Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel - Day 7

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The biggest thing I've noticed about reading these monster books is in how my attention span works. If I can't get through a book in five days or less, my attention starts to wander and I have to deliberately focus on continuing the text. This has nothing to do with whether I'm enjoying it or not. I mention this because it is one of the big problems my students cite when they are having difficulty finishing texts. It's not that I discounted this as a problem, it's just one I don't frequently encounter myself and therefore have trouble finding solutions. Reading things like this and Anna Karenina reminds me what it is like to slog. In short...it's good for me. (shudder)

I've also noticed that I've trained myself into this idea of only blogging when I've finished something....however if I'm reading a 1,000 page tome, that's not going to happen with any frequency and this explains why my writing habits seem to have deserted me. They apparently didn't work the way I thought they did.

For all that this is an absolutely huge text, it is very good. I was reminded of it when the BBC miniseries based on it showed up on Netflix. I committed the cardinal sin of watching the miniseries before reading the text, so now I'm spending a ridiculous amount of time comparing the two. Certainly, the miniseries has captured the feel of things and many of the events but they've been liberal with how the events connect together which changes how the characters come across in some instances.

I'm not done with the novel, obviously, but at this point I would say that they are both quite good. However, I would not recommend watching the miniseries first.