Hey kids! It’s Wednesday, and that means it’s time for another Book Report from Uncle Akatzen.
Okay. I’m not really your uncle. I get that. Sorry. I won’t ever say that again.

So imagine, if you will, a world where books are more popular than television. Stop laughing, I’m serious. What would such a world look like? How would what is possible and impossible be different? Could we bring back, through genetic cloning, the dodo bird? Instead of going to midnight showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, people might go to, say, midnight productions of Richard III.
Jasper Fforde (no, the two ‘f’s are not a typing error) envisioned such a world with his Thursday Next detective novels, beginning with The Eyre Affair, published in 2001. In this world, Thursday isn’t just a day of the week, it is also the name of the main character.

Thursday is a Literatec (literature detective), assigned to point out forgeries of Milton, debunk claims that Shakespeare’s lost play Cardenio has been found, and generally make sure that people are able to enjoy their books.
Her life takes an abrupt turn towards adventure when someone steals the original manuscript of Charles Dickens’ The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, and then a minor character disappears from its pages!
The resulting romp is what the New York Times reviewed as “A combination of fantasy, comedy, science fiction, Douglas Adams, Kurt Vonnegut, Lewis Carroll, Monty Python and even ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer”.

One thing I especially like about the book is that it works as a highbrow and lowbrow comedy at the same time. Literature fanatics will love the references and cameos that sneak in and out of these pages, and casual readers will enjoy the quirky, James Bond-like, alternative England of 1985. They may even be inspired to pick up one of the books referred to in the series to give it a read.
Satirical, yet also reverent towards its source material, The Eyre Affair is a book designed to deepen the pleasures of reading. It is also sponsored by Toast!

After reading The Eyre Affair, be sure to check out the other Thursday Next novels: Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, and First Among Sequels.
Any readers curious about Fforde’s other work will want to check out his Nursery Crime stories, beginning with Big Over Easy, a Dirk Gently-like detective novel about finding out who killed Humpty Dumpty.
Fforde also just released a new novel, Shades of Grey, about a society that where people can only see one color, and the caste system determined by which color you can see.

Well, that’s it for me this week. Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_