Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

[Kid Omega]

Is anyone else reading this book? I'm about a quarter through it, and loving every page. Like really dense historical fiction, dealing with truly fantastical magic very seriously and sincerely.

Really cool stuff. Anyone?


-k

[Shem the Penman]

Have it out of the library, but I haven't started it yet. It looks interesting.

[i_mmmchocolate]

I *HEART* this book. I love, love, love, love, love it!

Unfortunately due to the busy semester, I've only read up to Chapter 2.

I plan on finishing it during the holiday break though. *knock on wood*

For anyone who has never heard of this title, I highly recommend it. If anything, browse through it at your local bookstore. I have no doubt you'll buy and/or borrow it from the library.

[K'Nort]

It seems to be THE book this year. Everything I've heard has been positive. I can't even think about getting it due to school, but I won't be surprised if I receive it for Christmas.

[Scott Beeler]

Bought it, read it, loved it. Extremely entertaining stuff, based around two great interesting main characters and a version of magic that's delightfully wild and unpredictable. It's a long book at about 800 pages, and could have been cut down (since the first half is largely episodic) but the little adventures and incidents are so much fun that would really have been a shame. One of my favorite books of the year.

[Kid Omega]

Yeah, so far, it's one of my favorites this year as well.

Others would be Chabon's "The Final Solution", Eggers' "How we are hungry", and Roth's "The Plot against America"... it's been a damn fine season for fiction.

But this may make the number one slot. It's gotta edge out "The Final Solution", which I frickin' LOVED (Chabon is easily my favorite contemp. author, with Eggers up there close).


-k

[mattbib]

I read a brief article in my local paper about this, and actually had it in my hands when I was at the Strand with Brian Cronin and his girlfriend, but decided I could get it cheaper here at home (land of tax-free shopping and all). I'll likely pick it up in the next week or two.

[Dennis K]

I read the first 158 pages before I realized that my life was far too short to waste time with such drivel. Just a horrible horrible book.

[mattbib]

No accounting for taste... ;)

I've finished three chapters and am enjoying it so far. I'm the type of reader where it might take me months to finish a book though.

[Karl J. Barnes]

Bought it, read it, loved it. Extremely entertaining stuff, based around two great interesting main characters and a version of magic that's delightfully wild and unpredictable. It's a long book at about 800 pages, and could have been cut down (since the first half is largely episodic) but the little adventures and incidents are so much fun that would really have been a shame. One of my favorite books of the year.

I've also read some messages on other boards that this was its downfall for some. They thought that it should have been trimmed a bit and that the book started to drag at the end.

Did you feel that this is so or was it fantastic all the way through til the end?

[Scott Beeler]

I've also read some messages on other boards that this was its downfall for some. They thought that it should have been trimmed a bit and that the book started to drag at the end.

Did you feel that this is so or was it fantastic all the way through til the end?

I thought the end was easily the best part. Some of the first half (or even the first 2/3) could have been edited out without seriously damaging the book, since it includes a number of little side adventures which contribute to the main plot only slightly. But I think everything about the book is wonderfully entertaining, including those side episodes. It didn't drag at all for me, and went from very very good in the early parts to really fantastic during the last 1/3.

[Karl J. Barnes]

I thought the end was easily the best part. Some of the first half (or even the first 2/3) could have been edited out without seriously damaging the book, since it includes a number of little side adventures which contribute to the main plot only slightly. But I think everything about the book is wonderfully entertaining, including those side episodes. It didn't drag at all for me, and went from very very good in the early parts to really fantastic during the last 1/3.

Okay, thanks. I'll trust your assesment of the novel. From what you've posted about what you read, you and I tend to have the same taste in novels, at least fantasy.

[Sheldon]

Just finished it this morning.....really good stuff. Very witty, and it makes great observations....It was also pretty dense....in a good way, the footnotes added so much.

Susanna Clarke really created a wonderful history and I like how all the threads came together.....Scott Beeler was right....the last 3rd really is fantastic.

