Currently Reading

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

by Susanna Clarke

📖 240/412

How did we come to read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell?

For Christmas last year, my summer reading buddy mailed me a copy of Susanna Clarke's other book, Piranesi. It was so amazing I read it in one afternoon. (Highly recommend if you haven't read it yet.)

Two things happened:

1. I knew right then I would always be able to trust recommendations from my reading buddy. She knew good books.
2. Stunned by how awesome this writer was, I decided to read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell has been on my radar ever since it was first published back in 2004. I had heard a lot about it but never got around to reading it.

After finishing Piranesi, I decided it was time. It just so happened the Kindle version of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell was on a one-day-only sale for $1.99, so I grabbed it and started reading around January of this year. I got about 190 pages in and then set it aside and forgot to pick it back up. Yes, life gets in the way sometimes for longer books. This is also why it took me many months to finish Don Quixote.

When I met with my friends to discuss The Master and Margarita, I noticed my friend had a copy of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell with her. She was reading it! I was so excited because I had started that book earlier this year. So we decided to read it together this summer.

Also, because I was picking this book back up months after starting it, I discovered a great Kindle feature I didn’t know about: “Recap.” If you want to know how to use it, I wrote about it in this post: How to Use Kindle Recap When You’ve Forgotten the Story

Quotes from Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell:

All are taken from the Kindle version of the novel. Some are funny, but most are that I simply love how this author writes. The descriptions are wonderful!

Love these descriptions:

She wore a gown the colour of storms, shadows and rain and a necklace of broken promises and regrets. (p. 162)

A bleak, white sun rose in a bleak, white sky like an allegorical picture of despair... (p. 143).

A winter sunset was painting a swathe of rose-colour and blood-colour at the end of all the streets – pleasing to the eyes but somehow chilling to the heart. (p. 176)

...he was the sort of man who had been old at seventeen. (p. 26)

Loved these and they resonate:

Childermass replied that the house was larger than most. “Indeed?” said Mr Norrell, much surprized. Mr Norrell was particularly shocked by the smallness of the library, which could not be made to accommodate one third of the books he considered indispensable; he asked Childermass how people in London housed their books? Perhaps they did not read? (p. 44)

Well, sir, I am glad that you have found a friend whose mind accords so well with your own – there is no greater comfort. (p. 256)

Breaking the Spell by Daniel C. Dennett

📖 175/448

Some quotes from Breaking the Spell:

"Miracle-hunters must be scrupulous scientists or else they are wasting their time..." (p. 26)

"One of the surprising discoveries of modern psychology is how easy it is to be ignorant of your own ignorance." (p. 31)

"Do you ever ask yourself: What if I’m wrong?" (p. 51)

"African animals—have been known to get falling-down drunk eating fermenting fruit from marula trees, and there is evidence that elephants will travel great distances to arrive at the marula trees just when their fruits ripen." (p. 66)

"Sometimes—rarely—religions go bad, veering into something like group insanity or hysteria, and causing great harm. Now that we have created the technologies to cause global catastrophe, our jeopardy is multiplied to the maximum: a toxic religious mania could end human civilization overnight." (p. 72)

"How clever of wild sheep to have acquired that most versatile adaptation, the shepherd! By forming a symbiotic alliance with Homo sapiens, sheep could outsource their chief survival tasks: food finding and predator avoidance. They even got shelter and emergency medical care thrown in as a bonus." (pp. 169-170)

Other books I'm reading right now:

A Walk in the Park by Kevin Fedarko

📖 108/488 - A Kindle book I got on sale and it looked really good. Loving it so far.

Darker Days by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

📖 26/507 - I loved HEX, so I have no idea how I missed this one. I checked the library expecting a hold list, but somehow it was available, so I immediately grabbed it.