"The Eyre Affair" and other Thursday Next adventures by Jasper Fforde

You may have noticed (if you look at the stuff on the side of my blog) that I've been reading "The Eyre Affair" for about 2 months. I've actually gotten to the third book in the series, "The Well of Lost Plots." These books were recommended to me by my good friend Rachel (whose blogs are a joy to read--there are links to both if you'll look to the right). I am not talking about myself in the third person like Elmo does. I swear. Rachel is an English major and has read just about everything ever written. I always know that if she says it's a good book, it will be a good book. She was, as usual, right! I must warn you, though, that if you're like me, and haven't read all the classics (like Kafka's "The Trial," for example), there may be some jokes that go over your head.

The premise of the book is this: The world is obsessed with literature. There are radical groups, like Baconites, who believe that Sir Francis Bacon wrote the plays credited to William Shakespeare. Genetics labs have brought dodos and neanderthals back to the earth (the dodos like marshmallows, and the neanderthals are used for labor), and there is a special enforcement group called SpecOps, who has divisions that include Literatecs (they investigate forgeries and rare book discoveries) and the Suckers and Biters division (vampires and werewolves). Thursday Next is a Literatec agent whose job it becomes to chase down the evil Acheron Hades, who has made off with the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit. Hades has seemingly supernatural powers, making Next's assignment nearly impossible. Thursday's genius uncle has figured out how to jump into books, using bookworms and lots of electricity. After a series of strange and hard-to-explain adventures, Thursday and Acheron end up in a showdown in the middle of Jane Eyre. If you've already read this book, you'll know that this summary barely scratches the surface.

Now for my opinion: It took me a few chapters to get into it (same as you, Angela). There's a lot of time spent establishing the world, which is a tiny bit confusing. I'm not all that versed in our own world history, but I'm pretty sure the Crimean war has been over for quite some time. Did we even have the Crimean war? But after a few chapters I got sucked in and started to really enjoy the ride. I love the little touches like Pickwick the dodo, who loves marshmallows and brings Thursday a "gift" every time she comes home. The gifts are usually pieces of trash. The book includes fun things like Time Travel (Thursday's father has gone rogue from SpecOps Chrono division), romance, gunplay, and lots and lots of humor. One thing I realized, though, after reading this book, is that I am not nearly as well-read as I thought I was.

This became more and more apparent to me as I moved on to the second book, "Lost in a Good Book." I'm guessing it would have been much more funny to me, had I understood half the literary references that are placed throughout the novel. But I understood enough to laugh out loud at a lot of the book. This time, Thursday is in trouble for messing with "Jane Eyre." She becomes apprenticed to Miss Havisham (yes, the one from Great Expectations) to help control the Book World, where grammasites eat nouns and adjectives and wreak havoc on literature. All the agents meet for roll call at the ballroom in Norland Park in "Sense and Sensibility." Marianne enjoys flying planes and watching TV when she's not in the narrative. It's all very clever and entertaining.

I'm in the middle of the third book, "The Well of Lost Plots." Here are some things to look forward to if you get to this series: A rage therapy session in Wuthering Heights (hilarious), Thursday carrying around her friend's newly purchased head in a bag plot, and much more. I'm guessing that Rachel gets all the jokes. I think I'll do some more heavy reading, and then reread all the books. But even having never read a lot of the books that are alluded to, they are fun and entertaining, and may inspire you to read some classics. Thanks for the recommendation, Rachel.

By the way, Merry Christmas, y'all!