The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay

"Take my camel, dear," said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from the High Mass.

The Towers of Trebizond has been on my to-read shelf since 2007.  It popped up on some classic book list, possibly The Guardian's list of 1000 Books Everyone Must Read (it's one of the 100 Comedies -- I've read 37 so far).  Plus I really liked the cover of the NYRB Classic edition, above, so I bought my own copy which promptly gathered dust for about seven years until I picked it up the other day.

Published in 1956, this is ostensibly a humorous tale about some unlikely companions traveling around Turkey -- the narrator, Laurie, who is a companion and assistant to her widowed Aunt Dot as she embarks on a journey which is part research for a travel book, part missionary work to convert infidels to the Church of England, and part social work to empower women in a highly traditional and sexist culture. They're accompanied by an Anglican priest, Father Chantry-Pigg, and aunt Dot's nameless camel.  

It's quirky and the wit is mostly very dry:

It is not, therefore, strange that we should have inherited a firm and tenacious adherence to the Church of our country.  With it has come down to most of us a great enthusiasm for catching fish.  Aunt Dot maintains that this propensity is peculiarly Church of England; she has perhaps made a slight confusion between the words Anglican and angling.  To be sure the French fish even more, as I sometimes point out, and to be sure, the pre-Reformation monks fished greatly. "Mostly in fish-ponds," said Aunt Dot.  "Very unsporting, and only for food." 

After a time, the group ends up separating and Laurie spends much of the trip alone with the camel.  There are a lot of funny observations, but Laurie does a lot of soul-searching about the nature of love and religion -- a lot of the book discusses the differences between the different sects of the Church of England, not to mention the Roman Catholic church and Islam.  There's a lot of discussion about the plight of women in Turkey and whether they can be emancipated and empowered.  Laurie is actually an agnostic, and spends a lot of time pondering about the nature of religion.  This book spends a LOT of time discussing religion.  Parts of it are satirical, including some digs at Billy Graham, but some of it is just thoughtful.  

There were parts of the book I found delightful and quirky, and there are a lot of lovely travelogue-y bits when Laurie travels on her own through Turkey on the back of the camel, mostly in places where she can barely speak Turkish and few of the locals speak English.  Still, she gets by quite well, which is surprising for a woman traveling on her own in a Moslem country in the 1950s.  But the end of the book turns quite serious and I did find the ending very melancholy.  I went back and read the introduction of the book after I'd finished, and it was easy to see how some of the events in the book were inspired by author Rose Macauley's own life.   

This book was extremely popular in the late 1950s when it was published -- apparently people went around quoting the famous first line.  I do think that it is definitely a product of its time -- there are some parts in this book that definitely made me uncomfortable, which  some readers could find very offensive.  However, I do think it was satirizing many religions, not just Islam.   

I'm counting this as my Forgotten Classic for the Back to the Classics Challenge.

Anthony Trollope Bicentennial Celebration: Sign Up Here!

In exactly two months, on April 24, it will be the 200th anniversary of Anthony Trollope's birth.  In honor of one of my favorite writers, I'm hosting a month-long celebration of his life and work.  Here is where you can sign up to participate.  I've never hosted anything like this before, but I'm planning on posting weekly round-ups of anything relating to Trollope, awarding prizes (for U.S. and international bloggers) and reading as much Trollope as I can squeeze into a single month.  If you're interested, you can link any postings related to Trollope.  It could be a book review of one of his many novels, TV adaptations, or you could just ruminate about anything Trollope-related.  

Who's with me? Sign up with the Linky below!

Liza of Lambeth by W. Somerset Maugham

Liza of Lambeth is the first novel published by W. Somerset Maugham, in 1897.  I've been a big fan of Maugham's work ever since I read Of Human Bondage as a freshman in college, so I thought Liza would be a good choice for my Classic Novella selection for the Back to the Classics Challenge. (It also counts towards the Reading England Challenge). 

This is the story of Liza Kemp, a young woman of about eighteen or twenty who lives in Vere Street in Lambeth, a neighborhood of London.  Liza is pretty and spirited, and she doesn't seem very satisfied with her life.  She lives with her widowed mother, who seems to do nothing but drink and complain about her rheumatism, and her boyfriend Tom bores her.  At the beginning of the story, it's a beautiful day in August, and the neighbors are hanging around outside when an organ player wanders down the street.  Spontaneous dancing breaks out as Liza is walking home in a new dress, and she joins in.  The sight of Liza dancing in that new dress catches the eye of a new neighbor, Jim Blakeston, who changes Liza's life forever.  He's married, with a houseful of children, and he's old enough to be her father.  But Jim is so different than her boyfriend, Liza starts a relationship with him that sends her on a downward spiral.  

