this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell. After that book I gave myself permission to DNF though, so it was a maturing experience for me. I mostly wanted to know what happened to Stephen and that's what drove me, along with the "No mere book shall defeat me" attitude.
I really enjoyed all of the Fae short stories actually. I'm not really a horror fan, but I found Fae, and mortals interaction with it, particularly gripping and memorable. I never put the book down when I was in Fae, trapping me along with the victims, perhaps that's why I wanted Stephen to just be ok.
It was just everything else in the book I couldn't enjoy. The titular characters I found uninteresting. The setting, fae excluded, I was apathetic about. The structure, the footnotes, dear god the footnotes.
But the Fae stuff? I'll take 10 more of them in an anthology please.
Blasphemy but you can always Google if you just wanna know one thing but can't finish. I did to the WoT and don't regret it.
I could have but for the other two reasons I wrote about. Namely, I wasn't mature enough to DNF, and the Fae stories are really good.
I suppose in the end it did one better by causing me to grow as a person. Sure, books have taught me a bunch of stuff but not many I can describe as being "the" reason I "grew".
Today I wouldn't have read enough of JS&MrN to even hear about Stephen, let alone grow to care about him.
I'm sure I'm missing out on a great number of good books, great books even, possibly even formative books, by how willing I am to DNF. But, there's so many good books out there that my calendar always seems to be full anyway.