The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde

I have been meaning to re-read this series since, oh, the first time I read The Eyre Affair almost exactly three years ago. But I really got it into my head to do it over the summer, and by that time I had lent the first book to a good friend who is apparently bad at returning books, and I was all, fret fret fret. But then I realized — audiobooks! So I grabbed this book on audio from the library, and I can now say that it is a rather different experience.

The idea behind The Eyre Affair is actually a complex set of ideas. You have an alternate universe where Britain has been fighting the Crimean War for, you know, 130 years, no big deal, so you've got the pro-war/anti-war/pro-soldier/pro-let's-have-a-nap-instead set of issues. This alternate universe also includes time travel that is constantly re-writing history. Also vampires and werewolves. Also people who really really know you're talking about them. Also reconstituted dodos. Also many other things, and also, primarily for the book's purposes, a Special Ops unit dedicated to solving crimes against books. Which is awesome.

It's a whole big mess of everything, and so when I read it with my eyes, I necessarily imbued a Hitchhiker's/Buffy/Monty Python snark-the-day-away sort of mentality into it. And in fact, the audio book box promises these things. But what struck me within the first chapter of reading with my ears is that the narrator, despite having a fantastic voice for Thursday, does not choose to play the book that way. She is very very earnest and plays very straight off the page, and I felt like I was missing out on a lot of Fforde's wit and sarcasm.

On the plus side, I can now pronounce a lot of things from the book better than I could a week ago. Darn British people and their un-intuitive spellings.

The other thing I found interesting about re-reading this book is that I had forgotten how different the first book is from all the rest, because Fforde had really intended The Eyre Affair as a standalone. The pacing is slower (we don't even get to the Eyre part until practically the end!), there is a LOT of exposition-y stuff, and Thursday is not quite the BAMF she becomes later. And oh my goodness had I forgotten about Daisy. Let me just go jump into this book and punch her in the face.

Right, yes. On the whole I recommend the eyes-reading experience better than the ears-reading, but either way is pretty fantastic.

Recommendation: Do you like books? Mysteries? Sci-fi? Love stories? Dodos? Characters called Braxton Hicks and Jack Schitt? Fun? Go read this series.

Rating: 7.5/10 (lower than last time for the audio sadness)
(A to Z Challenge)

One of Our Thursdays Is Missing, by Jasper Fforde

Jasper! It has been so long! And even longer back to the last Thursday Next! I have missed you so much.

Okay, soooooooooooo. I tried explaining this book to my husband, but it is in fact quite difficult to explain without the help of five previous novels to get across the whole BookWorld concept. But, basically, there is a BookWorld and it is inhabited by all the characters of all the books you ever or never read, and whenever you read a book these characters are like, "Oh, time to pop on stage!" and act out your book. This is why books are slightly different every time you read them, see? It makes perfect sense.

Hanyway, we found out in the afore-linked last novel that the Thursday Next books have been published within the world of Thursday Next, but they're not the same as the ones we here in our world have been reading, and the chick what plays Thursday is not... not really Thursday-ish. She's kind of a hippie rather than a badass. Nonetheless, in this book the written Thursday gets a big taste of real Thursday life when not only does a strange book-crash (I cannot explain that) mystery leads her to, among other things, find out that Real Thursday is totes missing, which is a problem on many levels.

I thought this entry was brilliant, possibly because I've been severely lacking Fforde in my life recently and possibly because this book was much tighter, I think, than others in the series, and more subtle (especially compared to the last). I also loved that it's from the point of view of a written Thursday, and therefore gives us more insight into the BookWorld, which is decidedly less complicated than the real Thursday's world, and also more predictable but predictably amusing. Because the book has a different protagonist and all, I would say it's difficult to read this without having read the others, but I don't think impossible.

Worrisome is the fact that the book wraps a lot of things up quite nicely, which leads me to think that all of the Thursdays might be getting shelved soon, though if it's in favor of new and exciting series I might be okay with this.

Recommendation: If you like literature and you like satire, this satire of literature is for you. But you should probably start back at the beginning for optimum effect.

Rating: 9/10
(A to Z Challenge)

The Angel's Game, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (20 June — 24 June)

Wow. What a book. I have to admit that I'm still not exactly sure what happened in this book, but in this case I think that's a good thing!

Zafón takes us to turn-of-the-century Barcelona to meet David Martín, a writer of crime stories first in the newspaper and then as part of a ridiculously long contract for monthly novels. After his first story is published, Martín receives a note from an Andreas Corelli congratulating him on his talent and expressing a wish to work with him in the future. These sorts of notes keep popping up until one day Martín and Corelli meet under odd circumstances and Martín decides to take Corelli up on his offer. This would be all well and good except it seems that Corelli has more than a few tricks up his sleeve and that Martín's life — his health and his world — may be in a bit of danger.

