{"id":2724,"date":"2011-12-31T16:37:28","date_gmt":"2011-12-31T21:37:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/?p=2724"},"modified":"2021-05-31T19:51:35","modified_gmt":"2021-05-31T23:51:35","slug":"jonathan-strange-and-mr-norrell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/2724","title":{"rendered":"Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell<\/a><\/em> (2004) Susanna Clarke<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I admit it. When I saw this on sale on the kindle I grabbed it even though we already have the hardback book. Because this is a HUGE book, and it’s so much nicer to read a kindle than an 800 page hardback book.<\/p>\n

And since I had it on the kindle, that meant it was time to re-read the story, right?<\/p>\n

I’d forgotten that the first portion of the book is mostly Mr Norrell. Who I don’t particularly like (I don’t think one is supposed to, actually.) He’s not evil. He’s not mean. He’s just weak and selfish. And that’s one of the (many) strong points of this book. Norrell isn’t a villain, he just isn’t a good person. And Strange isn’t a hero, he just tends to believe things I find a little more reasonable.<\/p>\n

I think this sentence kinda sums it up.<\/p>\n

It was not that the Ministers were dull-witted — upon the contrary there were some brilliant men among them. Nor were they, upon the whole, bad men; several led quite blameless domestic lives and were remarkably found of children, music, dogs, landscape painting.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is no good or evil, there are just men.<\/p>\n

This is a very long book, but the humor is perfectly dry.<\/p>\n

(T)he other ministers considered that to employ a magician was one thing, novelists were quite another and they would not stoop to it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mr Norrell was very well pleased. Lord Liverpool was exactly the sort of guest he liked — one who admired books but shewed no inclination to take them down from the shelves and read them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There was an elderly bunch of celery that had lived too long and too promiscuously in close companionship with the charcoal for its own good.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(I don’t know what it is, but that sentence cracks me up.)<\/p>\n

(T)hough the room was silent, the silence of half a hundred cats is a pecuilar thing, like fifty individual silences all piled one on top of another.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not sure about cats in this instance, but there are silences, and then there are silences.<\/p>\n

She spoke Basque, which is a language which rarely makes any impression upon the brains of any other races, so that a man may hear it as often and as long as he likes, but never afterwards be able to recall a single syllable of it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think that’s somewhat less Basque and more general to any language one had to study in school.
\nRating: 9\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004) Susanna Clarke I admit it. When I saw this on sale on the kindle I grabbed it even though we already have the hardback book. Because this is a HUGE book, and it’s so much nicer to read a kindle than an 800 page hardback book. And since I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,27,30,2,291],"tags":[316],"class_list":["post-2724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-10","category-alternate-history","category-british","category-fantasy","category-paper","tag-susanna-clarke"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piQkW-HW","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":334,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/334","url_meta":{"origin":2724,"position":0},"title":"The Ladies of Grace Adieu","author":"Michelle","date":"December 31, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"The Ladies of Grace Adieu (2006) Susanna Clarke Illustrated by Charles Vess The Ladies of Grace Adieu is a collection of short stories set in the same world was Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell during the 18th and 19th centuries. Several of the stories revolve around familiar characters--Jonathan Strange, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Alternate History"","block_context":{"text":"Alternate History","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/fantasy\/alternate-history"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/12\/Ladies-Grace-Adieu.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":151,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/151","url_meta":{"origin":2724,"position":1},"title":"Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell","author":"Michelle","date":"October 28, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (2004) Susanna Clarke I got Michael this book for Christmas last year, but put off reading it myself because the book is huge: 800 pages huge. It's not the kind of book I could curl up with; instead I had to set the book on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "9\/10"","block_context":{"text":"9\/10","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/9-10"},"img":{"alt_text":"Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.klishis.com\/Books\/images\/jonathan%20strange%20mr%20norrell.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4711,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/4711","url_meta":{"origin":2724,"position":2},"title":"Hellboy: The Midnight Circus","author":"Michelle","date":"July 19, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Hellboy: The Midnight Circus (2013) Mike Mignola, Duncan Fegredo, Dave Stewart Couple things about this: 1) It came out as hardback. 2) I purchased the kindle version, because it was cheaper than the hardback (and by now we should all know my feelings about hardback books). 3) This is more\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Fantasy"","block_context":{"text":"Fantasy","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/fantasy"},"img":{"alt_text":"HellboyMidnightCircus","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/HellboyMidnightCircus.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2983,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/2983","url_meta":{"origin":2724,"position":3},"title":"The Lies of Locke Lamora","author":"Michelle","date":"June 5, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The Lies of Locke Lamora (2006) Scott Lynch This is a re-read. I remembered enjoying this book when I read it, and I bought the sequel, but both are in hardback, and I just dislike reading hardback book. So I broke down and bought both for the Kindle. I am\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "eBook"","block_context":{"text":"eBook","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/ebook"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2959,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/2959","url_meta":{"origin":2724,"position":4},"title":"The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making","author":"Michelle","date":"May 27, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (2011) Catherynne M. Valente This started coming up as recommended for me pretty much as soon as it was published. But it was hardback, and a hardback price even for the Kindle, and it seemed straight-up fantasy, which\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "8.5\/10"","block_context":{"text":"8.5\/10","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/8-5-10"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/The-Girl-Who-Circumnavigated-Fairyland.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3622,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/3622","url_meta":{"origin":2724,"position":5},"title":"The Way of the Wizard","author":"Michelle","date":"March 11, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The Way of the Wizard (2010) John Joseph Adams I love anthologies. They give me an escape in bite size pieces that won't keep me up past my bed time on a work night, and they also often a wonderful introduction to authors I have not read previously. This anthology\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthology"","block_context":{"text":"Anthology","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/anthology"},"img":{"alt_text":"way_of_the_wizard","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/way_of_the_wizard.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}