I have been reading and will be reading for some time to come:
by Susanna Clarke
From Goodreads:
"It's 1808 and that Corsican upstart Napoleon is battering the English army and navy. Enter Mr. Norrell, a fusty but ambitious scholar from the Yorkshire countryside and the first practical magician in hundreds of years. What better way to demonstrate his revival of British magic than to change the course of the Napoleonic wars? Susanna Clarke's ingenious first novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, has the cleverness and lightness of touch of the Harry Potter series, but is less a fairy tale of good versus evil than a fantastic comedy of manners, complete with elaborate false footnotes, occasional period spellings, and a dense, lively mythology teeming beneath the narrative. Mr. Norrell moves to London to establish his influence in government circles, devising such powerful illusions as an 11-day blockade of French ports by English ships fabricated from rainwater. But however skillful his magic, his vanity provides an Achilles heel, and the differing ambitions of his more glamorous apprentice, Jonathan Strange, threaten to topple all that Mr. Norrell has achieved. A sparkling debut from Susanna Clarke--and it's not all fairy dust. --Regina Marler"
I'm reading this book for my super-awesome book group. And it's big, a real beast of a book, one I have to have read by January 21st. Here's hopin'! But so far, so good...
I started this about four years ago now, read 300 pages. Then something came up and I put it aside, fully intending to pick it up again at a later time. I'm ashamed to say I never did. I'm not sure why either, because I really liked it. But I will do my best to finish it this year, even if I have to start from the beginning again because I have forgotten everything I read back then. Hope you are enjoying it.
ReplyDelete