The Call

I'm getting that urge again.

As reliable and inevitable as the tides and driven by the turn of the seasons.

It is time to read Dracula for the bajillionth time.

I think everyone has a book that makes very specific repeat appearances on their reading schedule and mine is Dracula by Bram Stoker.
Whatever that says about me.

I have several books that I read at least once a year - American Gods by Neil Gaiman, Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams and Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman amongst them - but Dracula is the only one prompted by weather rather than mood or memory.
The only one I can't say no to.

When the weather cools and a touch of frost enters the air I start thinking of grand old buildings, abandoned and decaying; formal language and a society built on and constricted by convention; strange happenings and otherworldly creatures driven by dark appetites that are only a magnification of our own; the kind of dread that only comes from the gothic classics, from a time when the world was still mysterious, the old world doubly so, when people believed in souls and that they could be lost; of courage and convictions.

And it's time to read Dracula again.