false 27002 20 <B>Literary sleuth Thursday Next is out to save literature in the fifth installment of Jasper Fforde’s wildly popular series</B> <BR><BR> Beloved for his prodigious imagination, his satirical gifts, his literate humor, and sheer silliness, Jasper Fforde has delighted book lovers since Thursday Next first appeared in <I>The Eyre Affair</I>, a genre send-up hailed as an instant classic. Since the no-nonsense literary detective from Swindon made her debut, literature has never been quite the same. Neither have nursery rhymes, for that matter. With two successful books of the Nursery Crime series under his belt, Fforde takes up once again the brilliant adventures of his signature creation in the highly anticipated fifth installment of the Thursday Next series. And it’s better than ever. <BR><BR> It’s been fourteen years since Thursday pegged out at the 1988 SuperHoop, and Friday is now a difficult sixteen year old. However, Thursday’s got bigger problems. Sherlock Holmes is killed at the Rheinback Falls and his series is stopped in its tracks. And before this can be corrected, Miss Havisham dies suddenly in a car accident, bringing her series to a close as well. When Thursday receives a death threat clearly intended for her written self, she realizes what’s going on—there is a serial killer on the loose in the Bookworld. And that’s not all—The Goliath Corporation is trying to deregulate book travel. Naturally, Thursday must travel to the outer limits of acceptable narrative possibilities to triumph against increasing odds. <BR><BR> Packed with word play, bizarre and entertaining subplots, and old-fashioned suspense, Thursday’s return is sure to be celebrated by Jasper’s fanatical fans and the critics who have loved him since the beginning. 948585 book 24 7 2007 First Among Sequels (Thursday Next, #5) total:3503|5:944|4:1483|3:895|2:157|1:24| 3503 13675 5283 565 4 5 false false Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Jul 23 07:24:43 -0700 2007 Mon Jul 23 07:52:36 -0700 2007
Familiar ground is less familiar than I might have expected. It's 14 years later, SpecOps has been disbanded, and Thursday is working at a carpet company while England's love of reading (so prom...more...]]> 1 5 false false Tue Aug 05 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Aug 05 07:40:18 -0700 2008 Wed Feb 25 20:35:29 -0800 2009
While I enjoyed the prior four books in this series, this one fell short. Much of the cleverness that ...more...]]> 4 3 false false Thu Jul 24 09:18:29 -0700 2008 Thu Jul 24 09:18:52 -0700 2008 more...]]> 2 5 false false Sun May 25 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon May 12 15:05:59 -0700 2008 Sun May 25 09:50:30 -0700 2008 3 3 false false Fri Feb 22 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Jul 22 16:21:51 -0700 2007 Sun Feb 24 12:54:00 -0800 2008 4 1 false false Thu May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon May 19 09:29:35 -0700 2008 Mon May 19 09:31:12 -0700 2008
I loved the scenes with her family - seeing son Friday as a grunty teenager whose only interest is playing guitar for his garage band, The Gobshites. (His parents are worried because he's slat...more...]]> 4 2 false false Sat May 10 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat May 10 10:21:21 -0700 2008 Sat May 10 11:33:37 -0700 2008 Jasper Fforde reminds me of a Douglas Adams who came from a happier home. (I have no idea what Adams' home life was like, but for the sake of analogy, humour me.) His humour is less biting, but just as madcap, his characters are kinder, and easier to like, but the surreality is, I think, just as...more...]]> 3 1 false false Wed Sep 12 12:28:13 -0700 2007 Wed Sep 12 13:24:23 -0700 2007 more...]]> 2 1 false false Fri Aug 31 14:02:33 -0700 2007 Fri Aug 24 18:08:04 -0700 2007 Fri Aug 31 14:02:07 -0700 2007
I thought The Eyre Affair was pretty ingenious. As the series continued, the books seemed to start to fall into a hole, but as the holder of an English B.A. and M.A., I was sticking with Fforde for his clever puns, literary allusions, S...more...]]> 4 1 false false Tue May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu May 31 07:10:18 -0700 2007 Thu May 31 07:19:35 -0700 2007
I love the series, but I think this is the weakest of them. It's not as compulsively can't-put-it-down readable as the rest of the series, and there are way too many apparently disparate plot threads,...more...]]> 2 1 false false Wed Feb 25 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Sep 01 17:12:41 -0700 2008 Wed Feb 25 17:09:00 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Wed Jul 09 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri May 23 18:30:55 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 08 18:06:10 -0700 2008
She solves mysteries and puts literary...more...]]> 3 0 false false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Fri Jan 30 12:56:23 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 30 12:57:06 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sat Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Dec 11 17:54:40 -0800 2008 Thu Dec 11 19:22:52 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Oct 08 11:22:05 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 08 11:38:33 -0700 2009


Jasper Fforde is a master of wit. The entire Thursday Next series is a wild romp through literature. If you are someone who considers yourself well read, and who loves puns and literary references, these are the books for you.

The stories take place in an alternat...more...]]> 5 1 false false Wed Mar 25 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 26 13:21:32 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 26 13:38:23 -0700 2009
This was a really ...more...]]> 3 1 false false Tue Sep 25 08:38:59 -0700 2007 Wed Oct 31 08:24:55 -0700 2007 more...]]> 2 0 false false Sat Apr 11 22:40:24 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 13 17:15:25 -0700 2009
I finished it, and I didn't finish it, which is typical of the strange paradoxes running through this book which I didn't care enough to invest myself in figuring out. The whole time travel paradox lost me, and I guess I could have sat and tried to wrap my mind...more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Sep 09 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 09 18:24:19 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 09 18:40:15 -0700 2009 The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, and two more -- all exist within the Thursday...more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Jun 24 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Jun 05 06:22:22 -0700 2009 Wed Jun 24 03:10:29 -0700 2009
As always the first chapter opens with a stonking great idea - that the country has an ...more...]]>