Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (spoilers)

Finished up to chapter 8:

So I've had a few thoughts about this book so far.  It seems to me that every chapter operates like a news story.  There's a lot of information thrown at you, names you don't necessarily need to remember (like the name of the fairy Buckler, perhaps?) but always there is a nugget of a story that can be disseminated with just a few sentences.
I've read (and listened to the Audible copy) up to the start of chapter 9 now and here's what I can tell you:

The York Society of magicians is an academic exercise in magic, and one day there is a new member who is like "why?" and he goes to find a practical magician, a unique creature since nobody has actually DONE magic in hundreds of years.  Dude does magic, becomes the talk of the town, and social stuff happens, and he gets asked to bring a woman to life after her untimely death, and uses a fairy to do this.

That's a LOT of I don't want to say filler, but...world-building, lets call it.  It's good.  It allows me to feel like the world is a real thing with real people in it.  But reviews of the audiobook were varied - "don't read it, it's too hard to listen to because it drones on and on."  I was expecting Garrison Keillor levels of monotone and dry.  Not really.  It's like the news story.  You focus on it, sure, but you also can do laundry at the same time.  Then, when something happens, you look up and actually listen carefully to every word.  It's good.

And by the by...making a deal with a fairy to bring someone back to life?  Yea, cuz that's going to go well.  Don't need to have spent as much time in fantasy worlds and know as much about magic as my crazy weird fascinations make me do to know that this is not going to end as well as Mr. Norrell hopes.
Read on!

Finished the book!

Literally finished the book today.  Difficult to really judge the book at the end, although it's QUITE fair to say that it was super long and a bit of a slog to get through.  The novel really takes it's time letting us know all of the intricacies of the characters so we can get to know them better and really build that connection, so the final "showdown" we have between Strange and Norrell gives us a bigger payoff.  Although, to be honest, the darkness spell that bound them together?  Seemed a bit of a reach to me,  The story became much more of a drama at the end, with escalating action as they start talking about summoning the Raven King, but...there were many times I was checking how long I had left in the audiobook thinking "I can't wait to just be done with this book."

I'm glad I finished it, as I don't really get an opportunity to read much anymore after life has been the way it has.  It was definitely interesting - the wife had some pretty interesting thoughts on the nature of the novel that I'll let her get into herself, but the point definitely is that there is a lot to talk about here.

As I said on the Facebook post, there is a Netflix miniseries that, if you enjoyed the book at all, you could consider watching.  7 episodes, 7 hours.  The beautiful Marc Warren plays the Gentleman with the thistledown hair, although in the show he's just credited as "The Gentleman."  Also, while some people poo-poo the audiobook, I'm glad that I went that route.  There were enough chapters with weird filler that I felt like it was ok that my attention drifted in and out during those chapters.  
Good book though.  Thanks for trying so hard people, we KNOW it was a long one, a tough one.  Maybe not the best one to start with but we know a lot of you gave it a good try and that's commendable.

So! I did not get through much of the book at all. (5 chapters or so) and it was really more because I didn't have/make time than that I didn't like the story. I found it very good actually. Clarke has a sort of peculiar style to her that I think helps add to the tone of the book overall. I have to assume this is on purpose on her part. Even the little things like writing "showing" as "shewing" helped immerse me into her world. I particularly liked the footnote style as well. It just kept me in a constant "academic" from of mind. In what I read, I never lost the very British and very proper feeling that I think she was trying to convey.

I am now watching the mini series so I can get the story because though I would like to finish reading the book properly, if I ever get to it, it won't be soon. But I had this thought about something Strange says in one of the episodes (2nd?). He does his mirror trick and when Norrell asks him how he could have done it if he didn't know how he did it, Strange says that he doesn't know, "it's like music." That got me to thinking, because as someone who has studied music for a number of years, it rang odd it my ears. Music doesn't just come, not for me, it takes practice and patience and teaching. But then I thought about it a minute longer. There are surely people who pick up music without all the years of study and hours and hours of practice. I am reminded of Ray Charles (as portrayed in the movie Ray). He practices, sure, but he doesn't know, at least at the start, that a certain chord is C major or G minor. He plays what sounds right, what sounds good to him. Which led me to the conclusion that the magic in this particular world is not unlike music in ours. Strange has a Ray Charles vibe about him, he imagines things and wills them into existence. Norrell, on the other hand, has studied and practiced, he mutters spells, he does things from books, a more scholarly time of music, one with years of theory behind it. Both very different but both very magical nonetheless.