Lost in a Good Book

I am fast becoming a fan of Jasper Fforde's. The world that he imagines is just as crazy, vibrant and downright addictive. This time, the action is centered around Great Expectations, with some bonus scenes from Kafka's The Trial and Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. Miss Havisham from Great Expectations seems like she would become a recurring character in future books, while the Red Queen and the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland also make appearances.

The humour in this book was on-point for me, the characters were full of life and jumped out of the pages (ironic considering this book is all about jumping into books). Reading more Jasper Fforde novels are fast becoming a priority in life.

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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I didn't post about The Eyre Affair a couple of months ago when I listened to it, because I just didn't know what to say about it. I was hoping that a second book would help. I'm not sure it did.

Let's just start with the Publisher's Summary (because there's just no way I could do justice to this book):

The second installment in Jasper Fforde's New York Times bestselling series follows literary detective Thursday Next on another adventure in her alternate reality of literature-obsessed England—from the author of Early Riser.

The inventive, exuberant, and totally original literary fun that began with The Eyre Affair continues with New York Times bestselling author Jasper Fforde's magnificent second adventure starring the resourceful, fearless literary sleuth Thursday Next. When Landen, the love of her life, is eradicated by the corrupt multinational Goliath Corporation, Thursday must moonlight as a Prose Resource Operative of Jurisfiction—the police force inside the BookWorld. She is apprenticed to the man-hating Miss Havisham from Dickens's Great Expectations, who grudgingly shows Thursday the ropes. And she gains just enough skill to get herself in a real mess entering the pages of Poe's “The Raven.” What she really wants is to get Landen back. But this latest mission is not without further complications.Along with jumping into the works of Kafka and Austen, and even Beatrix Potter's The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, Thursday finds herself the target of a series of potentially lethal coincidences, the authenticator of a newly discovered play by the Bard himself, and the only one who can prevent an unidentifiable pink sludge from engulfing all life on Earth. It's another genre-bending blend of crime fiction, fantasy, and top-drawer literary entertainment for fans of Douglas Adams and P. G. Wodehouse.

There's simply too much going on. This is Douglas Adams (mostly the Dirk Gentley novels) meets Terry Pratchett meets Doctor Who meets . . . something else, but it's not just those elements – it's those influences without restraint (not that any of those are known for their restraint). It's just too zany ,too strange, too unmoored from reality.

There's cloning to bring back extinct species, time travel, vampires, werewolves, interacting with fictional characters, rabid literary fans, characters walking into novels/other written materials to rewrite them, travel, or just to meet with someone else – and that's just scratching the surface.

I realize that this is tantamount to complaining that there's too much of a good thing, and I recently talked about what a foolish complaint that is. But this is different, somehow. The sheer amount of ways that reality can be rewritten/rebooted/changed in this series is hard to contemplate, and seems like too easy for a writer to use to get out of whatever corner they paint themselves into. One of the best emotional moments of this book – is ruined, simply ruined by time travel unmaking it just a few minutes later.

Emily Gray's narration is probably the saving grace of this audiobook – I'm not sure I'd have rated this as high as I did without it. Her ability to sound sane when delivering this ridiculous text (I mean that as a compliment) makes it all seem plausible.

I enjoyed it – but almost in spite of itself. I can't see me coming back for more. I do see why these books have a following – sort of. But I've got to bail.

The second outing of Thursday Next is also quite fun and entertaining in a very crazy way. There are so many new things that we get to know about her world which are fantastical and make for a fascinating read. The plot here is thin and even though Thursday saves the world from Armageddon, it doesn't feel that way. Its so difficult to keep track of all the wonders of this world but below are a few tidbits which will keep the reader wanting more.

Thursday attends a court hearing inside Kafka's The Trial where the case is about her changing the ending of Jane Eyre. This is handled by Jurisfiction, the group of characters from various books who handle crimes happening inside books.
Miss Havisham from Great Expectations becomes Thursday's mentor to teach her bookjumping and train her to be a part of Jurisfiction. She also loves driving cars in a very death-defying way.
If a character, plot line or book are Boojummed, they disappear from all copies of the book.
Pagerunners are characters who jump to other books and change their plots because they are bored with their monotonous character life.
Prose Resource Operatives from Jurisfiction may die if they go investigating in an adventure book.
Grammasites are parasites that feed on grammar. Example is an adjectivore that eats all the adjectives describing a noun until there is no way to describe it.
An extreme neocon party leader believes that his 3 MP party can win the next election by making a newly discovered long lost Shakespeare play license free. He almost succeeds until he and the play go missing before the election.

Even more entertaining than the first book, probably because I already have some background of the world and how it works.

Further develops the idea of characters entering and leaving books, including introducing an organization responsible for the training of characters and humans who have this knack. (I am in love with Miss Havisham.)

The humor is going strong and there's a little bit of goofy, self-awareness.

“Anything is possible right now. We're in the middle of an isolated high-coincidental localized entropic field decreasement”
“We're in a what?”
“We're in a pseudo-scientific technobabble.”

There are a lot of plot lines, all converging on Thursday at once. It makes for an exciting pace, although at times I wondered if it wasn't a bit much.

