Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

[NotQuiteCockney]

I know, I know, I'm 8 billion years late. Who else has read this? I'm a good bit of the way through, but am pretty 'meh' about the whole thing. The magic stuff is conveyed pretty well, but the whole faux-18th-century thing is tiresome, really ...

I started reading it and thought it was unbearable

Well I felt like that until I got about 2/3rds of the way through, and then it just took off for me and I couldn't put it down. The first thing I would say to people if I lent it to anyone was "It starts REALLY slowly, but persevere..."

Oh, fair enough, I'll stick with it. It's well-written, at least, and the charaters are reasonably interesting ... I guess ...

I read that giant three-part Neal Stephenson book set in the past (because, you know, it's all the same ), and found it a lot more interesting. There's some magical stuff in that, too.

Dh ploughed through this on principle. He thought the effort of keeping the whole thing up was laudable, but can't summon the energy to say he enjoyed the experience.
I gave up before I got as far as Mindles, maybe I should revisit.
Read Suite Francaise instead NQC, if you want to catch up on something REALLY good but "so last year"

What is 'suite francaise'?

I have a bunch of things on my to-read pile (ok, bookshelf, room, whatever), including a pile of graphic novels, the latest Anne Tyler in paperback, and I forget what else ...

Love the idea of "good but so last year".

JS&MrN felt to me (did you notice the dedication?) like a Brontesque fantasy collaboration between siblings - with consequent sort of folie a deux flights of intendedly grand but not-quite-coherent narrative-making. Which meant, of course, that as a novel it didn't feel properly realised.

Does that make sense?

(I listen day in day out to the collaborative Exploits of Freddie the Flying-Whale (including summaries of the latest episode featuring him on Dreamland TV) from ds & dd, so I think I have antennae for that sort of thing.)