Tag-Archive for » thursday next «

Mar

NovelWhore tweeted a good question: “What book most represents what you want your life to be like?”

This is a tough questions to answer. I would love to be able to go to Hogwarts and do magic like the characters in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, but Harry and Company go through some very rough times. They lose their loved ones, they’re tortured and outcast for their beliefs, and they experience a great deal of pain and suffering. Not even magic can eradicate these types of problems.

Una Spenser of Sena Jeter Naslund’s novel Ahab’s Wife is one of the strong female protagonists I most admire. She touches so much history, and she’s truly a remarkable woman. However, she also is forced into cannibalism to survive a shipwreck, an experience that drives her husband insane. I certainly wouldn’t want to have some aspects of Una’s life, but others sound truly amazing.

While I admire the passion and windswept beauty of the landscape in both Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, the characters again must live through such ordeals, much of it at the hands of other people who are cruel for reasons that are difficult to fathom. Wuthering Heights, Thrushcross Grange, and Thornfield Manor might be interesting to visit, but I can’t honestly say I’d want to live there.

Manderley seems like a great house to explore. I love Daphne DuMaurier’s descriptions of her unnamed narrator in Rebecca. However, if Mrs. Danvers must come with the house, I have to decline.

No, if I had one choice, one book in which I could live, one book that represents what I wish my life could be like, it would be Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Here are my reasons:

Empire waists are flattering. The clothes are simply gorgeous.
Despite the supposed repression of the time, Lizzie manages to express her true thoughts quite well, especially when she’s been insulted. She does not accept Mr. Collins’s proposal: she knows she will be miserable. When Mr. Darcy insults her with his first proposal, she lets him know in no uncertain terms, exactly where he can stick that proposal.
England. You will not meet a bigger Anglophile. If I could live anywhere in the world and money/job were no object, I’d pack my bags for the U.K. this red hot minute.
Austen’s economy of description evokes just enough of the setting to give the reader an idea without becoming bogged down in detail. Even so, I can see all of it, and it’s so beautiful.

In Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series, characters are able to jump inside books, and Thursday even lives inside one for a time. If anyone ever works out how to visit books, I want to book a trip inside Pride and Prejudice.

In which book would you like to live? Blog about it and tag others (we can make this a meme) or leave your answer in the comments.

Category: Literature, This and That, Trivia Tags: ahab's wife, brontës, charlotte brontë, emily brontë, harry potter, j. k. rowling, jane austen, jane eyre, jasper fforde, meme, pride and prejudice, sena jeter naslund, thursday next, wuthering heights One Comment

Feb

Thursday Next: First Among Sequels

Dana

The fifth book in Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series, Thursday Next: First Among Sequels, begins more than a decade after its predecessor, Something Rotten. Thursday’s son Friday is now a teenager whose thoughts seem to revolve more around his favorite group Strontium Goat than on joining the ChronoGuard—something he must do, and soon, or the world might end. And that’s the least of Thursday’s problems. She also has to deal with the two book versions of Thursday Next, a reappearance of old nemeses Aornis Hades and Felix8, and Goliath Corporation’s machinations. Worst of all, the stupidity surplus is at an all-time high, and in order to get rid of it, the government has decided to turn Pride and Prejudice into a reality show called The Bennets. It’s up to Thursday to put all things to rights.

I think this book is one of the stronger in the series. As full of literature jokes as the others, it’s also folded upon itself as Thursday has by this time had books written about her, which have spawned BookWorld Thursdays that don’t resemble herself at all—or do they? My favorite parts were some speculation that Harry Potter himself might turn up for a meeting (I won’t give it away), and a passage in which Fforde shares his own feelings about literature (I know this because he shared them at his book signing, too):

I’d been trying to explain to them just what form the BookWorld takes, which was a bit odd, as it was really only my interpretation of it, and I had a feeling that if they actually accepted my way, it would become the way, so I was careful not to describe anything that might be problematical later.

I found that passage to be a beautiful metaphor for the interpretation of literature, and it made me wonder what I might see if I traveled to the BookWorld. I am thinking a lot of squashy places to curl up and read, rain-spattered windows, and books, books, books.

I highly recommend this entire series to book lovers. The jacket blurbs recommend it to fans of Harry Potter, and it has a bit of that charm, but really it’s not like that series. It’s silly, bookish, and full of in-jokes for the well-read. You won’t be able to put them down. I can’t wait for the next Thursday Next.

So… what do you think the BookWorld looks like?

