In today's video I'll be discussing books that had lost content. Find me on Instagram for more bookish content and written book reviews! IG: / alana_estelle
I got the impression the universe didn’t want you to review Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell 😂 Also, my favourite Alana-ism is “I said what I said and I don’t take it back”. I really want that on a t-shirt.
Try Piranesi. It is a bit of a surreal, strange book. Obviously it's way shorter but she keeps you moving. I thought it was very imaginative. There's nothing to bog you down.
Huge lover of Lymond chronicles here! You don't even have to wait for book 2! Book 1 becomes much more readable around p 200, I swear :) And it's so worth it, I promise!
"It hurt my feelings" 🤣🤣 I'm so disappointed as well that Strange and Norrell didn't grip you, but I toootally get that. Now that you mention it, I also put it down for a long time, then picked it back up again and loved it the second time. I hope you end up loving it later on ❤
Great video. I definitely have been wondering what would become of your Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell review, after all the buildup to a surprise ending there. Also I've now started unconsciously thinking "D-Money" when I hear references to Dostoyevsky, so thanks for that 😂
If a book is so tedious that the expression "life's too short," creeps into your consciousness, I DNF it, because you know what, life's is absolutely too short. I used to feel guilty about DNFing anything, but no more.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Like many, I started to read it, loved it, but then got dragged down by the slow pace and DNF'd it. Like you, I wanted to like it. I returned a few years later and plowed through it. I can't really say that I am glad that I did, other than to say that "have read it." It is very 'Dickensian' (a word I always use to describe this book). However, readers either like or dislike a Dickens book and this book is paradoxically both - you love the first part but hate the slow part... you get both facets of Dickens here. Piranesi, other the other hand, is very different (and shorter). It is not very plot driven. I think it is more character driven where the main character is the setting, if that makes sense. More magical realism than magical, very beautifully written. Enough to carry the book? You'll have to decide that for yourself.
I'd rather read my boy Chuck and the more I think about it, the more I don't think I'll try to read this one again lol. But I am looking forward to Piranesi!
Totally understand re JSMN on my shelf 5 yrs (started & dnf'd). Unhaling last month & whaddaya know i gave it another go & had a blast lol🤓💕 I did think it could easily been cut by a 1/4 at least so not quite 5*. You'd have to seriously love the world to go with that pace / immersion & time investment but i get why people love it. I chuckled alot & yes thoroughly Dickensian absurdist humour 😆(defo not for everyone) & bags of charm. Re Dunnet (always wanted to read) but the 6 vol series is just too much.. im overwhelmed with series' these days y'know??!!!🙄😅 Good idea though to keep them both.. 😉Grove is in the wishlist along w Still Born 👍😊
It's so weird b/c I thought I'd hate Jonathan Strange. I wasn't ever going to read it, but I found it at a FREE LITTLE LIBRARY and I actually liked it. But, to be fair, it came at the right time. I need to read something about destiny taking over. What would "fix" this book for you? If you were an editor who read this book before it got published, what would you have suggested? P.S. - The Vanishing Half disappointed me. IDK why. It's a good book but I guess I was expecting fireworks after hearing so much about it. Also, My Dark Vanessa disappointed me, but only b/c it was overwritten. The Birthday Party was a good book, but again, I watched too many five star reviews on it.
Okay, so based on our respective opinions on Ducks, Newburyport (polar opposites) and on Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (ditto), I'm going to advise you NOT to read The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber, which completes my trinity of great reads from the last twenty years. (It took me four days to read Jonathan Strange...)
I read Strange and Norrell (to the end) in 2018. I mostly loved the book while reading it, finding the plot perhaps too slow but still savouring her command of Georgian English, but then I reflected afterwards and my opinion settled into a negative one. There are two reasons. First, the magic has no rules to it. What the characters can and can't do with magic depends on whatever way the plot needs to go at a particular point. And so the book is riddled with plot holes. Why did this character get into this inconvenience when he could have got rid of it with that spell from a few chapters ago? And so on. Second, the prose burned into my mind images and sequences that, to this day, I can recall with cinematic detail. But I mean that in a bad way. The cinematic detail doesn’t seem to reflect an author writing with a visually artistic eye, so much as her straitjacketing the story into being adaptable for TV (she got her wish in the end). Hence why the story runs for so long. This book doesn't feel like a novel, it feels like a wavering in between a novel and its adapted teleplay.
