This is one of my favorite books. I picked it up in a bookstore on a vacation weekend, partially because of seeing it mentioned everywhere, and partially because the first few lines interested me more than my other option. And it was on sale. 
 And I _loved_ it. The moment when Mr. Norrell performed magic for the magicians who had challenged him was beautiful and, well, magical. It took my breath away and made me believe. I was absolutely hooked. 
 I also loved the footnotes, and the deft rewriting of history. For the first quarter of the book, I assumed the Raven King was a real piece of folklore I'd never heard of before, which added immeasurably to the construction of the book's mythos. 
 Mr. Norrell himself was a pill, nasty and wretched but also amusing and as compelling as any of the nasty characters in Jane Austen's works are. But Jonathan Strange was just wonderful, and somebody I identified with heavily. 
 I tend to feel the same way about JS & MN as I do about most of the Austen I've enjoyed: it's less about the destination than the journey. (And I've read a lot of Austen many times since first reading JS.) That's why I could tolerate an ending I found slightly baffling the first time. Fortunately, after a few rereadings I was able to come up with a satisfying reason for why both Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell were so crucial to the ultimate goals of the Raven King. 
 Really, this may be my _favorite_ book. I find more than half of the representations of magic to be haunting and evocative, astonishing and wonderful. I love the presentation of faerie. I love the characters, major and minor. I love the mythology. I love the meandering footnotes and the meticulous worldbuilding. It is a work of rare and wild beauty that has enriched my own imagination immeasurably.