On the personal front, I recently finished The Gods Themselves by Asimov. It's obviously part of a larger story that was never finished, but at least it's got enough bits of the entire story-arc to stand by itself. Quite a good read and one of Asimov's best. Contrast that with Nemesis that comes off like a pilot for a larger story that never happened. It's more setup than story.
I got Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, but it was a bit too wordy and dickensian for my tastes, so I gave up around page 75. I'm currently reading The Godfather Returns. Thus far it's not a bad read, although it's spreading itself a bit thin trying to give more dimension to EVERY minor character from the early books (Tom Hagen, Johnny Fontaine, etc).
. . .but it looks like I'm going to have to take a break from that reading in favor of books about pixel shaders :(