This novel is a bit fantastical but still reads like something that could happen to someone you know someday. I was never really sure what was going on with Corelli or with Diego Marlasca, another mysterious character in the novel, but I was with Martín 100 percent... until near the end, when all of the novel's truths are thrown up in the air like a deck of cards and I was turning pages furiously to see which cards would land face-up. (How about that metaphor?)

The ending was sort of a let-down; I thought it could have ended earlier, but I may be missing something. I'll have to read this through again in the future.

Rating: 8/10
(Chunkster Challenge, Orbis Terrarum Challenge: Spain)

Bookhunter, by Jason Shiga (20 June)

These graphic novel things are starting to grow on me. I don't think I'm ready for any big-kid books, like Watchmen and the like, but I'm getting there!

So this is a nice, short, simple-drawing book about the library police. No, really. I saw this description of it while plowing through the Unshelved archives (excellent comic, p.s., you should also go plow through the archives), and I was, to say the least, intrigued. Library police? Concentric locked-room mysteries?? Library police??? How can I join?

And, happily, it was a good time. We get what seems to be a cold open with the library police tracking down a guy who is stealing all the copies of one particular book from the Oakland Public Library. Agent Bay and his team bust in and totally get the guy, but then we don't care about him anymore and we move on to the main story. In this, there's a Bible missing and the OPL needs Bay to recover it before it has to be returned to the Library of Congress. Only... it was stolen from a safe that has not been obviously cracked. And the book is only in the safe at night, but there's also no sign that the thief broke into or out of the library. Which means the book must have left during the day, but without triggering the anti-theft alarms at the doors. An exhausting riddle!

Best of all, the book is set in 1973, so Bay solves the mystery with the help of microfilm and a giant card catalog. Can't go wrong with that.

Rating: 8/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2007)

People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks (20 May — 27 May)

People of the Book is the fake story of the Sarajevo Haggadah, an illuminated seder text that baffles historians to this day. Brooks took some of the facts of the haggadah's discovery and created fictional characters and situations to explain how these things came to be.

Our protagonist, Hanna Heath, is a young but excellent book conservator who is tapped to handle the restoration of the book. While examining it, she discovers an insect wing, some wine stains, and a few salt crystals that pique her interest and get her asking questions. Although Hanna doesn't get all the answers, we do — Brooks writes scenarios for all of these that give a sense of the "people of the book" and why it is so important and revered.

I quite enjoyed this book, though it was a bit of a slow go as the narrative jumps back and forth between Hanna in the present and the other characters in their respective times. I found these journeys into the past to be more exciting than the present narrative, in which we discover that Hanna hates her mother and doesn't form lasting relationships and works with far too many young but excellent professionals. In the past, we discover the tyranny of religion, the compassion of individuals, and all of the discrete steps that had to be taken to make the Sarajevo Haggadah the complete book it is today. I can only hope that the haggadah's true story is as excellent as its fake one.

Rating: 8/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury (11 April — 14 April)

This is one of those books that I tried to read years ago but never got around to finishing, and picking it up again definitely reminded me why that happened. There are just too many words in this book! I mean, not really, because it's only 170-ish pages long, but really really, because Bradbury writes sentences in which silent trains run soundlessly along their tracks. So that's what silent means.

That's not to say that the book isn't good... it just takes a disproportionate amount of time to the length of the book to figure out what the heck Bradbury's saying.

So anyway. If you don't know, Fahrenheit 451 is about a world in which firemen are employed to start fires that burn up book collections, because books are bad and rooms made of four wall-sized TVs are good. One fireman, Montag, meets a girl who doesn't pay attention to the propaganda, and her influence helps push him on a path to try to overthrow the system.

I wish I had read this book during an English class, because it needs a lot of discussion. Bradbury makes some interesting points about how people perceive books and how outmoded they are in this day and age (the book is set sometime around now, from what I can tell) which are almost true, 50 years after he wrote them. We may not have flying cars, but we do certainly have apathy toward books.

Rating: 6/10
(My Year of Reading Dangerously Challenge)

First Among Sequels, by Jasper Fforde (5 January &mdash 6 January)

This came in for me yesterday at the library, and even though I was a few pages into another book, I couldn't help but read this instead. Love me some Thursday Next.

The events of this book pick up 14 years after those of the previous one. Thursday is now 52 and settled into her life as a wife and a mother of three. SpecOps has been officially disbanded, but Thursday's job as a carpet layer is really a cover for doing SpecOps work, which is really a cover for continuing her duties in Jurisfiction. In that last, she is stuck with two trainee Jurisfiction agents... Thursday1-4 from the first four books of the series as well as Thursday5 from The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco. Things, as they do, quickly go wonky and Thursday ends up having to save all of Time as well as herself from evildoers. No big deal.

