Any comments. It is a hefty tome. Anyone else read or reading it? If so, what do you think?
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited October 23, 2005).]
Posted by HSO (Member # 2056) on :
Just bought it. My wife is reading it first, as she's the fantasy lover in the house. But the first few pages looked good. I'm looking forward to reading it.
Posted by Beth (Member # 2192) on :
I could not get through it. I know a lot of people who just loved it, loved every word, but I bailed out halfway through the battle of Waterloo. I was not amused by the footnotes and it just didn't seem to be going anywhere.
Plus, it is like one billion pages long.
Posted by Gnomeinclaychair (Member # 2926) on :
I liked it. It was a little long, but for me there was just enough curiousity about what was gonna happen to keep me going through it.
I think she may have been trying to mimic the feel of the novels of that era (Jane Austen, for instance)which tended to be wordy and relationshipy which may tax a modern reader a bit. Still, it was well imagined, the characters were developed and distinct, and the plot was clever.
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
This one piqued my interest when in hardcover, but, for some reason, I never picked up a copy. The hype, maybe---certainly not the price, 'cause I spend that much or more nearly every time I set foot in a bookstore. Now that it's out in trade paperback, maybe I should finally pick up a copy...
Posted by hoptoad (Member # 2145) on :
Beth: Yes, I am having trouble with the full-page footnotes too.
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
Couldn't get into my regular bookstore today to look for a copy...closed from hurricane aftermath.
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
Off topic warning:
Robert, I was wondering how you were doing. You have power, so I guess Wilma didn't hit you as hard as she hit others?
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
Hurricane Wilma roared over my head, but I made it through. My power flickered but never went off (much to my surprise, actually), and the only damages I had were one busted screen (that was already torn) and a bunch of vegetation debris in my yard. I was well away from the main action, but I got hurricane force winds over my house. My new roof and new garage door held up well (both repaired after Hurricane Charley, but I'd already planned to have them done over.) I even got the day off from work to avoid the hurricane.
Unfortunately I know and have seen a lot of people who weren't so lucky. I might be inconvienced, but they're suffering...
(Side note, of possible interest to those who write science fiction: it's amazing how helpless some people and businesses actually are without technological support. I dropped into an office supply place yesterday. They were open but without electricity and their lights and cash registers and credit card machines were down. They added up purchases with a small solar-powered calculator, figured out the tax by hand, and made out receipts on some old-fashioned credit card receipts.
(Somewhere in the store were batteries, and battery-operated calculators that used paper rolls to print up results. Somewhere else in the store there must have been a percentage table, listing how much tax there would be on such-and-such dollar amount. It's the sort of thing an office supply place should have. They could have used both these---it would have been more efficient---but they didn't.
(My suggested method? It's exactly how I did it when I last worked in a bookstore.)
Anyway, I plan to try to hit the bookstores again tomorrow. There's this particular book...and I'm trying to track down a good copy of the Apocrypha, preferably in the King James translation, over-the-counter before trying Amazon.
Posted by Minister (Member # 2213) on :
"Long." That's the first descriptive word that comes to mind from Strange and Norrell. I read it when it came out in hardcover, and really struggled to get through the first few chapters. But I'm glad I stuck with it. The plotting was intricate and elegant, the characters interesting and sometimes original, and the setting richly drawn (so smoothly, in fact, that I kept having to think things through carefully to figure out which aspects were real history and which were made-up). And while I don't like the footnote thing in general, I don't mind it once in a while when well executed, which this was. Fascinating story, and I'm still interested in how this managed to get out as a first novel (even from someone previously published in the nonfic world).
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
Well, I did pick up a copy today. Maybe in the next few days I'll read it.
Posted by MCameron (Member # 2391) on :
I loved the footnotes. But, then, I've done a bit of reading of books written in the Victorian era, and so the whole style felt comfortable and nostalgic to me. It took me about five chapters to warm up, because it has been a little while since I've read anything like it, but after that I blew through the rest in about three days.
It's certainly not for everyone, but I loved it.
