|
Loading... Lost in a Good Book (2002)by Jasper Fforde
 shanaqui | Apr 9, 2013 |  It seems fitting that this series does better in print than in audio. I read the first book [b:The Eyre Affair|27003|The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next #1)|Jasper Fforde|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1309201183s/27003.jpg|3436605] as an audio CD and it made no sense at all. I was so confused. However, reliable friends assured me they were in fact good books, so after many years (and some desperation for a book to read) I decided to give it another go. It's fairly light reading, best read in quick succession and not left alone for long periods of time, because it is a unique storyland. But it's entertaining and not very mentally taxing, so a good summer read. And it promotes classic literature. Though how Miss Havisham in this book is actually the same character in [b:Great Expectations|2623|Great Expectations|Charles Dickens|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327920219s/2623.jpg|2612809], I'm not sure. The Cheshire Cat is fun, though. I liked it enough to pick up the next book in the series immediately, so that says something. (  ) LDVoorberg | Apr 7, 2013 | I liked this book so much more than the first in the series and I am happy I decided to continue on and read book #2. Fforde is a funny guy and the story was witty and a bit saucy. This book was a great escapist read. (  ) BookishJoJo | Apr 6, 2013 | I've read the first three of the Thursday Next series now, and I happen to think that this one, Lost in a Good Book, is the best so far. Thursday Next finds herself in impossible scrapes both in the real world and the book world, scrapes that are completely plausible once Fforde gets done crafting them. This was the crazy, off the wall, weird, completely original book I was looking for in the first book of the series, and this is the one that has cemented my determination to finish every one of the Thursday Next novels. If you're looking for something mind-blowingly imaginative and insanely creative, Lost in a Good Book is for you. You'll need to read book 1, The Eyre Affair, to get everything that's going on in this one, but it's definitely worth the effort. Go on, try it. You'll like it. (  ) Stephario | Apr 4, 2013 | I think I enjoyed this one even more than the first (though I'd definitely recommend reading them in order!). The learning curve for this series is a bit steep and I spent a lot of the first book absorbing all the strange and different ways Thursday's world works. That having been accomplished, the second book is just rollicking good fun (I don't think I've every used "rollicking" in a review before). At times it's simply unhinged, but if you're a literary nerd of any sort, you'll most likely enjoy it greatly. The dedication is also unique and made me smile. It reads: This Book is dedicated to assistants everywhere. YOU make it happen for them. THEY couldn't do it without you. YOUR contribution is everything. Thursday's Gran: I am cursed to eternal life! Thursday: Perhaps it just seems like it, Gran. Gran: Insolent pup. I didn't attain one hundred eight years on physical fortitude or a statistical quirk alone. [Later] Gran: Love is a wonderful thing, my dear, but it leaves you wide open for blackmail. (134-135) My father said that it was a delightfully odd - and dangerously self-destructive - quirk of humans that we were far more interested in pointless trivia than in genuine news stories. (141) [The Cheshire Cat] was staring at me with a curious mixture of insanity and benevolence... (177) [To Thursday] "I'll try harder questions in the future," announced [Miss] Havisham, "for you are obviously not adept at the easy ones." (190) ( ) JennyArch | Apr 3, 2013 |
 In Lost in a Good Book and The Well of Lost Plots, Fforde gets a bit bogged down in all the details of the fictional universe.  There is a certain self-delighted quality to all this cleverness that would probably become annoying if Fforde weren't so resolutely unclever about his own writing. By and large, the story bounds along in one-sentence paragraphs that J. K. Rowling would be proud of. Is contained inWas inspired by
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0142004030, Paperback)The second installment in Jasper Fforde’s New York Times bestselling series follows literary detective Thursday Next on another adventure in her alternate reality of literature-obsessed England (retrieved from Amazon Thu, 03 Jan 2013 14:55:34 -0500) The inventive, exuberant, and totally original literary fun that began with The Eyre Affair continues with Jasper Fforde's magnificent second adventure starring the resourceful, fearless literary sleuth Thursday Next. When Landen, the love of her life, is eradicated by the corrupt multinational Goliath Corporation, Thursday must moonlight as a Prose Resource Operative of Jurisfiction-the police force inside books. She is apprenticed to the man-hating Miss Havisham from Dicken's Great Expectations, who grudgingly shows Thursday the ropes. And she gains just enough skill to get herself in a real mess entering the pages of Poe's The Raven. What she really wants is to get Landen back. But this latest mission is not without further complications. Along with jumping into the works of Kafka and Austen, and even Beatrix Potter's The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, Thursday finds herself the target of a series of potentially lethal coincidences, the authenticator of a newly discovered play by the Bard himself, and the only one who can prevent an unidentifiable pink sludge from engulfing all life on Earth. Her adventures as a renowned Special Operative in literary detection have left Thursday Next yearning for a rest. But when the love of her life is eradicated by the corrupt multinational Goliath Corporation, Thursday must bite the bullet and moonlight as a Prose Resource Operative in the secret world of Jurisfiction, the police force inside books. There she is apprenticed to Miss Havisham, the famous man-hater from Dickens's Great Expectations, who teaches her to book-jump like a pro. If she retrieves a supposedly vanquished enemy from the pages of Poe's "The Raven," she thinks Goliath might return her lost love, Landen. But her latest mission is endlessly complicated. Not only are there side trips into the works of Kafka and Austen, and even Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Flopsy Bunnies, Thursday finds herself the target of a series of potentially lethal coincidences, the authenticator of a newly discovered play by the Bard himself, and the only one who can prevent an unidentifiable pink sludge from engulfing all life on Earth.… (more) |
 Google Books — Loading...
Popular coversRatingAverage: (4.1)
 Audible.comTwo editions of this book were published by Audible.com.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wikipedia in English (1)
5
The plot is more interesting in this book, I think. There's stopping the end of the world, there's rescuing Thursday's husband from being eradicated, there's the Jurisfiction stuff. There's another one dimensional evil-for-the-sake-of-evil character, but she's not got as big a part in this book as Acheron Hades did in the first. Besides, her power is amusing.
The back of the book says "Douglas Adams would be proud". I kind of agree -- some elements of the book remind me of his stuff, anyway. Maybe not as good, though. Still an enjoyable read. (