Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell Discussion (April/May 2012)

[Taylor]

This is a long one, but it should be great :)

[Brianna]

I own this one! Awesome.

[Taylor]

Me too! It's been sitting there forever, taunting me with it's long-ness.

[Taylor]

I have been swamped this semester with school, and I don't think I'm going to get to this one in time. Booooo!

[Taylor]

Totally got sidetracked. Didn't read it = fail! Sorry guys!

[Alexa]

I read it. I enjoyed it. I found her semi-biographical approach (with footnotes) quite amusing. It's sort of slipping away from me now, though, which is leaving me wondering why so many folks think so highly of it.

[Alexa]

Yes, there's a quietly ironic tongue-in-cheekness to it that's endearing. But then maybe it's just something about me, that I find footnotes amusing. I was disappointed not to see more of Arabella, and I found the lack of attention to her in the ending a weak note.

[Alexa]

I was wondering if anyone had read The Night Circus? I've seen a lot of comparisons between it and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. I really enjoyed it!

[Taylor]

I'm a year late, but finally starting this one haha

[Alexa]

So, keep us posted!

[Taylor]

Ok so I finished it! It took me a while to get into the writing style, and I have to admit that the footnotes and what I assume are traditional English spellings (connexion, shewed, etc) drove me mental. I found that I stopped reading the footnotes completely by about page 100. The characters were well developed, and the story unfolded very well if maybe a tad slowly. Just when things started to drag for me something magical and creative would happen and I'd be drawn back in. I thought the idea of a more 'mature' Harry Potter type world was intriguing.

Overall I liked the premise a lot, but wasn't really lovey-dovey with the novel on the whole. I would have liked to see it at about 500 pages total and not 900+. I couldn't help but think it would make a good series of movies though!

Did anyone else read it?

[Alexa]

I actually couldn't quite remember what I thought of it - so I went back and checked. This is what I wrote at the time: "A strange little book. (OK, not so little.) Is it a Dickens satire, or rather an homage? It was delightfully funny in many places, and so studied(?), mannered(?) in others. In the end, as a novel, read for my pleasure, it didn't quite work for me. There's all this wonderful exposition and one feels all set up for a sweeping tale, and yet it isn't quite there. I've decided that characterization is the key to my true reading enjoyment, and here the characters were just a bit too distanced for my tastes."

[Taylor]

The characters definitely felt distanced. We were introduced to so many, but it felt very superficial... like the reader didn't really get to know any of them, and as a result I found that I didn't really care what happened to them. I would have really liked to see the whole novel tightened up, better development of the characters, but also in a shorter amount of pages. I feel like I'm being very demanding, ha.

[Alexa]

It certainly evokes the 19th century in an interesting way and is quite atmospheric.