When I thought about creating a vampire community on Lemmy, I started thinking about which books/movies I would start with to get the community started. Obviously, I need to get Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel out of the way first since it’s just expected/assumed. Bram Stoker didn’t invent vampires or the vampire fiction genre, but this novel definitely codified many of the rules for vampires that are still used in vampire fiction today.

It was released in 1897, and this means it’s old enough to be in the public domain. If you’ve never read it, you can read the entire thing for free in whatever format you want thanks to Project Gutenberg (a website for public domain ebooks). Also, if you like audiobooks, LibriVox is a website where volunteers read public domain books to create free audiobooks. Since Dracula is such a popular novel, there are multiple versions available (even some with a full cast). There’s really no excuse to not have read this book if you’re a fan of vampires.