This novel is the second selection for the Bibliophilic Books Challenge and the third for the Typically British Reading Challenge. My next excursion is a trip back to Meryton to visit the Bennets of Longbourn. I haven’t been back for some time.

Category: Reading Challenge, Review Tags: bibliophilic book challenge, book review, jasper fforde, thursday next, typically british 2 Comments

Feb

Reading Update

Dana

I am within 80 pages of finishing Thursday Next: First Among Sequels. I should be able to share a review soon.

I am about 70% in on Crime and Punishment, and I have to say that I am just not into it. I will finish it because I’ve gone too far to turn back. My judgment at this stage is that there are really interesting parts leavened by parts I either can’t understand or am just not interested in. It’s running on two stars at the moment.

I am also slowly moving through Mansfield Park, and not because I don’t enjoy it, but because my reading focus is on finishing Thursday Next at the moment.

Following Thursday Next I plan to pick up Pride and Prejudice again, which will serve as the third of my four selections for the Typically British Reading Challenge. In terms of my other challenges, the All About the Brontës Challenge and the Bibliophilic Books Challenge, I’m still thinking about what to read next. My scores stand thusly:

Typically British Challenge: 2 of 4 (3 of 4 once I’ve finished Thursday Next)
All About the Brontës Challenge: 2 of 3
Bibliophilic Books Challenge: 1 of 3 (2 of 3 once I’ve finished Thursday Next)

photo credit: Dawn Ashley

Category: Reading Challenge Tags: crime and punishment, jane austen, jasper fforde, mansfield park, pride and prejudice, reading, thursday next, update 4 Comments

Jan

Jasper Fforde

Dana

Jasper Fforde was in Atlanta last night for a reading, Q & A, and book signing, and I had the opportunity to purchase his latest novel, Shades of Grey, which is a departure from his “books about books”—the Thursday Next and Nursery Crime series. I brought my daughter with me, and she found the premise of his new book intriguing. It is set in the distant future after some catastrophic event, and the people who inhabit this post-apocalyptic society can only see one color. Accordingly, they divide themselves into groups based on which color they can see.

A few readers asked Fforde questions about interpretation of his books, and I want to try to paraphrase his answer, though I didn’t capture the exact wording. He said that a book only belongs to an author until someone else reads it. After that point, it belongs to the reader too. He described reading as a creative process, work very much akin to the process of actually writing the book, and he said there is room in books for many interpretations because of all the reader brings to a book; therefore, when he is asked whether he meant to comment about something particular with certain choices he makes, he turns the question back on the person who asked: “Well, what do you think?” He values the thoughts and interpretations of the readers as much as his own. I found that to be so beautifully expressed and so true to my own beliefs that when he signed my book, I explained that as an English teacher, I am often challenged by my students who don’t agree with an interpretation I share (whether my own or that of another reader or critic) and thus will insist that the author might not have meant it the way I am explaining it. I usually say that just because an author may not have intended it doesn’t make me wrong necessarily because we all bring certain experiences and knowledge to reading, and we make connections the author may not have intended or known we would make. I also add that many times authors will say they did intend something or other, even if it is not on a conscious level because we have such a vast repository of symbolic language. Now I can tell my students that Jasper Fforde, a successful published author from England, believes the same thing I do. I think it will give my explanation more authority.

If you haven’t read Fforde’s books and you consider yourself a book lover, do yourself a favor and check them out.

Category: Fantasy/Sci-Fi, Writers Tags: jasper fforde, nursery crime, shades of grey, thursday next 2 Comments

Dec

The Fourth Bear

Dana

Jasper Fforde’s The Fourth Bear is the second in his Nursery Crime series. Detective Chief Inspector Jack Spratt, head of the Nursery Crime Division, is investigating the disappearance and possible murder of Goldilocks. She was last seen alive by three bears, and things just don’t add up. To top it off, deranged psychopathic murderer the Gingerbreadman has escaped from the mental hospital where he’s been confined since Jack collared him twenty years ago, and he’s on a murderous rampage.

OK, this book is just silly, but you have to expect that with Jasper Fforde and just go with it. Fans of nursery rhymes and fairy tales (as well as other types of fiction) will enjoy Fforde’s sly references, and however silly his stories become, he always manages to make me laugh in a few places and keep turning the pages. I had a friend on Twitter ask me if this book was any good because he’d heard this series was not as clever as Fforde’s Thursday Next series, and I have to say that all things considered, I enjoy the Thursday Next books more. However, if Fforde returns to Nursery Crime, I will read the next book, and I plan to be in line when he makes an appearance at the Buckhead Barnes and Noble on January 15. None of my books are in good enough shape to be signed. I may have to purchase his new one. Oh, drat.

