One of Our Thursdays is Missing

I can't remember exactly when I first came across Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, but I do remember that I read it out of order, reading Lost in a Good Book before I came across The Eyre Affair.  I immediately fell in love with the series, and have read every one of the books almost upon their release since I got started on it.

I didn't do a good job keeping up with things over the last few months, though, and only knew of the release of One of Our Thursdays is Missing when a friend (one whom I introduced to the series) pointed it out to me in the library.  We borrowed it and 3 of us made our way through it before the due date.

The first two books in the series are still my favorite (and I really liked his first in what seems to be another series, Shades of Grey), but this one is a good read too.  There are some really funny sections, and I really liked the character Sprockett.  I thought the little commentary on the RealWorld at the end of the book was nicely done too.

Overall, it's hard to beat a good Jasper Fforde read... at least, in my book.


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Sports and Books

A couple of days ago, baseball's non-waiver trade deadline passed us by. Like many other baseball fans, I was busily watching to see what my favorite team would do on the trade front.

Having only recently finished reading Jasper Fforde's Something Rotten, the 4th book in the Thursday Next series, the big business of professional sports was on my mind. With my own interest in (OK, obsession with) the baseball news, it was all the funnier to me to read the jibes made at the whole professional sports industry in the novel. Fforde's book is not exactly about professional sports, but the whole sports scene plays a part in the novel. For me, it provided a laugh at some of the practices that can get pretty irritating to a sports fan, especially how it seems there is a real disparity in sports based on money and geography.

Fforde's series is one of my favorites, as readers of my various blogs would already know. This is one of the reasons I love the series. It is funny -- and I mean laugh out loud hilarious -- but it also says something. I don't in any way mean that they get preachy or all proclaim-a-message; just that they deal with real issues in a thoughtful way. I love books that can entertain, and yet have a little substance to them too.

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Remember this guy?

Remember when I reposted an entry from my old blog about Jasper Fforde? Well, I've started rereading some of the Thursday Next books. I'm posting more of my thoughts on my newer reading blog, but found it worth mentioning that I've started rereading that series again. It really is a good one.

If I had to choose a book that I might predict to be used as an example of what a "postmodern" book looks like, this series might just top that list.

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