Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is now out in paperback - as of September fucking 5th, so I HAVE SPENT THE LAST THREE WEEKS LUGGING AROUND EXTRA WEIGHT FOR NOTHING!!! FOR NOTHING!!!!!
For those of you not in-the-know, Jonathan Strange is a freaking excellent book, the only trouble being that it is massively long, at 785 pages, and until a couple weeks ago, it was only available in hardcover. Because I read so slowly, it basically took me all summer to read this book. I could not take such a prohibitively large and heavy book on my various mini-vacations over the summer. I had to pack too lightly on roadtrips and going to conventions, so I took breaks from Strange & Norrell to read other books (Freakonomics, Harry Potter Six) and comics.
That's not to say I didn't enjoy Strange & Norrell immensely - and I advise all of you to read it as well. It's a terrific book. It's highly applicable to our D&D game at times, it's written in an enjoyable style. The prose is neither to easy nor to difficult and the book is largely not boring, save for the vacationing in Italy bit, and also some longish bits at the very start. The footnotes are very lengthy.
Also I wasn't aware of the existence of pork pies before this book, but now I am keen to try one. I found a good webpage or two about them last night, but can I find it again now? Oh hells no.
I finally got the pictures from the Michigan roadtrip online, take a look:
