Wow! I just did a quick scan of the reviews for this book and they are all over the place from one to five stars. Some people (like me) love it to death, others really hate it and some just sit in the middle. I guess you have to enjoy Fforde's particular sense of humour.This was a reread for me but the last time I read it was so long ago the book, when I dug it off my shelf, had turned a yellowy brown colour. This in no way damaged my reading experience. I still loved the premise of the book whi...

Buddy read with Jessica, Robin, Catherine, Kristi, Asya and Tanya. I apologize if I missed somebody; in case I did please let me know and I will add you. The book version of mid-eighties England is a fine dystopian society. The literature is a very serious business, time travel is nothing of the ordinary which comes with all the fun and paradoxes and cloning works wonders making people's favorite pets out of these guys:The heroine Thursday Next is a special operative working for literary detecti...

Sadly, I found this book to be a major disappointment. I'm huge fan of British comedy and science fiction--Monty Python, Douglas Adams, Dr. Who, Neil Gaiman--and something of an autodidact lit geek, so this novel which promises the exploits of a special agent who has to travel into the novel Jane Eyre in pursuit of a villain sounds right up my alley. So, what went wrong?Let's start with the world building. While Fforde's alternate universe England is quite inventive, it's also tonally weird. Eng...

Close the prose portal, the worms are about to start hyphenating!Hey! Everyone! This is a pretty awesome literature nerd's playground. :)I kinda expected something like a UF first-person mystery novel with magical elements where characters jump out of the pages of books and make a mess of things, or vice-versa, where we jump in and make a hash of a perfectly good story, but I didn't expect the novel to have a lot of complicated character elements in our main characters, a nicely complicated plot...

Sale Alert: Kindle Daily deal $1.99 27May2021Buddy read with the ever amazing Jessica, Evgeny, Catherine, Kristi,, Asya & Tanya and running commentary with oOSarahOo and Ashley who announced they are stalking our thread (not very good at stalking since we know they are there) over at Buddies Books and Baubles Think about your favorite book…the one you would live in if you could…the one you would never ever get tired of or want leave. Do you have it firmly in your mind??? Now imagine a world w...

I loved this book when I first picked it up and remember giggling the whole way through. (It was passed over to me by the Mum, of all people. We do not, normally, share the same taste in literature.) It has a charming irreverent take on... well... everything from literature to history. It's set in an alternate reality where literature is, if not kind, at least very very significant.

Hardly an author has styled the parallel universe tropes with breaking the wall elements to such perfection as Ffjorde did.The integration of living literature in a parallel universe as a plot device is ingenious and a potentially endless source of innuendos, connotations, and options for more and similar novels. Imagine the same with video games, movies, or all mixed and it could get big quick, depending on the main inspiration and idea of the chosen genres and works. I´ve rarely ever chosen su...

Comment from April 2020I feel bad about this old review. I have now enjoyed a Fforde short story, The Locked Room Mystery, which I gave 4* and reviewed HERE.Review from August 2010I didn't enjoy this. It tries too hard to be clever and to cover many different genres (humour, sci fi, horror, detective, literary and more) whilst also being annoyingly silly. After 100 pages I ditched it - something I rarely do.Thursday Next is a woman who is a literary detective in one of several alternative realit...

This is so much fun. I want to play too! And, as it happens, I have a surprisingly good opening. So, with the usual perfunctory apologies, may I presentThe Meyre Affair: a Thursday Next storyThe hardest part is telling them they're fictional. After that, the rest is usually easy. - Thursday Next, A Life in SpecOpsI could start this story at any number of points, but I will choose the moment when I knocked on Manny Rayner's front door. Nothing happened, so I knocked again. He opened it.The rest o...

Have I become a jaded reader? I sometimes catch myself muttering in the middle of a long series of yawns, “Haven’t I read this plot/character/technique before?” Or when the author describes their setting, I will lazily flip through my mental inventory of backdrops until, sure enough, I find an old one that it is a good enough fit to reuse. Then Fforde comes along and throws the literary equivalent of a bucket of Arctic cold water in my face. I found myself having to actually work to keep up with...

