Frankenstein

When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.

I'll be honest, I went in with rather low expectations. The story of Frankenstein has never been one that particularly interested me and I had a feeling this book would probably not carry the same weight today as it did when it was first released. Not because its themes aren't relevant anymore, but because its themes are something that has been explored a ton throughout art by now and isn't as novel anymore. I wasn't sure if this book actually dug deep enough to wow a reader in the 21st century.
I was curious to see if I'd be surprised though and I like the backstory of how Mary Shelley came to create this story after all.

I agree that Frankenstein opens up some great moments about existential themes, the relationship and obligations between a creator and its creation, the concept of innocence and blank slates, the fear of the strange, the burden of consciousness. The creature's suffering was definitely the most intriguing part of this book for me. Victor Frankenstein himself was pretty awful as a character.
In general, the way people throughout the story react to and treat the creature is very over the top and ridiculous in a way that I don't think aged well. Victor's own inner struggle is also often hard to empathize with, in my opinion.
And of course, there are things like the way the creature learns to travel all across Europe and learns to speak sophisticated language so quickly is a bit odd even in the context of this story.
I also can't really say if I find it strange and corny or really innovative that the story is told through all these different accounts from different characters. I mean, at some point we're reading letters in which someone describes the story of someone listening to someone else tell their story in which they listened to someone else tell their story. The layering in this is ridiculous sometimes.
The prose can be a bit repetitive and dull at parts too. Mary Shelley loves to get distracted by describing landscapes for a couple of pages at a time. But there are moments of great prose with really powerful and effective words as well. The final speech by the creature actually hit me a bit.

Overall, I enjoyed this though. It's not a terrible read and it had some engaging and interesting moments. I don't think I'm ever gonna be a big fan of the Frankenstein concept though and that's more because of my personal preferences and less because of the quality of this text.