Welcome to Kazam...where unimaginable horrors share the day with moments of confusing perplexity and utter randomness

You'd think Jasper Fforde and dragons would have been a no brainer for me, but I had stayed away from this series, despite the fact that this is a Fforde series and I luuuuuuuuurve him, because it's a kids series. It says for grades 5-7. So while I KNOOOW children's lit can be amazing, it's not something that I was thinking would be my thing and thus I ignored it. Then more and more people starting talking about how great it is and it was on sale and hey, I do love Fforde so I decided to give it a try.

5-7 graders are more advanced than I had assumed. Or actually, I think what's more likely true is that a lot of the other books I read would also probably be fine for 5-7 graders. Because if you hadn't told me this was a kids book then other than the fact that the protagonist is a teenager I don't think I would have noticed. And I guess I still can't really tell what makes this a kids book vs. not.

As with all Fforde books, the plot is sort of hard to explain. The main character is Jennifer Strange, who works at an employment agency for magical people, and lives in the nation of Kazam. They seem to mostly do house renovations, fixing the plumbing and whatnot, but since they can do it with magic no need to tear through walls. She's sort of an indentured servant to the place, which is the normal situation for orphans and, at least for Strange, doesn't appear to be all that unpleasant. She it's pretty much running the place, especially since the manager Mr. Zambini has gone missing. And there's a prophecy the last dragonslayer will kill the last dragon, which will lead to a massive war as opposing armies vie for control of the dragon land. The usual imminent peril that plagues Fforde protagonists.

Two people tried to kill me, I was threatened with jail, had fifty-eight offers of marriage, and was outlawed by King Snodd IV. All that and more besides, and in less than a week.

All of Fforde's books feel the same. I mean, they all have the same style, and all deal with plots that are nigh impossible to describe, with morally upstanding and intelligent leads, evil corporations/governments with seemingly unlimited resources to use against our plucky and intelligent hero. While I guess this could get repetitive, it doesn't. Thursday Next, Nursery Crimes, even Shades of Grey and now this are all sort of the same but in such entertainingly different ways that I love it every time. Now I can add The Last Dragonslayer to the list.

Gif rating:

Title quote from page 16, location 182

Fforde, Jasper. The Last Dragonslayer. HMH Books, 2012. Kindle

I'm too valuable to assassinate

It's getting embarrassing how far behind in reviews I am. I'm going to really try to work on that and maybe get to stuff sooner than 3 months after the fact. So with that, let's talk about The Woman Who Died A Lot by Jasper Fforde!

This is the seventh Thursday Next book. The series is split into 2 series though it's not all that clear (to me) the difference between the two except for the fact that I sort of like the first series better. BUT I STILL LIKE SERIES TWO. And I liked this book. Because Thursday Next is the best character.

The books aren't going to make all the much sense to you if you haven't read the others in the series. It's a strange and wonderful world set in an alternate timeline with extinct-animal cloning, visits to Book World, mind worms, evil corporations, and bad ass librarians. There are a lot of references to the past books and you're going to be lost if you haven't gone through them. Which I highly recommend you do because see above re: Thursday Next and best character.

This time around Thursday is recovering from injuries sustained during her adventures in One of Our Thursdays is Missing. Thursday is getting older and listen, it's harder to bounce back from these things when you're in your 50s versus your 20s. SpecOps is being reinstated, but instead of going back to the Literary Detectives, Thursday is being given the "safer" job of head librarian.

Trouble always seems to follow Thursday around, and this time it's major budget cuts for the library, Goliath trying to come back after their previous troubles now that the National Stupidity Index is dangerously low, Jack Schitt looking for revenge, Aorins's mind worm causing problems for the whole Next family, and the Global Standard Deity has scheduled a smiting for Swindon that is going to do a LOT of damage unless Tuesday (Thursday's math genius daughter) can figure out how to get the anti-smite shield to work. The usual for a Thursday novel, really.

One of Fforde's skills is his ability to juggle so many different plots without things getting muddled AND coming up with resolutions to all of the plots that actually make sense. Well, make sense within the Thursday Next world.

I'm not really sure what to say about the book and only some of that is because it's been so long since I finished it. It wasn't my favorite Thursday Next book, but as I said in the beginning of this post, I like part one of this series better than part two overall, so this isn't too surprising. I love that Fforde has not only continued with Thursday but let her age. She still kicks ass but things are definitely different than when the series began, as they should be. And, of course, I love Fforde's sense of humor.

