Frankenstein

the movie is way better, it has the same problem of old classic books, loooooong explanations, 5 different adjectives to describe only one thing, no suspense or tension and really really slow paced...

It's a classic for a reason. And it was fun to be listening to this while reading another book that referenced it.

Read during a week in the Austrian Alps, and all I could feel of this book was the atmosphere. I didn't enjoy the characters, and felt the introduction to his cousin was to brief to allow any attachment to her. When she left the narrative, I was barely affected.

The ending left me confused, and I felt the plot overall was driven by some weird goal of telling some sort of Faustian myth, but poorly executed. The religious tones and lessons were over powering.

The Romanticism was over powering at times, and almost completely absent at others. It seemed that Shelly wasn't very good with this.

Still an amazing and engrossing story. Unfortunately there was only one illustration in my copy. I’m unsure if this was due to my device. The one I saw was beautifully done.

I have thought, but this being a classic piece of literature, I'm not going to write them down for posterity. That never served me well in lit classes, and I don't foresee it going well on the internet.

This LATW production benefitted immensely by Stacy Keach's gravely reading of the monster. It refrained from what many other productions have done in aping the cinematic incarnations of an ill spoken monster and a dilemma of science going too far, instead taking from the book the well spoken creation struggling with his own existence, with loneliness and rejection, and a creator who turns against him.

“While I watched the storm, so beautiful yet terrific, I wandered on with a hasty step. This noble war in the sky elevated my spirits.”

I have remembered that use of the word 'terrific' for almost a half century. I wish it weren't archaic.

Not an easy read, given the verbosity of 19th century language and ideas, so don’t try to rush this seemingly short book. The critical introduction (by Maurice Hindle) in this Penguin Classic is also hefty, but worth persevering with. The backdrop to the novel’s themes is wild and romantic nature as in the description of the trek to Chamonix’s Mer de Glace (still impressive today, if one can get past the panoply of ski and tourist facilities). These dramatic features form an apt setting for discoveries and life-explorings, all rendered in a language of passion and extremes. It’s both a “mad scientist” story (the inventor going too far; referencing “Prometheus” and “Paradise Lost”) and an origin story as of a being experiencing our world from first principles (the tabula rasa concept that occurs in Locke and Rousseau’s thinking), set out in a glorious telling by the monster, a methodical but alike emotional account. All this energised sentiment and excess of “feelings wrought” recalls Goethe’s “Young Werther”, itself almost a source text for the Romantic spirit, and used as such by the Monster here who educates himself from a foundling parcel of key books. “The scenery of nature.. he loved with ardour.. The sounding cataract haunted him like a passion …” (p151). Epithets of evil are rampant in the narrative (monstrous, malignant, treacherous, wretched, malicious, hateful, hellish, hideous, daemon… to mention just a sample), flung out on sight of the “Monster” even before any actual misdemeanours have been committed, but as often for me, it’s hard to make the “baddie’s” motives or character convincing. Future film-makers of course have filled this gap.

Contrary to popular belief, Frankenstein is not a book about a savage monster created by a crazed scientist who escapes to wreak havoc on unsuspecting nobodies. If anybody is the monster here, it's Victor Frankenstein himself, who has been given the power of a god to create a life, but doesn't consider the psychological flaws in the experiment. I see Frankenstein as more of a social novel than a horror novel in this respect. Shelley wants for the reader to sympathize with the Creature, not to condemn him like the cottagers do, who do so just because he's different. Frankenstein depicts the anti-Eden of new birth, a lonely soul without a companion, which is why the Creature rebels. The Creature is but a child without maturity or experience, summoned into a world which despises him, so how can we expect him to behave any differently?

With so many popular take-offs of the Frankenstein story floating around, the original tale turned out to be different than I expected. Mary Shelley does an excellent job of communicating the shifting emotions of characters; coloring their horrors and delights in great detail. I was taken off-guard by the intelligent communication of the monster, how quickly it seemed he educated himself in the ways of humanity through observation. The story was a mixture of dreadful events and hopeful dreams and gestures of both hate and love--all ultimately shattered by a self-made monster. After such a prolonged chase, the ending seemed abrupt for my taste. However, I find this abrupt closure to be common among many older fairytales. Overall, I enjoyed the book very much.

Wow... what a heap of erroneous stereotypes I had about this book because of cinema... very good book that makes me consider starting to read classics. Wherever you are... thank you Mary W. Shelley. (Translated from Spanish)

I was bound to like this book, really. I've always been engaged with concerns of scientific overreach and the dark side of ambition. That said, I don't usually like a book with such a clear message to convey. But Shelley did a fine job making this into a real page-turner. It's not that the outcome is such a mystery, I suppose. But it's well written, and the arcs of the characters themselves are enough to propel it forward. There are some dry spots with a bit more exposition than necessary (Frankenstein's chronicle of his developing interest in science, for example, or the monster's recounting of his time at the DeLacey cottage), but even these were largely mitigated by Shelley's skillful writing. I have to note, also, that this is the best use of the bookend device I've probably ever seen. Perhaps that's because it's not truly a bookend--Walton actually enters Frankenstein's story before it's finished, and he becomes a significant factor in its completion. Or perhaps it's because of the way our narrator's ambition parallels Frankenstein's own. But it works nicely here, and ties the story up perfectly at the end.

