Long time, no see, blogosphere!
I've been up to my eyeballs with schoolwork this past month, and I rewarded myself with a few days of breathing easy after my last final before tackling "the blogs" again. I've got a few things to catch up on, so let's recap, shall we?
Besides re-reading HP7 (which needs no review) for the movie premiere this past month, I picked a book off my shelf that I snagged at the Green Valley Book Fair a couple years back. (If you are in the BV/Lexington area and haven't driven to Staunton for this too-amazing-for-words book fair, you're missing out.)
Thursday Next is a sequel to The Eyre Affair, a novel I read in my undergraduate genre studies course and absolutely loved. The sequel, unfortunately, is nowhere near as good, but I'm not too heartbroken about it because the book only cost me $2 (see book fair note above).
I'm not sure how to begin as far as description goes. It's not a futuristic setting--it's more like an alternate reality setting. Present day, complete with time travel and a protagonist working for a special operations team ("SpecOps") that has the ability to jump in and out of the literary world. Thursday, the heroine, is tasked with rescuing famous literary characters from grammasites, low read-rates, and the occasional evil plot from the outside world. (One of the crises in Thursday Next is the government's idea to make Pride and Prejudice a reader's-choice reality book in order to use up the national stupidity surplus. I'm grinning at your confusion right now.)
I have to give major props to Jasper Fforde for the way he writes his world. He describes everything with ease, making you feel like you understand how "the rules" work without coming across as forced or exaggerated or overdescribed. That, for me, is what makes or breaks a sci-fi novel, and Fforde is a genius at getting it just right.
Despite the disappointing sequel, this series comes highly recommended from me. It's well-written, incredibly fun, and full of well-tossed bones to English majors in the form of unexplained allusions to classic literature.
Up next for December: my take on The Hunger Games and Percy Jackson and the Olympians!
I've been up to my eyeballs with schoolwork this past month, and I rewarded myself with a few days of breathing easy after my last final before tackling "the blogs" again. I've got a few things to catch up on, so let's recap, shall we?
Besides re-reading HP7 (which needs no review) for the movie premiere this past month, I picked a book off my shelf that I snagged at the Green Valley Book Fair a couple years back. (If you are in the BV/Lexington area and haven't driven to Staunton for this too-amazing-for-words book fair, you're missing out.)
Thursday Next is a sequel to The Eyre Affair, a novel I read in my undergraduate genre studies course and absolutely loved. The sequel, unfortunately, is nowhere near as good, but I'm not too heartbroken about it because the book only cost me $2 (see book fair note above).
I'm not sure how to begin as far as description goes. It's not a futuristic setting--it's more like an alternate reality setting. Present day, complete with time travel and a protagonist working for a special operations team ("SpecOps") that has the ability to jump in and out of the literary world. Thursday, the heroine, is tasked with rescuing famous literary characters from grammasites, low read-rates, and the occasional evil plot from the outside world. (One of the crises in Thursday Next is the government's idea to make Pride and Prejudice a reader's-choice reality book in order to use up the national stupidity surplus. I'm grinning at your confusion right now.)
I have to give major props to Jasper Fforde for the way he writes his world. He describes everything with ease, making you feel like you understand how "the rules" work without coming across as forced or exaggerated or overdescribed. That, for me, is what makes or breaks a sci-fi novel, and Fforde is a genius at getting it just right.
Despite the disappointing sequel, this series comes highly recommended from me. It's well-written, incredibly fun, and full of well-tossed bones to English majors in the form of unexplained allusions to classic literature.
Up next for December: my take on The Hunger Games and Percy Jackson and the Olympians!
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