As it turns out
I was at the airport with a slight delay Friday night, so I bought a book. What I ended up with was Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which was somewhere on my list (though not, as you can see below, on the impending 4). I was pretty happy to find it, especially in a compact, light paperback at $7.99. I am about 100 pages in, and it's pretty good. The material in the footnotes is interesting and enriching, but sometimes having to break to the footnotes and come back is irritating. Everyone says it's slow to start, but I don't think it's too bad so far. I do wonder if the affected-faux old-writing style is "dumbed down"--i.e. would I be cruising through Austen, Bronte, Dickens with the same speed and degree of comprehension? If so, then I do believe I should move those folks up on my list (to be followed closely by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky).
- posted by k @ 1:11 PM