The greatest testament to the novel's genius is probably that, almost two centuries later, it's at least as thought-provoking and relevant as it could have been when it was written.

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.

Despite all the pop culture references, I didn't know what to expect with this classic. It's pretty delightful -- the digs on male egocentricity, the portrayal of the grossness in the disparity between social classes, the visual of the chase through the arctic, and that when compared directly with the monster, the human is more revolting. I think this literary period may be my jam: "for all Romantic horrors are diseases of excessive consciousness, of the self unable to bear the self."

When I was in high school, I had a friend who was obsessed with the movie, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Whenever we'd go to his house to hang out, it was pop, snacks, and that movie. Over and over and over again. That's probably why this book has been sitting on my shelf for several years and I've continued to remain uninterested in reading it. However, it's one that I promised myself I'd read this year so I decided to get it over with.

I wish I could say I loved it --- but I didn't. I am glad I read it---but mostly so I can say that I've read it. Ha! Like Orwell's 1984, it's one of those 1001 books I probably could have died without reading.

Book Description: "The story of Victor Frankenstein and his monstrous creation has held readers spellbound ever since it was published two centuries ago. On the surface, it is a novel of tense and steadily mounting horror; but on a more profound level, it offers searching illumination of the human condition in its portrayal of a scientist who oversteps the bounds of conscience and of a monster brought to life in an alien world, ever more desperately attempting to escape the torture of his solitude. A novel of hallucinatory intensity, Frankenstein represents one of the most striking flowerings of the Romantic imagination."

Nah...not really. No horror. Not really profound. No hallucinatory intensity. If by "flowerings of the...imagination" we mean "great imagination---budding writer", then yeah, I'll give you that one. Mary Shelley was barely nineteen years old when she wrote this and, although it was published within months of Frankenstein, this is exactly the kind of gothic nonsense Jane Austen was parodying in Northanger Abbey.

The idea of a scientist pushing the bounds of human convention to create non-human life is brilliant.
The idea of the "monster" developing human abilities and emotions is brilliant.
The way Shelley made it all happen? Not so brilliant.

I was left with way too many questions on this one. How did the monster learn all he did in just a few months of spying on his neighbors? How does he go from inanimate blob to quoting Plutarch and Milton in such a short amount of time? His knowledge is inconsistent. For instance, he knows about the mythical character of Pandemonium but he doesn't know fire will burn him? Shelley wrote this as part of a dare between herself, Lord Byron, her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and another friend. Throughout the entire book, all I could imagine when the monster was prattling on and on was that Mrs. Shelley was really just wanting to show off all her knowledge to these obnoxious men she was in competition with.

Critics say this is a story of a monster that was more human than his creator. They say Frankenstein drove the monster to his "badness" and that it was all his fault that the monster committed evil acts. That might be the case if Shelley didn't have him rant in endless philosophical orations. She makes the monster appear more intelligent than the scientist. I'm definitely holding the monster accountable for his own actions. He obviously has a conscience.

I am not into science-fiction gothicism/horror stories. The language of the 1800s makes it very hard to interpret and understand. I think it does offer a lot to be learned using literature skills, but I would not recommend this as easy reading to anyone below high school level. I did identify with the monster, and the loneliness he must have felt being created and then forgotten.

I enjoyed this. I was surprised at how different it is (particularly the monster) from the representations of the story we see in popular culture. I like the fact that it had no genuine protagonist. The overwritten, floral language was occassionally a bit too much, so I found myself skimming a bit. I thought the interpretation of the story in which the monster is a metaphor for Frankenstein's repressed (homo?)sexuality was pretty overt.

I enjoyed it much more than Dracula.

Some have called this the First Sci Fi book, seemed like one worth reading. I also realized that I didn't actually know the whole story, and heard that many movies changed it. One amazing fact is that Mary Shelley was only 18 when she wrote this!
The story is told in an interesting way- we are first introduced to Walton, a rich Englishman who is exploring the northern reaches of the Earth looking for the North Pole, told through letters to his sister. He encounters Victor Frankenstein, in a rowboat and nearly frozen to death. Then the story is told by Frankenstein in the first person. I don't think this random structure added much, but it didn't hurt either.

Frankenstein is from Geneva, and goes to university to study natural philosophy, as it is called in that day. He becomes obsessed with the secret of creating life, and eventually creates the Monster, an 8 foot tall, powerful, and superior being, who is nevertheless hideous to behold. Frankenstein immediately regrets his creation, who flees from the horrified doctor and eventually finds him and demands he create a companion for himself, as he is lonely and without companionship, feared and repulsed by all who happen to see him. And the monster is willing to kill Frankenstein's friends and family to convince him to do it. They then chase each other all around Europe in this struggle.

