I'm not sure how I got into the habit of listening to the Thursday Next series instead of reading it, but there ya go. First Among Sequels is the 5th in this series by Jasper Fforde. I read the first one, The Eyre Affair, about a year and a half ago while recovering from surgery (tip: don't try to read while on Vicodin) and have listened to all the others on my commute. I tend to try not to bog myself down in series, since there's so much else I want to read, so if I like the first in the series, I'll tend to listen to the others. There's no real system, though...Fans of the other books in the Thursday Next series won't be disappointed with this most recent installment. Thursday is back, this time 14 years after the previous book ended. As always, the literary references are delightful, and Fforde's wordplay never fails to crack me up. The best in this one is "Ann Worthless Schitt." (This brings up one of the downsides of listening to the books - I have no idea how that is actually spelled.) We are re-introduced to Friday (and Friday and Friday) as a slacker teenager, and we meet Tuesday and Jenny. We hear about Sherlock Holmes, and we meet Tempe Brennan (from the Kathy Reichs books). Oh, and how could I forget, Thursday 1-4 and Thursday 5!
The one thing that was very aggravating, and it probably wouldn't have bothered me as much in print, was a particular technique Fforde used a couple of times involving time manipulation. If you read it (or have read it) you likely no what I'm talking about.
Overall, I recommend the book to any fans (and recommend the series to the uninitiated), but I highly recommend reading it in book form and finding other titles to listen to, if that's your thing.
2 comments:
very nice blog you have going here. as a used book store addict, most of the ones i read about here are new to me. or maybe we just have different tastes in books? no, more than likely i just don't keep up.
-whatever.
mostly i enjoy learning something new and your blog has certainly fed that addiction.
house of leavessounds particularly interesting. i hope to find it tomorrow. thanks!
I suspect it's a little of both. I'm a really eclectic reader in that I don't stick to one genre and read whatever sounds interesting to me. However, most of it is stuff that is pretty current that I hear talked about.
Of the ones I'm reading, I think you would really like House of Leaves. It reads like a documentary with lots of quirky footnotes. It reminds me of the Blair Witch Project, except in print. I'm not far enough into it for it to have gotten too creepy, but I keep hearing that it's a psychological mindf *ck.
I also think you would probably like the Terry Pratchett books (epitome of British humor).
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