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

[thete1.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm with you. I actually couldn't even finish it. My theory: it hit a *lot* of people's intellectual kinks *hard*, so that the lack of what I'll call "generally accessible emo" wasn't as noticeable for them as it is for those of us who have *different* intellectual kinks.

[ratcreature]

Huh. What exactly do you think those kinks are?

And even so, I don't think these kinks are handled well. I mean, for example Byatt's Possession is one of my favorite books, even though I'm not interested at all in Victorian literature, but it still sucked me in completely, though I suspect that it was even better for readers into Victorian poets.

[elynross.livejournal.com]

I wanted to like it, but like thete1, I didn't even finish it. I find that of works that deal with combining magic with the "real" world, I tend to either feel like they're making the real world more magical, or the magical more mundane, and the latter I rarely enjoy. And I got several hundred pages in and didn't care for any of the characters.

I did like the footnote thing, though; I've enjoyed that kind of thing both in Pratchett and in House of Blue Leaves, which does an even more extreme job. But in both cases, I like the core stories, as well.

[thete1.livejournal.com]

Going by the people I *know* who I also know liked the book -- well, footnotes in and of themselves are *totally* a kink for people. Like, hugely so.

Also, unlikeable characters across-the-board. (Yeah, I dunno, either.) Beyond that... I waited too long after having seen the book recced to the skies to (try to) read it myself. It is a puzzlement.

[thete1.livejournal.com]

*points down to elynross, too* -- I *do* remember at least one or two people on my f-list saying something about how they *liked* the way the magical and mundane were played.

Actually, now that I think about it, I think a few of those people were also/had also been very into popslash fandom, which brought the "magical realism" *hardcore*. I tend to be wary of that genre even when it *does* have a fair amount of "generally accessible emo," because... yeah. Not for a Te. (Unless it also involves JC and/or Joey and/or Chris having sex. I'm there for that.)

[ratcreature]

The magical world becoming more mundane even appeals to me, but not so much that I could get into it without single character I like to identify with.

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

I finished it, but then, I was trapped on a plane going from Chicago to Portland with nothing else to read, so I'm not sure how much that says about the book itself. *G*

I did keep hoping it would become more interesting-- or at least, more interesting in ways that mattered to *me*-- but while I loved the world-building, and the settings, and the way magic worked, and the *civilization*, and the sets... I was like you, I just didn't really *connect* with any of the characters.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, the world is kind of cool, but seriously, all the characters are like the ultimate anti-MarySues. You know, like how sometimes fanwriters do meta about how to avoid turning OCs into MarySues that hog the attention and the sympathy from canon characters, and give the different example for MarySues, like those authors who make the OC an unremarkable librarian with mousebrown hair and two cats who isn't attracted to the guys at all for herself etc. to avoid the whole violet eyes warrior princess who gets together with the hero thing, only that's far more like self-insertion anyway, and she ends up a yenta too? If I ever need to explain how to avoid making characters likable and attractive in any way, I can point to this book... *g*

[ratcreature]

Also, unlikeable characters across-the-board.

o.O
That is far more alien to me than a footnote kink...

I can see a certain writing skill in it, because I think it is quite hard to achieve that, when most readers' inclination is to want to sympathize and identify with characters (and I have identified with characters who "objectively" were total assholes or worse in fiction because of that), but... I don't see the attraction.

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

Dude, you got more than 300 pages in? That's about 200 more pages than I got.

nlanza loved it; I thought it was dreadful.

[ratcreature]

Well, a large part of getting that far was that I was too lazy to replace it in my bag for some time, so it was what I had on hand on public transport.

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

heee!

[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.