Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

[petronia]

Finished at seven-thirty this morning. 600 pages in a night or thereabouts. Held out thanks to copious quantities of Vietnamese drip coffee with condensed milk after dinner, but I dare say my "speech patterns" have gone awry with Clarke's style. XD The last time I stayed up reading a book was either HP5 or Perdido Street Station (cannot remember which I read before the other, and LJ Archive is unhelpful - don't tell me I didn't blog about PSS?), and certainly this one leaves a more pleasurable aftertaste than either of the latter.

Oh, I found it in Pitasblog. Perdido Street Station was... exactly three years ago, the night of August 17-18, 2002. O_O So it is HP5, but the only reason I stayed up for HP5 was because it wouldn't end, so to speak. It's not really the same thing. A book like Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell makes me remember why I entertain odd prejudices regarding the act of reading that I can't quite defend against my friends online - why I instinctively feel skimming passages, skipping to the end to see what happens, and so forth constitute reprehensible behaviour. In fact they should be against the natural order. One shouldn't have the faculty to skim or skip any more than one has the faculty to physically teleport. Opening a book should be like opening a door, stepping through and hearing it shut behind one, closing off bodily distractions, ambient noise and such higher cognitive processes as are involved in constructing a sense of "intellectual distance". If the book doesn't do that it's doing something wrong, though logic suggests the difference is to be found instead in the reader - every other book used to be like that for me, as opposed to one per year or three.

(But then the difference always lies in the reader, says Theory.)

The best comparison for the experience may in fact be my book of May 30-June 1, 2002 - it took both nights and most of a day, I was unemployed - House of Leaves. The sheer accumulation of dates, sources, annotations and anecdotes over the course of 700 pages engenders a specific sense of anchored veracity difficult to achieve by other means; no matter that the work is fiction and the subject matter treated is supernatural. All very well when one's in the actual process of giggling and humming over the page, but then one looks up to realise the hands of the clock have jumped forward a couple of hours, the house is silent, every other room except this one is full of shadows and half-ajar doors, and getting oneself a pina colada out of the kitchen fridge becomes an exercise in nerve-tempering. ^^;

My entire family was up by 7:20AM. If I'd stayed up all night in front of the computer sarcasm and recrimination would've flown, but as I stayed up for a book my parents were solicitous and indulgent and put a pillow over me when I finished the book, set it down, fell back against the sofa and conked out for ninety minutes (all of which I spent wandering in Faerie, or so it felt). My sister ironised at my expense, but then she habitually keeps 3-6 books to hand and reads them in a cyclical fashion, 50 pages of one followed by 75 pages of the next followed by 30 pages of the one after that. Let posterity decide which practice is more unnatural.

100 icon slots and I don't have one for books!

Comments

[karabana.livejournal.com]

If I'd stayed up all night in front of the computer sarcasm and recrimination would've flown, but as I stayed up for a book my parents were solicitous and indulgent and put a pillow over me when I finished the book, set it down, fell back against the sofa and conked out for ninety minutes (all of which I spent wandering in Faerie, or so it felt).

Awwww. *warm fuzzies*

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Heh, we are just really nerdy people. ^^;v

[luxetumbra.livejournal.com]

but I dare say my "speech patterns" have gone awry with Clarke's style.

Heh, my writing patterns have gone awry since I've finished. I keep on wanting to type "shewed" or "chuse". Apparently there's going to be a movie. I have no idea how they're going to pack that book into less than 2 hours.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Heh, my eye would get caught on each one of those as they appeared. XD What's the the word on using them these days, I wonder? (I think aesthetically speaking, I prefer "chuse" to "choose", it quite reminds me of Jane Austen...)

I actually don't think it's too difficult for a script (I didn't even know there was going to be a movie!) to get the important bits in at 2 hours and still be sane, But who knows if they'd cut what I think could be cut. ^^;

[moderntime.livejournal.com]

A book like Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell makes me remember why I entertain odd prejudices regarding the act of reading that I can't quite defend against my friends online - why I instinctively feel skimming passages, skipping to the end to see what happens, and so forth constitute reprehensible behaviour.

