatie over een persoon of ding | McCammon, which is · Vampire, which was · Nosferatu, which was |
Uitspraak om op te letten
De spreker gebruikt 118 samentrekkingen en verkorte vormen, zoals don't, I'm, we're. Spreek ze kort uit, zoals je ze hoort.
- De “th”-klanken: faithful /ˈfeɪθ.fl̩/, enthusiastic /ɪnˌθjuːzɪˈæstɪk/
- De klanken “sh” en “zh”: adaptation /ˌæd.æpˈteɪ.ʃən/, civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, fiction /ˈfɪkʃən/, inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, partially /ˈpɑɹʃəli/
- Lange woorden — let op de klemtoon: participate /pɑːˈtɪs.ɪ.peɪt/, adaptation /ˌæd.æpˈteɪ.ʃən/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, naturally /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/
Zo oefen je met deze video
- Luister de hele video één keer zonder te spreken en noteer de woorden die je niet kent.
- Begin op 0,75× snelheid, spreek zin voor zin na en ga terug naar normale snelheid zodra het makkelijk gaat.
- Neem jezelf op en vergelijk met het origineel; let daarbij op woorden als participate, horror, arc.
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