Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

[King Bob]

The two titular characters are early 19th century Englishmen who want to bring back the practice of magic in England. Part of it takes place in Faerie. It's quite long and involved and took me a while to get through. I believe she wanted to write fantasy in the form of a 19th century  novel - rather like Elizabeth Kostova with The Historian, but more sucessfully in this case. It is somewhat slowly paced for the most part, and many pages are footnoted. (Footnotes, as I recall, were kind of a fad there for a while.)

I'm not sure I'd recommend this unless you like Dickens and such. FYI Neil Gaiman praised this book highly.

[Drunk Monk]

I remember we discussed the netflix adaptation
http://www.brotherhoodofdoom.com/doomFor...5#pid23625

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

I really liked this book. I don’t mind if it takes a while to get going if I can see kinda where it is heading. I agree that there is a very strong 19th Century feel to it with the pacing. I enjoyed the footnotes and think that many of them could be written into their own stories.