Thursday Next

A set of books I recommend to anyone who will listen is the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde.  Don't even ask me what genre to put these in, there is a little of everything.  If you have ever daydreamed of walking into your favorite book to live, visit, or possibly change the ending then this is your kind of lit.

Thursday Next is actually the main character who works for a policing agency, Jurisfiction, that controls the Book World.  Until I came across the first book, The Eyre Affair, I hadn't considered that the Book World was in much danger or needed policing.  I was definitely wrong.  Thursday's job is protecting books from tampering and revision by outside forces.  You can guess what book is at stake in the first volume. 

Sometimes what I really want out of a book is fantasy, a world that I know doesn't exist and can't possibly be on tomorrow's front page.  That is not to say that Thursday's world does not have the same problems we have, but they do play out very differently with twists in plot that I do not expect to encounter here. 

I found the Thursday Next series a lot like popcorn--you want to devour them by the handfuls.  It is fun to come across favorite characters from other books and see a whole new side to them.  I loved Great Expectations from the moment I read it in seventh grade.  In Book World there is a Miss Havisham that Charles Dickens never dreamt of. 

Fforde lives in Wales and has published several other books that all seem to cross the genre lines.  He also lets his own personal quirks shine through, I love that in an author.  For instance, none of his books have a chapter thirteen.  You may find it in the index, but check out the page, no chapter thirteen. 

The current books in the series are: The Eyre Affair; Lost in a Good Book; The Well of Lost Plots; Something Rotten; First Among Sequels; and One of Our Thursdays Is Missing: A Novel.

Take time to check out a Thursday Next novel, you won't regret it.