Category: Review Tags: book review, jasper fforde, nursery crime, the fourth bear, thursday next Leave a Comment

Jul

Beach Books

Dana

I’m hitting the beach tomorrow! We’re staying in Florida for a few days next week, and so I’ll have plenty of choice, I decided to bring along the following books (the first of which I have just started reading):

Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver (the sequel to The Bean Trees; I have taught The Bean Trees several times, and I have been meaning to read the sequel for years)
Between, Georgia by Joshilyn Jackson
gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson
The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde (the first of Fforde’s Nursery Crime series)
Thursday Next: First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde (Fforde’s sequel to the Thursday Next series)

I’m not sure what sort of online presence I’ll have while I’m on vacation, but even if I don’t review the books over vacation, I’ll review what I have read when I return.

Category: Literature Tags: barbara kingsolver, beach books, jasper fforde, joshilyn jackson, summer reading, thursday next One Comment

May

Something Rotten

Dana

Jasper Fforde’s novel Something Rotten is the fourth in his Thursday Next series. Famed Literary Detective and Head of Jurisfiction Thursday Next misses the real world and decides to leave fiction to see what she can do about uneradicating her husband, Landen Parke-Laine. Thursday learns in this installment that things are indeed much weirder than we can know.

While I have enjoyed the entire series, I found this book more confusing than the others. The various threads of the story don’t intertwine until the end, and by that time, I had forgotten enough of the details that I was still confused. Of course, I’m a slow reader, and it’s partly because of that fact that I had difficulty putting the ending together. A reader who finishes more quickly than I might fare better. Fforde is a book nerd’s writer. His allusions to literature and history and enjoyable and entertaining. I liked the book enough that I’ll continue to read more Fforde books, but I’m going to take a break from Fforde for a while and read something else.

My next book will be Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them. Of course, I’m still working on Wilkie Collins’s novel The Woman in White on my iPhone. Because Francine Prose autographed my copy of this book, I don’t want to write in it, so I’ll post my reflections as I read here.

Category: Fantasy/Sci-Fi, Literature, Review Tags: book review, francine prose, jasper fforde, reading like a writer, something rotten, thursday next Comments off

Apr

The Well of Lost Plots

Dana

Jasper Fforde’s novel The Well of Lost Plots is the third installment of his Thursday Next series. Thursday winds up in the Well of Lost Plots at the end of Lost in a Good Book after her husband has been eradicated by the ChronoGuard. She is taking a well-earned break inside the pages of the novel Caversham Heights. Thursday becomes a JurisFiction agent and continues her apprenticeship with Miss Havisham of Great Expectations. Thursday soon learns that life inside books is as fraught with danger as life in the Outland, and she must look out for attacks on her memory, the Mispeling Vyrus, and a pagerunning minotaur on the loose.

Thursday’s problems are not resolved at the end of The Well of Lost Plots; in fact, if you’ll pardon the pun, the plot only thickens. I felt the storyline in this book jumped around a bit, but it has some genuinely funny moments. A reviewer on Goodreads described these books as beach books for book nerds, and now that I’m trying to find that review, I can’t; however, the reviewer was correct. Book lovers will enjoy all the inside jokes, but even readers who have not read the works of literature alluded to in this series will enjoy it. It’s wildly hilarious fun, and a good “what-if” alternate history story.

I am picking up the next book in this series, Something Rotten, as my new read.

Category: Fantasy/Sci-Fi, Literature, Review Tags: book review, the well of lost plots, thursday next Comments off

Feb

Lost in a Good Book

Dana

I finished reading the second book in Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series, Lost in a Good Book, in the early part of February, but I haven’t had a chance to review it until now.

In this book, Thursday is dealing with her newfound fame after her adventures in The Eyre Affair. She is newly married to Landen Parke-Laine. Potentially spoilery detail ahead. You were warned.

Landed is eradicated by the “benevolent” folks at Goliath in order to force Thursday to help them retrieve their agent, Jack Schitt, from the pages of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” In order to learn how to jump into books, Thursday is apprenticed to none other than Miss Havisham herself, who is a delightful character in the hands of Fforde.

Generally speaking, I liked this book even better than the first and am enjoying the third, The Well of Lost Plots even more than the previous two. If you are a book nerd, do yourself a favor and check out this series. The allusions and wordplay will make it worth your while alone, but aside from that, the storyline itself is engaging.