The book isn't too long- 220 pages in my edition- so I'm glad I read it. But the writing (which I think is technically pretty good) is a bit anachronistic to today's reader. Frankenstein's laments get quite repetitious, and his actions in trying to avoid the Monster's destruction of his life are utterly idiotic. Lots of wild coincidences are required for the plot to make sense. So I wasn't a huge fan, but hung on until the end.

No, it is not a science fiction or horror book. It is a deep reflection on the scope of human creativity and intelligence, raising various moral challenges to scientific progress and human morality. That is how it should be read. (Translated from Spanish)

I never read it because I already knew the story, but I signed up for a book club to read it, and it was hard for me to finish. (Translated from Spanish)

ugh her minnddd!!! I'm not even gonna try to write what i think, how much i love this book and how brilliant Mary Shelley was. Ohh i could talk about this book for hours on end, and about every frankenstein's monster inspired character and so on and so forth...

How did this become a classic? Even if you are used to the amazingly convoluted prose, because that's the style of the times, there's the matter of getting past the amazingly thin shred of story here, the lack of motivation, the skimming over the important bits to give immense detail to the overwrought reactions of the characters. Then you have to completely suspend your disbelief not only to allow for Frankenstein to create something like the monster in his student apartment out of nothing and in no time to allow for the fact that the dread monster goes from being completely unaware to erudite philosopher in a matter of months while living in hovel behind the hovel. I finished it because I had to.

And how did the classic Frankenstein movie ever get derived from this self-indulgent emotion fest? Yikes! Now I have to watch one or two of the other adaptations that say they stuck closer to the Shelley version to see if they did.

Great fiction is worth looking at over and over.

The classic horror fiction tale of a scientist and his creation. Set in the late 1700's/early 1800's, Victor Frankenstein relates his tale of his creation. A college student, he becomes obsessed with classic 'natural philosophy' (alchemy?) and fuses it with current knowledge in chemistry to learn how to create life. From that point on, his creation obsesses and haunts him, driving him insane multiple times. A true creation gone wrong. A very interesting novel and truly a classic. I enjoyed the introduction to this edition too.

Terrific fresh a marvel

There is a lot of commentary that can be had about the situation Frankenstein was put into and what the meaning of life is. I personally felt that what came out of the story and what can come from it was better than the delivery.

Mary Shelley's greatest work is deeply influenced by the ideas of her age, and its conception was imbued with the companionship of Percy Shelley and Lord Byron in the appropriately Romantic environs of the Swiss Alps. In Harold Bloom's postscript, he identifies Frankenstein's demonic creation as the only true character in the novel; the creature is a Romantic wanderer, cursed by his sensitivity to music, natural beauty, and human emotions to live in isolated despair. He is too human; while Victor is defined by his unthinking ambition and his desire for creation (much like the abstracted God figure in Milton), the soul of the poet belongs to the being he brings to life and then shuns. Bloom also discusses Frankenstein in terms of the double or doppelganger, a motif in much of 19th Century Romantic and Gothic literature. The reflection or doubling of the scientist (or natural philosopher) and the poet is really one of the central problems that arises from the Romantic response to the Enlightenment. Where does our creative soul fit into this new world of rational understanding? Can our humanity be analyzed and defined away by Darwin and Freud?

The overly dramatic narration spoiled it for me.

In all my life, I have never had the urge to read Mary Shelley's masterpiece until I received a copy as a gift recently. I have read a lot of classics in my life, but I have never been a fan of the "horror" genre. Well, this book was a surprise--wonderful language, well-drawn characters, a deep study into the human psyche with just the right amount of tension. After finishing the book I couldn't help but think that Hollywood did us no favours with their numerous adaptations of this story. It certainly formulated a preconceived notion in my head, and made me decide to give the book a pass. According to my research, Mary Shelley created this story on a rainy afternoon in 1816 while she was in Geneva with her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and their friend, Lord Byron. How is that for a pedigree? This book is a horror story, but it is so much more. It is study in human nature, and an examination of the dangers and occurrences that can occur when a person's ambitions and preconceived notions, ruled by an imagination that has been allowed to go its own way from childhood. It examines social and human morals, especially as they were in the early 19th century. It is also a tragedy as we watch a man descent into obsession and insanity. There is a reason why this book has stood the test of time, and why it has survived numerous reincarnations as a film and television series. The underlying message is still valid today. Unbridled obsession, tragedy, romance, grief and narcissism are all emotions that we still see everywhere today. The difference today is that all these emotions and actions are out in the open and are discussed freely on television, in the news media and on social media. I think the real horror behind this "horror" story is that it forces the reader to examine their own motivations and aspirations, and maybe begin to understand how these can be interpreted. perceived and judged by others. I am sure we all know of people in the world today and in history who definitely have a "God" complex, and we can see the harm that it has caused and still continues to cause in our world. .