It's quite short, only 137 pages, and one could easily read it in a day or possibly even a single sitting, but I had to put it down a few times because I did find the story quite depressing. It's quite obvious to the reader that this isn't going to end well, and it doesn't.  Maugham was working as a doctor in working-class London at the time he wrote the book, and it struck me that he must have seen many girls  like Liza. 

It was a little difficult to read because all the characters speak in a dialect which I can only assume was Cockney. (Please feel free to correct me in the comments I'm incorrect.) Though the story is well written, and the characters are well developed, I can't say I really recommend it because I found it so sad.  I did appreciate it as fan of Maugham, but I can't say I'd ever want to read it again.  I've read The Painted Veil and Up at the Villa several times but Liza of Lambeth won't be on my list of favorites. 

Victoria's Daughters by Jerrold M. Packer

My fascination with Victorian writers has expanded to overlap with my love of non-fiction -- I find it so interesting to read the actual history that was going on during my favorite literary period.  I found Victoria's Daughters at one of the library sales a couple of years ago for a mere $1.  After the debacle of my last so-called nonfiction read, I needed some actual history to cleanse my reading palate.  Though it isn't nearly as scholarly as I expected, it was still a fascinating read. 

Queen Victoria had nine children over a period of seventeen years, and five of them were girls: Victoria, the Princess Royal (known as Vicky), Alice, Helena (known as Lenchen), Louise, and Beatrice (she eventually had forty grandchildren).  Though not nearly as well documented as their famous mother, this is still a very interesting insight into the lives of the Queen's household, how European royalty was intertwined through marriage, and the transition from the 19th century to the 20th. 

There are also some hints about the background of World War I, since Victoria's oldest daughter (also named Victoria and known as Vicky) married the oldest son of the German Emperor, and was the mother of William the Second of Germany, also known as Kaiser Wilhelm.  When Germany and England were at war, royal cousins were fighting on both sides.  

Basically, it was the duty of Queen Victoria's daughters to make brilliant marriages:  her second daughter Alice also married a German prince, Louis of Hesse (her daughter Alix married Nicholas of Russia, the final Tsar); her fourth daughter Louise married a future Scottish Duke; the other two daughters, Helen and Beatrice, also married minor German princes.  Well, the youngest daughter finally married at 28, even though Victoria was initially furious at the idea of her youngest daughter marrying at all -- it was her duty to stay with her mother for her entire life.  Beatrice was 17 years younger than Victoria and only four years old when her father Prince Albert died, so Beatrice spent her entire life taking care of her mother.  Eventually Queen Victoria agreed to her marriage, but only on the condition that Beatrice and her husband live with the Queen and Beatrice continue to act as her unofficial secretary.  

Princess Beatrice, the youngest daughter, in her wedding dress.

This was a really interesting book -- lots of history, several scandals, and much of it was quite tragic.  Hemophilia ran in the family, and besides Queen Victoria's son Leopold, some of the grandsons were also hemophiliac and died young.  The second daughter, Alice, died of diphtheria which she contracted while nursing her own children, one of whom had also just died during the same outbreak.

Princess Alice, the second of Queen Victoria's daughters.

I did have a few quibbles -- there weren't nearly enough photos, considering how many people are included in the book.  Also, though there's an excellent chart showing the immediate family tree (which runs horizontally across a two-page spread, so I was constantly turning the book sideways) I really wish the author had included a map or two.  There are a lot of references to various royal houses, palaces, and castles, and I'm a visual person, so I would have liked some geographical layout.  Also, a map of all the German kingdoms of the time would have been helpful -- four of the daughters married German princes, and there was a lot of traveling in the book back and forth between England and Germany.  

The writing in this book was pretty accessible, though a bit clunky at times.  Packard has this tendency to end sections with heavy foreshadowing and dramatic flourish, as though he were writing cliffhangers.  A lot.  For example:

From those earliest years, the little girl stored up constant approbation, in reserve for the day when she would turn it disastrously loose in her adult life.  (Cue ominous music).  Or how about:

Only a fiend could have predicted that such bliss would, starting in a few weeks, begin to turn to choking dust.