As I said, I love me some Thursday Next, and this is no exception. It's a bit more heavy on the allegory this go-round (the government has a surplus of stupidity they have to use up and are thinking about getting into the stupidity credits game; there's a show called Samaritan Kidney Swap) which I think detracts a bit from the real story, which is Thursday kicking butt and taking names. Nonetheless, I am thoroughly looking forward to the next in the series, which will apparently be called One of Our Thursdays is Missing but is not the next book Fforde is releasing. Sigh. Off to find some Nursery Crime, I suppose...

Rating: 7/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2007, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (2 December — 7 December)

This book was on my "To Read" list two summers ago, but didn't make it onto this year's list, probably because I couldn't remember why it was on my list in the first place — that's the problem with having so many good books out there! But, fortunately (or was it fate...), I saw it again on another blog and was reminded that I wanted to read it because it was a book about books. So brilliant, right?

Very right.

So our protagonist is Daniel Sempere, a boy living in Barcelona just after the Spanish Civil War. His father, a bookseller, takes his almost-11-year-old son to a place called the Cemetary of Forgotten Books, where Daniel is told to select a book that he will adopt to make sure it never disappears and will always stay alive.

Daniel finds a book called The Shadow of the Wind, by Julián Carax, which turns out to be pretty much the best book Daniel's ever read. When he learns that Carax's books have been forgotten not just because of their limited publishing but because a mysterious stranger, going by the name of Shadow's protagonist, has been collecting and burning the novels, Daniel sets off to find out the truth behind the rumors of Carax's life.

I very much liked this book. It is a translation from the original Spanish, so a few of the turns of phrase are a bit awkward, and a couple things don't quite line up, fact-wise, but all in all the book has a solid plot and an excellent story. I have to say also that I had the big twists figured out from the beginning, but I still had an excellent time finding out just why those twists happened. There are so many lives intertwined in this story, and all of them are interesting.

Rating: 8/10

Something Rotten, by Jasper Fforde (25 November — 28 November)

Something Rotten is the last of the first four books of the Thursday Next series... I figure that since Jasper took a few years off, I can take a break now, too. :)

This was definitely a great conclusion for the set... basically, a whole bunch of odd things that happened in the previous books were recalled and sometimes explained here, and, of course, even more odd things happened!

It's a hard book to summarize, though, because so much of what happens here is tied to things that happened in other books — a fictional character comes to power, Thursday's husband is reactualized (or is he?), Thursday's friend's wife is an assassin out to kill Thursday... yeah.

The new things in the story are a plot by the aforementioned fictional leader to convince England to hate Denmark, going so far as to claim that Volvos are both unsafe and Danish; Thursday's acquisition of the Swindon Mallets croquet team which needs to win the SuperHoop to take down the Goliath Corporation; and that Thursday needs to find a new Shakespeare to rewrite Hamlet after its characters wreak havoc on the piece.

Basically, if you've liked the previous books, read this one. But do not under any circumstances read this first.

Rating: 7.5/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2004)

The Well of Lost Plots, by Jasper Fforde (22 November — 25 November)

The Well of Lost Plots is the third book in the wonderful Thursday Next series in which our hero, Thursday, vanquishes foes who seek to upend literature.

The previous book focused on time travelling; this one is mostly about book travelling. Thursday has entered the world of Jurisfiction, those in charge of policing the fiction shelves both published and in progress, and is at the same time taking a respite from the Goliath Corporation who are still out to get her. She and her pregnant tummy are hiding out in an unpublished book called Caversham Heights until Thursday can figure out how to get her husband back — if she can remember him.

Yeah, it's pretty much that confusing. Thursday is also out to solve the mystery of several dead and missing Jurisfiction agents and requite the love of two generic characters. I love it.

It wasn't quite up to the standard of the first two books — a little too much babying of the reader with unnecessary repetition, and also a few too many typos! — but it was definitely intriguing enough (along with those two books) to cause me to move the next book, Something Rotten up to my new current read. Then I'm going to have to take a break from all the alternate universe-ing, I think. :-D

Rating: 7/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2003)

Lost in a Good Book, by Jasper Fforde (8 November)

This is the second in the Thursday Next series of awesomeness, and I must say this one is even better than the first.

After sending away a Goliath Corporation employee to live in a copy of The Raven, the company is understandably upset and asks Thursday to go back and get him out, please. She refuses, and Goliath goes back in time to kill off her new husband before he can become three years old. If Thursday will go get their employee, they'll bring back her husband. She's sold. Unfortunately, her uncle Mycroft has conveniently retired away with his Prose Portal and Thursday has to figure out how to get into the book herself and also figure out why a bunch of weird coincidences keep cropping up at inconvenient moments.

