Thursday, January 15, 2009

Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde (1/81)

Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde
Category: Recommendations or Award Winners

This is the second book in the Thursday Next series, which really should be read in order. I'll warn you now not to read this if you haven't read The Eyre Affair, because it will inevitably have spoilers for the first book.

Lost in a Good Book starts soon after the The Eyre Affair ends. Thursday is being inundated with requests for appearances on TV shows (she's even asked to create a workout video) after her adventures in the pages of Jane Eyre. The Goliath Corporation is none too happy with her treatment of Jack Schitt; meanwhile, Cordelia Flakk is chasing Thursday down for more PR appearances, and someone seems intent on killing Thursday by coincidence (decrease in entropy occurs every once in awhile, but I'll let Mycroft explain how that happens).

It's hard to pin down the Thursday Next series by genre. It's sort-of science fiction, because it involves time travel and an alternate universe. It's definitely humor, running the gamut from roll-your-eyes puns (Schitt, his half-brother Schitt-Hawse, and various other character names) and literary references to classics that might go over your head even if you've read the books. But to attempt to pin it down doesn't do it justice - you really just have to be in the mood for zany good fun and literary puns. 5 stars.

Cross-posted at Born Reader.

3 comments:

SandDancer said...

I have this on my TBR pile, having read The Eyre Affair late last year. I'm looking forward to reading it, but unfortunately it doesn't fit into any of my categories so I'm holding off reading it for now.

Mary said...

Ooh...that's too bad, but I hope you enjoy it when you do get to it. I love the series so far, and am looking forward to reading the next. I kind of stretched my category a bit to make it fit, as my mom actually recommended book #4, Something Rotten.

Cindy B said...

I love this series. So much fun.