I also noticed that Packard had a tendency to editorialize instead of just presenting the facts and allowing the reader to form an opinion.  For example, after the death of Beatrice's husband, there was a rift between Beatrice and her sister Louise: 

Probably no family row would have occurred if [Louise] hadn't let her mouth get ahead of her brain when Liko's death was reported while the family was at Osborne. . . . It was a stupid and careless thing for one sister to tell another under the circumstances, and understandably, for a time it badly strained relations between Louise and Beatrice.

I'm sure that after spending years researching a subject for a book, a writer couldn't help but form opinions about them one way or another, but I did find a few of the comments a bit over the top.  Perhaps by merely including a quote the reader can come to his or her own conclusion about the stupid things that siblings say to each other.  

Overall, though, I really enjoyed this book.  I also have several other books about Victorian history on the to-read pile, and some more royal biographies.  My book group is reading Helen Rappaport's The Romanov Sisters in a few months, and I'm also really looking forward to that one.  Bloggers, which books about Victorian history do you recommend?  Which royal biographies? 

Modoc: the True Story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived by Ralph Helfer

I had high hopes for this book -- what's not to love about elephants?  And the "true story" of an amazing elephant and his lifelong friendship with a trainer?  Well, it would be amazing, if it were, in fact, all true.  But sadly, not so much.

This book out pretty interesting, with a fairly good narrative.  Basically, it's the story of a young boy, Bram, who was raised with a circus elephant, and spent most of his life with her throughout fantastic events -- both wonderful and tragic -- around the globe.  There are ocean voyages, a shipwreck, mystical encounters in faraway lands, bandits, benevolent royalty, wars -- you name it.

But as I read this amazing narrative -- complete with dialogue, which is always slightly suspect in a book that's reporting elements of years ago -- I was slightly put off by the writing and its insider knowledge of people's thoughts and feelings.  And a lot of the events are so fantastic that they just don't ring true.  Plus, this story is oddly lacking in concrete details.  For starters, the date of this miraculous birth is never mentioned -- not even the year!  The reader can only assume that it is sometime in the early part of the 20th century.  In fact, there's not an actual date mentioned in the entire book.  The more I read this book, the more it started to feel like a fable or fantastic folk tale, not nonfiction.

Since I am a curious person (and because I spend far too much time surfing the internet) after I finished the book, I began Googling for actual facts.  It quickly became obvious that Ralph Helfer studied at the James Frey School of Nonfiction Writing -- that is, playing pretty fast and loose with the facts.  Modoc seems like an amalgamation of a lot of different stories, different elephants, etc.

If Helfer had just said the story was inspired by actual events, I might have bought it -- the story, though flawed and over-the-top, would probably have found some satisfied readers.  But the fact that he's trying to pass this as a TRUE STORY is just so irritating, it's really taken away from the experience of reading the book. (The fact that it is listed as nonfiction by the library is just eye-rolling).

I really need to be a little more discerning when I choose nonfiction.  I did take another look at the Goodreads reviews for the rest of the books on my TBR Pile Challenge List, which is all nonfiction, and it seems like those that aren't memoirs are fairly respected -- there are obviously some aren't necessarily universally loved, but they actually have footnotes, indices, and/or bibliographies.

Memoirs are another story altogether.  If an author states at the beginning, that basically, this is how I remember this incident, or that certain characters or events may have been combined, I might be forgiving.  How can someone remember an entire conversation years later?  It's different than if they're quoting a print document like a letter.  Essentially, the reader has to assume that this is the writer's memory (or interpretation) of certain events.  Looking back on my TBR Pile Challenge list, I realized that exactly half of these books are essentially memoirs or opinions.

As I've mentioned, I've been reading a lot more nonfiction in the past few years -- maybe this also means I need to be more selective.  Does the popularity of nonfiction also mean an increase in thinly veiled fiction?  (And is it really more popular, or do I just think so because I've finally embraced nonfiction?)  Bloggers, how discriminating are you about your nonfiction?  Are there any "true stories" that you later found out weren't completely accurate?

