Joshua Gross’s Reviews > The Eyre Affair > Status Update

I can only imagine how little of this book I understood back when I first read it 15 years ago

This is a fine example of why Reed gets so annoyed at stories about time travel. Thursday went into the time distribution and told her past self stuff she remembered her past self being told at the beginning of the book...

Just when I thought we were getting back on track they ran into this temporal distortion she has to deal with, I hope this is relevant

I'm enjoying the running bit about who wrote Shakespeares plays, reasoned thoroughly and interestingly over multiple places in the book

Uranus in this book has only 15 moons, which was what was known until 1997, so even him writing in 2000-2001 his information was either old or it's how it is in that alternate reality, which is an alternate England of 1985, so that's confusing...

The alternate history in this is often confusing, I think that there was a German occupation in England in WWII that isn't discussed much

"The White Queen used to believe six inpossible things before breakfast and it didn't seem to do her any harm." Through the Looking Glass reference

A curious development: Joffy just asked her for a cup of tea, is it a mistake or an intentional beverage departure??

Colonel Phelps is also drinking coffee, and becomes upset when given tea.

In this part that has been underlined by multiple people as profound, Jasper Fforde here is suggesting we all make mistakes, people just care about the ones that cost human lives more (and this may be rationalizing on Thursday's part) but if you're in a situation where human lives are at stake you have a greater responsibility to make sure you don't fuck up.