I read this years ago, I think it was back around 2005 or so. I remember liking the book fairly well, even though I'd never read Jane Eyre, and a modest part of the book's plot touches on that story. But I also remember being irritated at the book. Something made me bristle when I read it. Some elements of the storytelling rubbed me the wrong way. I remember talking to the person who recommended the book to me. I held it book up and said, rather disdainfully. "This is probably really popular, is...

I had the same feeling after reading this as I had after reading The Looking Glass Wars. Fabulous idea, terrible execution. I was going to give it one more star than I gave that because it's not quite as badly written. And I liked the idea of door-to-door Baconians and Rocky Horrorized Richard III. But I changed my mind because the more I think about it, the more I didn't like it.It was so smug and cutesy and in need of better editing. And it would have been better served by not being written in...

This is a thoroughly delightful and brilliant book. I chuckled and chortled all the way through this book; it’s hilarious. There are many interesting characters and I am eager to read the rest of this series. I’m not sure that the successive books will also get 5 stars from me: the clever premise might get a tad old; I’ll have to see. This unusual story is a bit difficult to define. It fits multiple genres: sci-fi, mystery, humor, fantasy, and fiction. And the author manages to create an entire

➽ And the moral of this rerereread is: one of the most creatively original worlds ever created + delicious literary references galore + being meringued (don't ask) + most heavenly Brit humor/wit/sarcasm combo + bookworms farting apostrophes and ampersands, and belching out capitalisations (I told you not to ask) + a super extra cool, clever as fish kick ass heroine who's a war veteran and dares to be over 35 (the nerve!) + Shakespearean shenanigans + pet dodos + unnotified SpaceTime Flexations +...

This book may describe my perfect job goal: to be able to enter a book and meet the characters, ensuring they are following the author's original intentions and not "on-the-loose" due to some sort of villain. How amazing would that be? Awesome kick start to this series... I read the first 4 then started to get a little disenchanted, but I'll go back one day! All book lovers need to give this first one a chance -- you'll undoubtedly love and hate parts of it!

3.5★This book did sound so up my alley and I'm a bit worried because it is a very busy book , so maybe it wasn't the right book to start in a very active holiday. I'm hoping my rating is fair.I found it very hard to get into the start -as I said busy. It reminded me of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy in Five Parts but the style was much colder - I just couldn't warm to any of the characters at all. That did make it a struggle for me to keep going with the read.However, Every tim...

This has been sitting on the shelf for a while, and I finally got around to it. I’m glad I did. A wacky alternate reality tale for literature buffs, The Eyre Affair introduces LiteraTec detective Thursday Next, who must prevent a madman from kidnapping Jane Eyre out of her novel and destroying Charlotte Bronte’s work. Dodos for pets, vampire hunters, hot air balloon transports, time travel, Baconian extremists . . . This book is a wild, eccentric ride. If you liked The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the

(Violence alert: The body count is high, plus some grossness factor.)It’s a spy thriller. No, wait — it’s science fiction. No, wait — it’s literary criticism. No, wait — it’s art history. No, wait — it’s historical-political commentary. No, wait — it’s romantic comedy. No, wait — it’s an epic war drama. No, wait — it’s — oh, look — Japanese tourists!While I applaud the spirit of many of the directions this novel takes, you kind of have to wonder if the author could have focused just a tad bit mo...

Really enjoyed the inventiveness of Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair. The premise of the story is that original manuscripts can be stolen and then changed, not just that manuscript, but all copies of say, Jane Eyre. Thus, these original manuscripts are viewed as absolute treasures. There are also literary portals which intersect with the 'real world' which make it possible to change what happens in our favorite novel. And there's also time travel. And an alternate history which skews how we view

I've been storing up some venom for this review, so be prepared.First of all, I want to unleash my fury on whoever in the Rory Gilmore Book Club suggested this book as February's pick. To go from such a brilliant read as Jane Eyre to this was frustrating to say the least. It highlighted all the amateurish contrivances of Fforde's writing. I rolled my eyes so many times in the first four chapters, that I nearly gave myself a headache. And no, I'm sure it doesn't get better after that, that's jus...