Demobbed: Coming Home After the Second World War by Alan Allport

The other day, I was working at the circulation desk at the library, and a patron returned a book that I really want to read, River of Doubt by Candice Millard.  When I asked how he liked it, he seemed a little dismissive.  "Well, I have a Ph.D in history," he said, basically implying that the book wasn't particularly academic in nature.  Now, I have been reading more and more nonfiction the past few years, and I even started a book group at my branch that reads only nonfiction.  I'm finding nonfiction to be better written and more accessible than ever before.  It never occurred to me that this could be considered a bad thing.  

However, my most recent nonfiction book was all of the above -- well-written, accessible, AND academic.  Demobbed: Coming Home After the Second World War by Alan Allport is a fascinating read about the lives of British soldiers (and to a lesser extent, civilians) during the period immediately after WWII, when millions of men returned home during peacetime after the war.  

I must admit I knew next to nothing about this when I started -- everything I know about postwar Britain is from TV series like Call the Midwife.  I did realize that food and gas rationing went on for years, but I am sure to myself, and many others, my first thoughts are about the soldiers returning home to ticker tape parades, kissing nurses in the streets, like the iconic Life magazine photo.

The book isn't terribly long, about 225 pages of narrative of text, but it's packed with information.  Here are a few facts that I learned:

• Logistically, returning soldiers home was complicated. It took months, even stretching to years for some of the British military. It takes a long time to get that many people from one place to another.  (If you've ever been on a cruise, you know how long it takes people to get OFF the ship. Try multiplying that exponentially.) 

• Because of the bombings and destruction on the home front, many civilians felt that they'd had an equally bad time than the soldiers who were fighting, or even worse. Many of them resented the returning soldiers. Soldiers were also shocked at the rationing and destruction once they'd returned.

• And of course, the issues of the mental health of many of the returning soldiers. I know there are infinitely more resources for returning veterans now, but it's shocking how bad it was after World War II. 

This book was extremely interesting and well-organized. In the introduction, Allport explains that this book was originally an academic thesis (it's published by the Yale University Press). Compared to most of the nonfiction I've been reading the last few years, Demobbed is definitely written in a more formal style than some of the nonfiction that I find on the library shelves, but it's still very accessible. I really enjoyed this book, especially compared to the disappointment of the previous book I read from my TBR Pile Challenge 2015 list. I highly recommend it for anyone who's interested in the postwar period. 

I still own two more nonfiction works about post-war Britain on the TBR shelves: Millions Like Us by Virginia Nicholson and Our Hidden Lives by Simon Garfield. Bloggers, have any of you read either of these? And what other books about WWII and postwar Britain do you recommend? 

Mary Poppins by P. L. Travers

"She knew very well that Mary Poppins never wasted time in being nice." 

Growing up, I missed an awful lot of the children's classics -- I read and loved the Narnia series, the Little House books, and the Boxcar children, but I never even read The Wizard of Oz series until I was in middle school (and I skipped the first book, assuming it was just like the movie.  I was quite wrong).  I am now officially adding Mary Poppins to the list of books I regret never reading while I was an actual child.

If you're not familiar with the plot, Mary Poppins is a mysterious, magical nanny that shows up and takes charge of the four Banks children after their Katie Nanna leaves on short notice.  She's not what you'd call warm and cuddly -- she's actually rather short and brusque with the children -- but when Mary is around, wonderful things happen.  The two elder children, Jane and Michael, have fantastic adventures with Mary, including a visit to the zoo at night when the animals are running the place; a tea party held whilst floating up near the ceiling; and a magical trip around the world.

Mary Poppins was never among my favorite Disney movies when I was a kid, and when my own children were born, I didn't enjoy it much more.  It was only after I saw Saving Mr. Banks that I had any read desire to read the book to see how it compares to the movie.  Well, it's far superior -- in fact, there's barely any resemblance to the movie at all, except the famous opening when she comes in with her carpet bag and slides up the bannister; and her evening out with Bert.  It's possible that other elements in the movie are taken from later books in the series, which I haven't read yet, but if you're a fan of the movie, you might be disappointed.  Mr. and Mrs. Banks are barely mentioned, and there are no chimney sweeps in sight.

I also did not realize that this book was revised by Travers back in 1981.  I'd been listening to the audio, and when I have a hard copy, I like to see my progress by comparing it to the print book.  So, I looked in my copy to check my place, and was VERY surprised to see that my current chapter, "Bad Tuesday" was QUITE different -- as in quite racist!

