i have recently picked up a fat little piece of fiction. i forget proper annotation (or even what the grammar rule for writing a title is called), but the book is "jonathan strange & mr. norrell" by susanna clarke. its about 19th century england and magic that returns to the country after many years. when this book first came out, it caught my eye on the new fiction table but i quickly ushered myself away after reading the jacket. it just didnt sound all that exciting. in my recent search for fantastic fiction a friend said that her favorite book was the one above. it had magic, it had fantasy, it was large. perfect, ill give it a try.
i am now 160 pages in and have yet to be sucked in whole -- sucked in like the many bright friends who love hp have boasted. patience i am told. i will give it a chance, it is good, but not as amazing as i was made to believe.
i have been thinking about the idea of sticking through something and i believe that dedication and seeing something through often proves the value of that something. often if you skip right to the end or fast forward the weight, the value, the reward is not as sweet. the work through the grit makes the end worth it. and the work itself soon becomes part of the prize as well. i will work through this book and it better not let me down.
i downloaded a song today (thats another story). i was not very fond of it. i was thinking how easy it was to access this song and listen to it and it struck me that there was no commitment in this downloading. if i didnt like it, fuggit. i wondered if i had purchased a cd with the song whether i would like it any more. if i buy an album, i listen to it several times. even if i dont like it at first i'll give it a couple of tries because of the effort and money to acquire it. there are numerous albums i now love but initially did not favor. (i.e. first impressions of earth)
anyway you get what im saying.
on the other hand:
i recently saw 'wanted' with friends. the trailer looked pretty week but a respected voice said it was awesome! i kept waiting for something really spectacular to happen. it never did. i paid my dues and waited to the end, but it was not awesome. win some lose some.
5 comments:
i spelt weak wrong
peter-
fiction isn't as good as historical fiction
i have heard that about wanted. also, i wrote my latest post, then stopped by your blog to read. your entry is very appropriate and complementary to mine. The part about sticking through something to the end. Visit Newgrange if you ever can--this i promise you will not let you down.
Yeah, that's right; I found your blog.
Hope I didn't hype that book up too much, but I don't think you should be of the mindset that you have to "work through" it; you just have to let the book lead you through the story. It should be an easy read. Other books are hard, but I don't think this one should be. Speaking of, I am really into these books recently where the point is not the plot, but the world-building, the atmosphere, the prose, the relationships between characters, etc. These are books you have to read for hours at a time and get completely lost in. And I think Jonathan Strange is on a continuum with two other books I've read fairly recently: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez), which is magical realism and just an amazing book for all that every character has the same name and I had no idea who was doing what for most of the time, and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, which is totally surrealist, like reading someone's dream. I have no idea what that book is about other than a guy who lost his cat, but I totally dug it.
And I fourth (fifth?) the recommendations for the Poisonwood Bible. Great read.
Also good is The Handmaid's tale. It is feminist critique of the religious right set in a future dystopia. It is a little heavy-handed, but I liked it as an allegorical tale.
Right now I am reading The Book Thief; its kind of fantastical (e.g. narrated by Death). So far I like it, but haven't been completely sucked in. Something about the narrator is keeping me from fully engaging in the story.
One book I like that is not fantasy is The Corrections by Johnathan Franzen (Swarthmore alumn, what-what). It's about a dysfunctional family and so far everyone I've recommended it to has liked it.
Let's see...other fantastical books I've read are the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay as well as The Fortress of Solitude, but neither of those really sucked me in. I never felt quite enough empathy for the characters, and the prose wasn't interesting enough to stand without characters I really cared about. But they both got good reviews, so maybe you'd like them.
Another not-fantasy is A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. This book needs a good editor to chop out about 200 pages, but parts of it are really moving and other parts are really clever. I was recently highly recommended What is the What, also by Dave Eggers, and I plan to read that soon.
Oh one last fantastical-esque book I liked is Everything is Illuminated. The structure is very "I wrote this for my college fiction class" but it works, and, having read his other book, which is more lose, I think Jonathan Safran Foer needs the structure to hold up the plot of the book and keep it from going every which way. Oh and his wife wrote a book called the History of Love, and I liked that, too.
Okay seriously I am done co-opting your blog. Maybe I should have just written an email...
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