sometimes I read things that are not fanfic...

[ratcreature]

Like just now I am reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, because I had seen it recced a lot. But... so far (I'm only on page 344 of its slightly over 1000 pages) I'm kind of underwhelmed.

It hasn't really hooked me, a sure sign for that being that I read it mostly on public transport, whereas if I'm really engaged with a book I usually bother to take it out of my bag and continue reading it at home rather than leaving it. I still don't like any of the characters. I realize that that's probably intentional, but while the book is kind of interesting with its worldbuilding I'm starting to ask myself whether I really want to spend several hundreds of pages more with characters I dislike. Also, I find the whole excessive footnote thing kind of jarring. If it was just brief footnotes it would be different maybe, but some are four full pages long.

Comments

[frogspace.livejournal.com]

I never got past page 142; the book didn't fit in my new bag.

There is exactly one character I could sympathize with, if only for a moment, because reading the book felt very much like this:

But, curiously, though Mr Norrell was able to work feats of the most breath-taking wonder, he was only able to describe them in his usual dry manner, so that Sir Walter was left with the impression that the spectacle of half a thousand stone figures in York Cathedral all speaking together had been rather a dull affair and that he had been fortunate in being elsewhere at the time.

Yeah.

[ratcreature]

Heh. True, that sums it up nicely.