First Among Sequels (Thursday Next, #5)

by Jasper Fforde

if you wanted a happy ending to anything in Hardy, you’d be well advised to read it backward.

‘You can lose yourself in a book, but you find yourself in Poetry.’

The book may be the delivery medium, but what we’re actually peddling here is story. Humans like stories. Humans need stories. Stories are good. Stories work. Story clarifies and captures the

essence of the human spirit. Story, in all its forms—of life, of love, of knowledge—has traced the upward surge of mankind. And story, you mark my words, will be with the last human to draw breath, and we should be there, too, supporting that one last person.

Whereas story is processed in the mind in a straightforward manner, poetry bypasses rational thought and goes straight to the limbic system and lights it up like a brushfire. It’s the crack cocaine of the literary world.