I found the first book in the series underwhelming, but I thought I'd give the second one a chance, figuring that this one wouldn't get bogged down in world-building like the first did. Too much of the first third of this book seems to be taken up with rehashing the events of the previous book, and it feels like Fforde's stabs at humor haven't really improved. I could bore you with describing every strained attempt at wackiness or over-explained joke, but having recently re-read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I have to say Fforde just has no bite. Considering that the Thursday Next books are aimed at book nerds, the whole idea of taking shots at giant corporations, bureaucracy, celebrity culture and fashion just feel like lazy pandering. Sorry, Jas, this is where you and I part ways.

Another great read, I even think I may have enjoyed this one a bit more then the first and I LOVED that one!! Looking forward to books three through five of this series!!

I read the first book of this series almost eight years ago, and every once in a while I thought about reading the following books, and reading something about Fforde (probably on Goodreads) pushed me to get this from the library. I remember very little from the first book aside from the general world in which the story takes place, but that didn't really influence my enjoyment of this one.

I was having a pretty good time until, about two-thirds through, the narrator describes Marianne Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility as “dressed in a Victorian dress, bonnet and shawl.” That a book like this could possibly mistake Jane Austen as Victorian is kind of the worst insult for a reader like me. Interpreting Jane Austen as Victorian means you don't understand Jane Austen or the Victorian era. At first I thought it was purposeful, that the Jane Austen of the book's world is not the same as Jane Austen in this world, but nothing in the text pointed to that. This series puts forward a world where books (at least books by British writers) are revered and protected, but then they make an elementary mistake about one of the greatest English writers of all time? I took away a whole star and a half for that.

Otherwise, the story is not bad and the world is a really interesting place with a handful of really clever things happening. It even reminded me of Douglas Adams, but less clever, less funny, and less absurd. Strangely, the end of the book – and I remember that this happened to me with the first book too – seemed pretty lame and too conventional for the rest of the book. Maybe it's because it's a series or maybe I just don't like the way most books end in general or whatever, but in any case I'm not terribly interested in picking up the next one. Maybe in another eight years.

I started this series sometime late last year and can't believe I waited so long to pick it back up. I really enjoyed the first one, but this was an amazing ride!!!

In the first book we meet Thursday Next who is SpecOps in charge of protecting the literary world. Enter the villian who is stealing and changing books. It's up to Thursday and her partner Bowden to hunt down and right the literary world. She ends up inside the story of Jane Eyre, saves the day and changes the ending for the better.(There is so much more to it than this brief note).

NOW in this, the 2nd book, she finds herself in the limelight due to her escapades in Jane Eyre. During her many PR appointments and TV appearances it seems someone wishes her harm, her father informs her the end of the world is coming and her home life is put in jeopardy. (Again, so much more to it than this note).

This is one extremely wild and awesome book. Filled with sci-fi, time travel, jumping into books and interacting with characters such as Mrs. Havisham of Great Expectations and the Cheshire Cat. A world where fictionary characters can jump into the real world and wreak havoc while real persons can change and wreak havoc on the books themselves. I am definitely not waiting to finish this series out.

Lost in a Good Book is Fforde's next fast-paced escapade in the story of literary detective Thursday Next. Like the first book, The Eyre Affair, the book mingles adventure with references and characters from well-known classic literature. Luckily you don't have to have read all the classic literature referenced, you'll still understand the story. And, of course, his high and low brow puns.

In Lost in a Good Book world Fforde fleshes out the world presented in The Eyre Affair. He enhances it with literary figures who dip in and out of reality. They deliver the lines given to them by their respective authors, then off they go and live their lives. In this case Thursday ends up as the apprentice to Miss Havisham, from Great Expectations. This is so she can enter “The Raven” and rescue her husband. How Fforde came up with this and his other ideas is remarkable. He has a vivid imagination and a fluid and smooth writing style. It feels old fashioned but modern too.

I enjoyed this novel more than his first. He enhances and expands the imagery and world building . The Eyre Affair has a plot driven by external events, such as the Crimean War. Lost in a Good Book is much more insular. The plot takes place either within books or via the actions of the characters from the books. However, apart from Thursday and Miss Havisham most of these other characters are underdeveloped and lack depth. They are there as plot devices. They do interesting things rather than being interesting themselves. Fforde compensates for this with a highly articulate and engaging style.

Also, at times the various sub-plots don't always mesh together particularly well. Various story strands are at first confusing and need re-reading to grasp how they have been resolved or how they fit into the story. This jerks the reader out of the novel.

But these are minor criticisms and if you liked the first book then you'll love Lost in a Good Book too. Fforde shows he's excellent at composing off-the-wall imaginative stories which span many genres. Get lost in a good book by reading Lost in a Good Book!

Is it strange that I want a Dodo of my own? Jasper Fforde continues one of the most unique, bizarre and enjoyable worlds in his second Thursday Next book which offers lots of laughs, a plethora of literary references for the book geek and a story that had me turning pages as fast as I could.
I won't say too much on the plot other than to mention that the second book in the series lives up to the first in all the ways that made me love it in the first place and opens up tons of new possibilities for future volumes. This volume leaves more up in the air at the end than The Eyre Affair did, but that just makes me more anxious to move on to book 3 The Well of Lost Plots. A worthy addition to the series and a gateway for much more exciting literary adventures to come.

Audio: A unique detective, alt-history, portal fantasy and *completely* satisfying sequel in the **Thursday Next** series with some unexpected twists this time around. Fforde is a top-tier creator of worlds that have shimmers of familiarity yet are completely absurd and fever dream, while writing interesting characters and interspersing humorous historical [and in this case literary] references and jokes that go over my head 80% of the time.