I haven't talked much about reading here lately.

I am - STILL - reading on "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell." Part of that is because the version I have is not a very "portable" book - it's the huge hardback - so I have to read it at home and haven't tried taking it on my travels. But it's also the sort of book I find I have to be in the right mood for.

(There will be a bit of a spoiler in the paragraph after the next one, so if you've not read it yet or if you are in the middle of it, you might want to hold off).





In the wrong mood, I get very annoyed at the author's habit of spelling "choose" as "chuse" and similar affectations. (Yes, I know, she's trying to be Swiftian or something, but when I'm not in the mood for it, it annoys me, in the same way that typos annoy me. I think when I'm in a compulsive mood, my brain interprets the alternate spellings as typos). Also, she spells Switzerland as Swisserland, which makes me wonder if this is actually an alternate-universe-that-just-looks-like-ours sort of setting.

That said - I hit one moment in the book last night that scared me. Which is rare with books these days. Strange is in Venice, he's met up with the Greysteels, he's trying to summon a fairy to help him. And he goes to Mrs. Delgado's house, knowing that she's mad, knowing that madness is purported to help people see fairies....and he trades her her fondest wish (or so he says) for her madness - she turns into a cat and runs off into the night, and her madness is transferred into a dead mouse. Which Strange then makes into a tincture which he takes.

I do not know why that passage scared me but it did. I think it was the sense of "wait, wait, you might not be able to pull back, this might be irreversible!" Or it might be my own fears of losing a grip on my sense of reality that triggered my discomfort. (I don't think it had anything to do with the ickiness of taking tincture of dead-mouse in brandy, though.)

Perhaps it's also the idea that perhaps the madness - see fairies connection is not cause and effect in the sense that Strange assumed it was - given Mrs. Pole's experience. (In other words: what Strange thinks is the cause is actually the effect.)

Good book though. I am looking forward to the completion.

I think my next "big book" is going to be Gulliver's Travels, since I'm already in somewhat of a Georgian mode.