What’s on my bookshelf? 7-10-12

Unfortunately, posting hasn’t been a priority for about a month now. I decided to start the second half of the year of my posts with a fun bookshelf post about my enjoyment of Jasper Fforde.

I love what’s known as British humor, with dry wit and puns and all of that. (I’m a fan of Piers Anthony’s Xanth novels for those puns, as well.) I love it when I’m reading a book and something in there takes a second to jump out at me, and then I chuckle, giggle, or laugh, depending on the material. They’re not always truly jokes, but they’re amusing nonetheless. That’s what Fforde’s books do for me.

Now, I haven’t read all of Fforde‘s books, but I’m looking forward to them based on the few I have read.

I started with The Eyre Affair, one of the  Thursday Next novels, given to me by my aunt for my birthday. It’s hard to describe the novel, so here is the description off of Goodreads:

“Welcome to a surreal version of Great Britain, circa 1985, where time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem, militant Baconians heckle performances of Hamlet, and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection, until someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature. When Jane Eyre is plucked from the pages of Brontë’s novel, Thursday must track down the villain and enter the novel herself to avert a heinous act of literary homicide.”

Yes, people can go into books and affect the story. That intrigued me from the first, and the strangeness of these books only makes the story that much better.

Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots and Something Rotten are the next four in the Thursday Next series that I have read. I have yet to read #5, #6 and #7in that series – First Among Sequels, One of Our Thursdays is Missing, and The Woman Who Died A Lot – but they are on my wishlist. I have to get them read before Fforde comes out with #8 in the series, rumored to be titled Dark Reading Matter. 

I own book #1 in his Nursery Crime series, The Big Over Easy. I haven’t read it yet, but – again – it’s on my list. I had not heard of his Shades of Grey series until I looked him up on Goodreads, nor had I heard of his Last Dragonslayer series. I’m looking forward to looking at them more closely, though.

Sometimes you just need a book that helps you to take life a little less seriously, but still makes your brain work. Hopefully you get that from these books, as I do.

About Brittany Westerberg

I'm a lover of writing and books. I graduated from South Dakota State with a master's degree in communications in 2011, the same year I was first published. I'm a wife and mom, and I work in content and digital marketing in South Dakota.