Two birds with one stone: Susanna Clarke

Books like these are unfair to all the other books. 

I wish I hadn't done this, but I didn't blog about either of these books right away. When I finished Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Sam had just finished reading Piranesi and he was eager for me to read it immediately, so he encouraged me not to take the time to blog about Strange & Norrell but to wait and do one blog post covering both books. I figured it wouldn't hurt for me to break my rules for once. The only problem is that now I'll not end up doing either book justice . . . though I have a feeling that I never could have. 

Both books were so well-written and so engaging. Strange & Norrell was, to me, everything that Grossman's The Magicians had promised me but had failed to follow through on. It tells the story of the return of magicians to nineteenth century England. The book was looooong, and yet it went by so fast! And now I'm eager to watch the TV series. Piranesi, though quite a bit shorter, was every bit as intriguing (or possibly more so, as it had more of an element of mystery), one of those stories that begins with everything cloaked in secrets, leaving you to puzzle your way through. Neither book caused me to deeply contemplate The Meaning of Life, but both were completely engrossing, and the reading experience was the way I wish it could be with every book.