*raises hand* I do things like this too. I skim quite a bit at all times, actually, but if I like the book enough, I'll go back and reread it immediately after I finish.

If I'd stayed up all night in front of the computer sarcasm and recrimination would've flown, but as I stayed up for a book my parents were solicitous and indulgent and put a pillow over me when I finished the book

Lucky! My parents--okay my dad, who is always gets up in the middle of the night--yells at me each time he catches me in front of the computer or reading. You would think that an entire lifetime of this pattern would have told them that well, I don't listen.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Heh, more people seem to get this from their parents than I thought. I feel less alone. XD Seriously, I used to catch a lot of flak for being on the computer late at night, but after I started working as a proper grownup my parents more or less gave up on me. Still if they saw that I'd not gone to bed at all there would be disapproving remarks.

Everything is forgiven in my family as long as books are the cause, though. That's the cute thing. Manga are not included in "books", yet Mirage of Blaze is. If I buy forty manga tankoubon I'm wasting my paycheck, but forty volumes of Mirage of Blaze lined up on the shelf do not represent money ill-spent to the parental eye. XD

[serendip.livejournal.com]

I had to skim Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell because it was driving me ABSOLUTELY insane XD And when I did, I got drawn in and I went back and read it properly. I think reading the whole thing all the way through assumes that the writer knows how to set up a book in a way that draws me in, i.e. not really Ms. Clarke XD I admit to being a bit of a spaz about books and it was just too world-build-y for me.

I did use to read through the night/be on the computer and parents would whine even tho I was the least likely out of everyone to sleep in. Not my style XD

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I really love the world-buildy stuff though. XD Footnotes! Follow in Wellington's footsteps! etc. It does get moving quite slowly at the beginning, but when you get down to it that's par for the sort of early 19th century novel it's emulating, and that I typically haven't the patience to read these days. XD I read the first 150 pages or so over a couple of evenings, and then the story really got going and I read the remainder at one go.

Re: Your thoughts on books and reading.

[methexis.livejournal.com]

I love you.

Cordially,
J.

Re: Your thoughts on books and reading.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

^_^

[hemlocke.livejournal.com]

Now I really want to read the book. Maybe I should apply for leave JUST to read the book XD God knows I have enough leave for that.

But it sounds like one of those books you need to read slowly to digest. Hmm. I fear I may not have the discipline to do so.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Well, I read it very fast and wouldn't mind reading it again more slowly. XD To me it's one of those books that suck the reader in like a black hole but probably not to everyone - depends on how much you find historical fiction with footnotes, the actual fiction of the period, etc. immediately congenial.

[angrybabble.livejournal.com]

I really liked this book. I read it in a week on weekends and at work on my lunch break. People were impressed by the ENORMOUS BLACK HARDBACK I was carrying around. I was all, "if you're not amazed by my massive intelligence which is communicated by the number of pages in the book I'm reading, I can always just beat you to death with it."

So you're saying I should read House of Leaves, then?

And yes, how the hell to cram this book into 2 hours? Leaving out the entire war, possibly? (But then... well... it would cut a LOT of time, but I think people would be puzzled by how some things happened XD;)

I need a book icon too.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Big + black = impressive, always. I know my mom was impressed when she realised she had to carry that back home from the library. XD; (My sister had put herself on the reserve list.)

I thought you already read House of Leaves! XD Yeah, I would rec it - it's really one of a kind. Some people are terrified by it but for me it was more like "if you read this at night in a big empty house you're going to be kind of freaked." Which of course I did.

I think they'd have to leave quite a bit of the Napoleonic Wars out, if only because it was presented in such a detailed fashion in the books. I dunno, I don't actually think it'd be that hard? If you kept the magician A + magician B + personality clash + bad fairy bargain + enchanted wives/servant mystery + prophecy with a few scenes of the war, and cut a lot of the stuff with Drawlight/Lascelles and Italy. ^^;; To me I think it'd be most important to get the Stephen Black bit down.