[Jonathan Bogart]

I read it back in November, when it first came out. Hadn't heard a thing, just saw it in a display, read the back cover copy, and impulse-bought. I enjoyed it tremendously (I'm an Austen/Regency nut; that aspect interested me much more than the magic), but it hasn't really stayed with me. For such a thick book, it's an almost gossamer-light read.

That's not a put-down. It takes a high degree of craft to write something so unnecessary so well. (For example, P. G. Wodehouse may well be my favorite author.)

[Joe Grendel]

I read it back in November, when it first came out. Hadn't heard a thing, just saw it in a display, read the back cover copy, and impulse-bought. I enjoyed it tremendously (I'm an Austen/Regency nut; that aspect interested me much more than the magic), but it hasn't really stayed with me. For such a thick book, it's an almost gossamer-light read.
With about 100 pages left to go (and I'm taking them slow to make them last), I've got the exact opposite feeling. It's been a long time since a book made me think and imagine like this one has, and not in the well-worn pathways of most fantasies. (You can see the groove over there walked by all the ignorant peasants destined for great things, for instance.) This book is strange and magical in all the right ways.

While I think Neil Gaiman's read that it's the greatest English novel of the past 80 years is a bit over the top, it's not MUCH over the top.

A heartbreaking work of staggering genius. ;)

And, honestly, I can't recall the last time that a real marriage, even if it's depicted with a period-appropriate light touch, was such an important element of genre fiction.

[i_mmmchocolate]

OK, I finished the book. Fantastic. Amazing. Well-written. Funny. Touching. Wonderful.

But I'm confused.

S P O I L E R S











Was John Uskglass the man who Childermass encountered when he discovered Viniculus' hanging?

And that ending...I'm not quite sure I liked it. I'm still on the fence.

What happened to Lady Pole? She was removed from the enchantment and instead of returning to her normal life in London, she stays in Starecross writing angry letters to the newspaper? That was a bit odd.

[mattbib]

No accounting for taste... ;)

I've finished three chapters and am enjoying it so far. I'm the type of reader where it might take me months to finish a book though.Heh. Ironically enough I put this book down nearly a year ago and have yet to finish it. Hopefully I'll get back to it after my current Harry Potter kick.

[roguespirit]

I'm enjoying it but finding it hard to get through, which is unusual for me. I think it does drag a bit which is probably why I haven't looked at it for about 3 weeks.

I think I may have preferred to read it as a set of 3 books which it is also published as

[Ottmeister X]

Finished this book. It was good, maybe very good, but I didn't find it great like the four pages of claims at the beginning of the book.

I found some parts of it to be dry, maybe slow. Not boring, but some parts didn't seem all that necessary and it felt like Clarke was getting sidetracked. But I guess not to the point where she was meandering.

Good book, worth reading. I found the last 200 pages definitely the quickest part of the book and I actually liked the ending.

[Doodle Bob]

To answer IMMMMMChocolate's questions:

Yes, that was him at the end.

As for LP, it would seem impossible for her to return to "normal life". As far as she was concerned, every single non-enchanted person completely failed her. She's mad as hell and wasn't going to take it any more.


I myself just finished the book and was very happy with it. It's a very slow burn of a novel, starting out rather cutesy and quaint in tone but building intensity -- and by the end, giving the magic involved a slightly hidden but very sinister feel to it. So, I think she wrote it as a long novel on purpose, not just because she had a lazy editor.

As for the prose, it's not a tremendously hard read: only slightly more adult reading-level than the Harry Potter books.

[Jerkmeister]

Whata wonderful novel. I think I'm ready for a re-read, especially since I've almost entirely forgotten the whole story (but maybe I'll save that right before her next book comes out, the second of a trilogy). The best parts were with Jonathan Strange, particularly his time spent at war. The ball room scenes were very surreal and I really enjoyed this one scene that had this dead old king in it, or something, out in the castle gardens. I'm rambling like an idiot cause I've forgotten the whole back, ha ha.
This was by far the most surreal bookthat I'v read since Neil Gaiman's Books of Magic.