Thursday Next

I was at a friend's house last weekend and needed a book to read, so I borrowed her copy of Lost in a Good Book, which is the sequel to The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde.... Only to discover that I'd already read two-thirds of the thing. I mean, I knew I'd started it, but I had no idea I'd read that much of it, and I can't figure out why I would have put it down when I was so close to finishing it. Especially since this time around, I started it Saturday morning and finished it Monday on the way to school.

This series (of which there are at least two more that I have yet to read) is about an alternate universe in which the Crimean War lasted about 120 years longer than it did here, in which World War II didn't end in 1945 and Britain was occupied by Germany, in which neanderthals, dodos, and mammoths have all been resurrected, and in which it is possible to hop into the pages of a book. In fact, books in general have a far greater importance in this world than they do here, to the point where England needs a Special Ops force (SpecOps-27) to police faked Shakespeare plays and the like, and people name themselves after literary characters and authors.

It's all that, and then it's a bit chicklit. It's also the sort of book that you spend looking for literary allusions, puns in people's names (the main character is Thursday Next, her husband is Landen Parke-Laine, his parents are Billden and Houson), and characters you recognize from literature. Miss Havisham makes rather a loud appearance. In all, it's really rather fabulous.