Media Mondays: too much book

[deepfishy]

So I've just started reading Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell because I keep seeing gifs of the BBC miniseries across my tumblr dash, and while I'm not exactly spoiler-averse I do like to keep *some* surprises/want to read before watching

Comments

[smtfhw]

The TV series was excellent - personally I preferred it to the book, because my take on the book that while I enjoyed most of it, it would have benefitted from a really thorough edit, and I do mean really, really thorough.

[deepfishy]

Good to hear, because I'll be hunting that down now I've finished the book.

I can certainly imagine a very different kind of book emerging from that edit. The latter incidents with Lascelles in particular (Childermass!) felt like you could build a more tense, energetic narrative with what's already there.

[lyrstzha]

I remember liking it reasonably well, but not loving it. I did enjoy that it had that very verbose, parenthetical, almost hysterical Victorian style down pretty well. Of course, that's what some people actually didn't like about it, so YMMV.

[deepfishy]

Having now finished it, I agree - it has a certain style that sort of *demands* it have footnotes and occasional meanderings. I'm not entirely sure whether the resolutions for Mrs Pole and Stephen and Arabella are... satisfactory? Karmically pleasing? - I mean, do they get what they actually want?... but overall, enjoyable. (and now the parenthetical rambling has infected my comment post)

Though I must admit, the time it took for Strange to even appear almost had me skipping forward to find him :).