The book was great and mostly easy to understand in spite of all the weird time-travelling and odd coincidences. I really love how everything ties in with books, even when the books in question are ones I haven't read yet (but should! I'll get to it!). Definitely a must-read if you're into befuddling plots and funny talks with Great Expectations characters.

Rating: 8.5/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2002)

The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield (25 October — 29 October)

One last book for the RIP Challenge before it ends! This one was on my original list, but I didn't think it was going to make it here in time for Hallowe'en. Luckily, it did, and I quite enjoyed it, though I thought it was going to be more scary than gothic. Alas.

The Thirteenth Tale is two stories — the main story is that of Vida Winter, a prolific author à la Stephen King or Jodi Picoult, who is dying and wants to tell someone her true life story. The second is that of Margaret Lea, the woman Vida chooses to be her biographer, who is slowly coming to terms with the secret of her twin lost at birth.

The secondary plotline I don't care for much, but Vida Winter's tale is incredibly engaging. Born into an incredibly dysfunctional family, she learns to cope with a lot of insanity and hide a few dozen secrets in the process.

I recommend this book for Vida's story alone; even though I figured out the twist halfway through I still didn't know how they'd pull it off. Well told, Setterfield.

Rating: 7/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2006)

Misery, by Stephen King (4 October — 12 October)

My second book for the RIP Challenge... I'm a little bit behind in getting to four, but I think I can make it yet, as I've just started two challenge-appropriate books.

Misery is about an author called Paul Sheldon who gets into an horrific car crash and wakes up as the ward of a nurse, Annie Wilkes, who just so happens to be Paul's self-proclaimed "number one fan." Unfortunately, her love of Paul — and his series of popular fiction novels about a woman called Misery — coexists with a fragile mind that isn't prepared to let Paul go any time soon. She also has a bit of a mother mentality — when Paul does something bad, like, say, kills off Misery or tries to escape his captor, he's in for a world of hurt, both mentally and physically.

I very much liked this book. At first, I wasn't sure it would really classify as an RIP Challenge book, as there wasn't anything particularly scary or gory about the storyline, just a crazy lady keeping an author hostage. But when it started getting creepy, it was creepy. I was constantly stopping in the middle of a paragraph, looking at my man, and yelling, "This woman is CRAZY!" Let's just say I'm glad I'm not popular enough to be kidnapped any time soon.

Rating: 8/10

The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde (28 August − 1 September)

The premise behind this book is an alternate universe in which weird things happen regularly − time gets out of joint, extinct animals can be cloned, religious fighting is replaced by "Who was the real Shakespeare" fighting. As in this universe, the government has a lot of bureaus to control its constituents, among these SpecOps 27, the literary division.

Our protagonist, Thursday Next, is an operative in this group who gets lured into a big investigation by the fact that she's seen the bad guy involved, Acheron Hades − few others have because he doesn't resolve on film. He is out to make a name for himself by stealing an original manuscript to Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit as well as a machine called a Prose Portal invented by Thursday's uncle, Mycroft. With it he can enter original manuscripts, kill a character or two, and completely change every copy of whatever story he's gotten into.

Thursday works to rescue her uncle, restore a failed relationship, and save Jane Eyre from destruction, all while battling the forces of evil in Hades and government corruption.

I really liked this book. Fforde makes the alternate universe seem very real with little details (an ongoing Crimean War, Jehovah's Witness-like "Baconians") and writes entertaining characters. A couple of times, when time-travel and manuscript-revising were involved, I thought too hard about how things could actually work and lost the story a bit, but otherwise it was great. This is the first in a series of Thursday Next novels, and I will definitely be looking for the second the next time I hit the library.

Rating: 8/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2001)

Dictation, by Cynthia Ozick (7 August − 13 August)

This is a book of four short stories (less than 50 pages each) that weren't really connected in any way, as I thought they were going to be when I picked up the book.

The first is about the amanuenses (typists, basically) of Henry James and Joseph Conrad. James's girl has a plot to hatch, and by golly she's going to seduce every girl she needs to to get it done. No, really.

The second is about a bit actor who gets a leading role but has to change himself to do it, and oh, also he's being sort of stalked by the father of the woman who wrote the play he's in. Hmm.

The third is about an American writer type who goes off to a conference in Italy and gets himself married to the chambermaid four days later. This one I understood the least.

The final story is the one I enjoyed the most; it's about a girl who, through her mother and her mother's crazy universal-language-loving cousin, learns a lot about lies and deception.

My problem with the set was really that the stories were a bit too literary -- they reminded me of trying to decipher Hemingway and I just wasn't in the mood.

Rating: 5/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2008)