That particular chapter starts out with Michael getting out of the wrong side of bed.  Everything goes wrong all day and he's being very naughty.  They're out on a walk and spot a compass on the ground, and Mary Poppins uses it so they can travel around the world.  In the audio version, they go in all four points of the compass, and visit a polar bear, a macaw, and panda, and a dolphin, and it's quite delightful.  Apparently in the original version it's people, and the visit to Africa is particularly offensive.  But I'm glad to say that the revised version is much better.  

Though I do own a print copy of the book, I mostly listened an audio version, which I just loved.  The reader, Sophie Thompson is one of the most delightful audiobook narrators I've ever encountered.  (Yes, that's the Sophie Thompson who is the sister of Emma Thompson, who played Miss Bates in Emma and Mary Elliot in Persuasion).  She's just perfect for Mary Poppins -- Mary is very no-nonsense, the children are full of wonder, and her accents are spot-on.  I'm planning to read the entire Mary Poppins series, and when I do, I will imagine Sophie Thompson narrating all the rest of the books in my head.

I'm counting this book as my Children's Classic for the Back to the Classics Challenge.

Anthony Trollope Bicentennial

Well, I just recently discovered via some other bloggers that 2015 is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Anthony Trollope, one of my all-time favorite writers!  How did I not realize this?  

So far, I've read 15 of his 47 novels, and I still have 16 unread on my shelves (not to mention three volumes of short stories, his autobiography, and an illustrated biography).  To celebrate my love of Trollope and his charming novels, I'm thinking about hosting a month-long event on my blog.  Trollope was born on April 24, 1815, so I thought April would be an appropriate month.  

I've hosted giveaways before, and I'm currently hosting the second year of the Back to the Classics Challenge, but I've never hosted a blogging event like this.  I was thinking I'd have some sort of sign-up linky, some giveaways, and maybe post weekly updates with links to participants' postings.  I'm definitely open to suggestions!

Bloggers, what do you think?  Are any of you interested in participating?  And what would you like included in a blogging event? 

The Girls From Winnetka by Marcia Chellis

Well, that was disappointing.

I was really looking forward to starting my TBR Pile Challenge reading list for 2015.  After finishing one giant doorstopper of a book (which I loved), and having about another 20 audio discs to go on a second, I naturally looked through the pile and chose the shortest book.  I have a really hard time leaping from one enormous book to another.  My choice was The Girls From Winnetka by Marcia Chellis. I received this as a prize drawing gift from another blogger back in 2010.   Unfortunately, I wasn't nearly as enamored of this book as she was.  

This is the true story of five friends, women who graduate in the same high school class in Winnetka, Illinois, an upscale Chicago suburb, in the late 1950s:  Annie, Margo, Barbie, Laura, and Brooke.  (No last names are given in this story; we don't even know the actual year they graduated).  The book covers their changing lives throughout the decades and examines them in light of the social upheaval of the 1960s and 70s, and the changing role of women.  Each chapter is split up between the five women as they live through different decades, from the 1950s through the 20th century, beginning and ending with a reunion of these lifelong friends.

I was particularly intrigued by this book because I love nonfiction (my entire TBR Pile Challenge list is nonfiction this year!) and because I lived for about ten years in Chicago and the suburbs.  I've been to Winnetka many times and actually know people who graduated from this very high school, New Trier. I also attended the same university as one of the women in the book, and I really hoped that this book would really connect with me.  

Unfortunately, it really didn't.  This book was published by a small independent publishing company, and it really showed.  I found the quality of the writing really lacking, with some serious errors in punctuation, and the style just felt amateurish.  (I should confess upfront that I am a person who becomes easily annoyed by the misuse of an apostrophe.) Maybe I'm especially nitpicky, but it really bugged me that the author (or editor) misused commas and italics repeatedly -- basic stuff that any middle school teacher would mark down.  I know my blog posts aren't always perfect, but I'm not asking anybody to pay to read my stuff. 

The story was also quite disjointed, with huge gaps in the narrative.   I think these women really did have interesting lives, and I'm quite sure I would have gotten more out of this book if it were better written.  I just couldn't get past the poor quality of the writing and editing.  It really seemed like a first draft to me.  It was only 240 pages, so it was a fast read, but I'm sure I would have liked it much better if it were longer and the women's histories were expanded.  