Now for gripes. It felt like a cheat to me when she stopped writing any chapters that focused on Jonathan Strange. He had become this mysterious creature to everyone else, and she never lets us into his head during the whole pillar of darkness part.
Perhaps I found this more annoying because I had recently read a book that did a similar trick even more egregiously: Unintended Consequences by John Ross. Both books were written in omniscient (although Unintended Consequences was poorly done) and both followed a main character for years, until that character began acting strangely. Then we're no longer allowed into the character's mind, and he becomes as much a mystery to us as to the rest of the characters.
It feels like cheating to me, because the authors want to have the closeness to the character that using his POV will bring, but still make him mysterious when he is doing unfathomable (by other characters) things.
At any rate, that was the biggest complaint I had about Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and it is fairly mild. Otherwise I thought it was wonderful.
--Mel
Posted by wetwilly (Member # 1818) on :
I'm reading the book right now. I'm about halfway through it, and so far I'm enjoying it very much. I wanted to mention something that nobody else has mentioned yet.
This book is HILARIOUS! As a current college student (an English major, no less), I find her constant digs on academia to be very funny. Not roll on the floor laughing hysterically funny, but pretty much constant chuckling funny. It's that dry, sarcastic humor that only the brits seem to be able to do right, where you might not even realize a joke was told, but if you do get it, it's funny. Maybe if I had never gone to college I wouldn't think it was funny, but as it is, it's very funny.
Like I said, I'm only about halfway through it right now, so maybe it will get tedious by the end, but I doubt it. Clarke made me chuckle with the very first paragraph, and has kept me chuckling pretty steadily for c. 400 pages. I'm really enjoying it.
Note: I rarely (as in pretty damn close to never) read fantasy, but I'm loving this book anyway.
[This message has been edited by wetwilly (edited November 15, 2005).]
Posted by Minister (Member # 2213) on :
Good point, Willy. The humor was dry and subtle, but very enjoyable throughout.
Posted by hoptoad (Member # 2145) on :
I am enjoying it immensely. But I am such a slow reader. I may take that topic elsewehere.
Posted by 'Graff (Member # 2648) on :
I'm reading it now, as well.
I like what I've read.
I do not like when she "breaks character" and starts speaking to the audience directly. I feel like I'm being condescended towards.
----------- Wellington
Posted by 'Graff (Member # 2648) on :
I also don't appreciate the prententious spelling.
People in this world don't "choose" to do things, or "show" one another something interesting.
No, it's always "chuse" this and "shew" that.
She can't say "anyone," or "someone." It's gotta be "any one" or "some one" and it's very, very irritating.
I feel like I'm reading the King James Version...
----------- Wellington
Posted by wetwilly (Member # 1818) on :
'Graff, both of your gripes are a direct result of what she was trying to do with the book, that is write a piece of 19th century literature, or at least something that could have been one. The "pretentious" spelling is just the spelling that was considered right in the 19th century. Also the direct addresses to the reader are directly lifted from the 1800's. If she didn't do those things, she would have failed horribly at creating an "authentic" 19th century novel. As it is, I think she succeeded.
Personally, I really enjoyed the book. I thought it was very fun.
Posted by 'Graff (Member # 2648) on :
I understand her desire to emulate a genre. I have no gripes with that.
But few 19th century literature enthusiasts (I imagine, not being one of them) would complain about her spelling ("How can she imagine this recreation to be authentic when she did not even spell 'chuse' correctly?"), had she chosen to spell in such a way as to make the writing accessible to people unfamiliar with the genre.
And, having finished the book, the addresses to the reader didn't happen as often towards the end.
But I really, really did enjoy this book, overall.
----------- Wellington
Posted by HSO (Member # 2056) on :
This is a great book, in my opinion. Though I suspect people will either love it or hate it for all the reasons already mentioned above.
I find it interesting that this is the author's first novel. How ambitious! Kudos to the publisher, too. And I believe this book deserved to win awards -- which it did.
[This message has been edited by HSO (edited January 22, 2006).]