We're reading Frankenstein in English. It's a challenging read and Victor Frankenstein is an irritating, melodramatic character, but the book is good. I'm really interested in Romantic era (which has nothing to do with romance, by the way) style writing.
Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley when she, her husband, Lord Byron, and others were trapped inside the Villa Diodati for a few days during a storm on Lake Geneva in Switzerland in 1816. The writers challenged themselves to a competition to see who could write the best ghost story. Frankenstein came to Shelley as a dream, and put it on paper. Her colleagues liked it so much it was published two years later.
Another famous story written in the Villa Diodati was The Vampyre, by John William Polidori. It was a big influence in Bram Stoker's Dracula.
I hear you can visit this Villa in Switzerland. I'd love to visit it some day.
Anyway, there's my English nerdiness of the day. Further proof that I should be an English teacher when I grow up.