However, I won't be discouraged with the rest of my TBR Pile list; I've just started the next book on my list, and the first twelve pages of the prologue were infinitely better written than The Girls From Winnetka.  I've heard excellent things about nearly all of the other 11 books on the list, and the two alternates, so if nothing else I knocked the worst one off the list first.  

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

As usual, I am years behind everyone else and am only now reading the Next Big Literary Thing.  (I suppose now it's just a Literary Big Thing.) Ten years!  That's how long it took me to read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell,  though I've only owned this book for about three years (which I got at the bargain price of $1 at the library's Friends sale), and is yet another Big Fat Book that has been taking up space on the TBR shelves.  This book is almost 800 pages, and I've already started the audio of The Pickwick Papers.  I really and truly had no business starting this doorstopper, but it looked dark and mysterious, and that's exactly what I was in the mood for on New Year's Day when I picked it up.  

Quite frankly, it's just BRILLIANT. It's taken me almost two weeks to finish (due to interruptions), but honestly, I didn't want to rush through it. This is one of those books that I was glad to savor and read in bits in pieces. I didn't want to stay up all night to find out how it would end. I wanted it to last forever, because I knew I'd be sad when it was over. 

For those who don't know the setup, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell begins in 1806, in Yorkshire.  There is a society of magicians, who really don't know much about magic, but they've heard that there's a Mr. Norrell with an amazing library of magical books and who claims to be the last practicing magician in all of England.  A couple of them go to meet him, but either he's a snob or he doesn't like competition.  He makes them an offer: Mr. Norrell will do something amazing to prove he's a magician, but all the others must sign an agreement that they'll never try to do magic again.  All but one of them accept. 

Well, he does do something amazing -- he goes to a cathedral and brings all the statues to life.  Everyone's abuzz with the possibility of actual magic back in England. Mr. Norrell moves to London and meets a lot of fashionable people, and then he performs another unbelievable feat of magic. Soon all of London is crazy for magic. Mr. Norrell offers his services to help with the war against Napoleon. He also takes on a single pupil, Jonathan Strange, a wealthy young man who's a bit of a dilettante, but he seems to have found his calling as a magician. The rest of the book consists of the the development of the relationship between Strange and Norrell, and the changes that magic brings to England.

One of Portia Rosenberg's  illustrations from the novel

This 800-page book is set up very much like a Victorian serial.  There are 69 short chapters, all about ten pages long, which was really nice for reading in bits and pieces. This isn't a book I wanted to rush through.  It took me more than two weeks to finish this book, and I was glad to stretch it out.   I can definitely imagine this published weekly, like the novels of Dickens and Trollope.  It has a very Dickensian feel about it, though it's set in the Regency period which was the time of Jane Austen.   I normally hate comparing books to other books, but I couldn't help thinking that if Jane Austen and Charles Dickens could have met and written their version of Harry Potter, it would have been very much like this. Susanna Clarke nails the Victorian writing style more than any other historical writer I've read.  

It's also written as though it were an actual history of how magic came back to England, complete with footnotes to explain all the references they make, mostly about ancient magicians and stories of magical events in the past.  I also found it very funny in parts -- there are a lot of snarky little asides.

Some people have complained about the pacing of this book, but I thought it was just right.  I just loved the world of Strange and Norrell and I'm really sad now that I've finished the book.  It took Susannah Clarke about ten years to write it. I've heard that she's writing a sequel and I really hope that's true, and that it won't take too much longer for it to be finished.  

In the meantime, apparently the BBC is adapting it into a TV miniseries!  That's actually one of the reasons I decided to tackle this book -- I really wanted to read it before I watched it on TV. It's going to air here in the States on BBC America, though there's no word yet when it will actually be shown.  I'm glad it's a miniseries and not a TV movie or feature film, because the format is just right. Eddie Marsan is playing Mr. Norrell and though he's young for the role, I'm sure he'll do a wonderful job.

Bertie Carvel (left) as Jonathan Strange and Eddie Marsan as Mr. Norrell

There are some other production stills floating around the internet. I don't recognize any of the other actors but I'm really hoping it will live up to the novel.  Susanna Clarke also published a book of short stories called The Ladies of Grace Adieu, and I've already requested it from the library. 

Has anyone else read this? And how is your reading going for 2015?