"It's kind of like the old me taking over, and I promised myself that this was how I would act if I ever saw you.""I have the same thing, but with Tom Stoppard," I said."You'd kill Tom Stoppard?""Not at all. I promised myself many years ago that I would throw myself at his feet and scream 'I'm not worthy!' if I ever met him, so now if we're ever at the same party or something, I have to be at pains to avoid him. It would be undignified, you see - for him and for me."

I'm going to read Thursday novels till Fforde decides he's done reading them. And then I will mourn, even if these later novels aren't quite as much fun as the earlier ones (The Well of Lost Plots 4eva!). And yeah, you should probably give them a try as well.

Gif rating:

Title quote from page 29

Fforde, Jasper. The Woman Who Died A Lot. Penguin, 2012.

Happiness is learning there are more books coming

You guys. You guys! YOU GUYS!*

Jasper Fforde has another series.

 I know! I'm excited too!

The new series is called The Last Dragonslayer. Those of you in the UK may be like "Alley, really? This is old news" because apparently the first book has been out there since 2010. But I just heard about it now because I'm not good at keeping up with things. Or being observant in general. Fforde Tweeted something about finishing a draft of another Thursday Next book (more OMG!!1!) so I checked out his website and what do you know. New (to me) series.

That is all. Please carry on with your day.

*I use "guys" as a gender neutral term, though I know many of you are ladies.

[That's] the RealWorld for you. A brutal and beautiful place, run for the most part on passion, fads, incentives and mathematics

I wasn't planning on reading another Fforde book immediately after The Big Over Easy but I couldn't help myself. Fforde Tweeted a couple weeks ago that the lastest Thursday book One of Our Thursdays is Missing was out in paperback. Well, I can't turn that down. So I went to the local bookstore and they had a copy and I can't have an unread Fforde book sitting around. Another Fforde it was.

The Thursday Next series is my favorite book series and this is the latest addition. Thursday is missing! No one in the BookWorld or the RealWorld knows where she is but there are some tense times between Women's Fiction and Racy Novel and Thursday is needed for the peace talks. She has a lot of enemies so who knows where she's gone. There is hope though: the written Thursday! She's like the real Thursday except not quite as smart. Or as quick. Or as good with a gun. She wasn't her hippie, granola-loving self she was in Thursday Next: First Among Sequels which was good, but I still missed Thursday.

Like the other Thursday books, or really any Fforde books, they're hard to describe to someone who isn't already familiar with the world. In the map of BookWorld, the Thursday books fall into the "speculative fanatasy" neighborhood, which borders on Dickens and Tolkein rip-offs, according to the BookWorld map. They're absurd and punny, with science and crime fiction making their way in. There is a lot of literary humor and I'm sure I missed a lot of it. But considering I loved The Eyre Affair and read it several times before ever reading Jane Eyre, knowing all of the literary references is not necessary.

I want to compliment Fforde on his ability to take a character, written Thursday Next, who is virtually identical to real Thursday Next and make her different enough so you can tell you're not dealing with the original. Unfortunately, I missed the original. Written Thursday is almost Thursday, but not quite. And I wanted her to be the real Thursday. Of course if I had the real Thursday then the book would have been "One of our Thursdays is missing! What? No? She's actually just right over there. Nevermind then!"

Overall not the best in the series (The Well of Lost Plots is still my favorite), but it was still nice to go back to BookWorld.

Title quote from page 180

Fforde, Jasper. One of Our Thursdays is Missing. Penguin, 2011.

Humpty Dumpty. The fall guy.

January was reading slump-y for me and in an effort to get back into reading I decided to go with a well-loved book I've read a number of times before. And what better read than Jasper Fforde's The Big Over Easy?

In a spin-off of the Thursday Next series, we have Nursery Crimes. It's a police division, lead by Jack Spratt (can eat no fat, has a problem with giants) that deals with crimes concerning nursery rhyme characters. Even though this is clearly the most awesome crime division, NCD is chronically underfunded and understaffed. One of the main problems is Jack is having getting his cases written about in one of the real-crime magazines, made famous by the various Sherlock Holmes adventures. Justice is all well and good, but the most important thing is to make sure you have an interesting story, preferably with lots of seemingly insignificant clues that turn out to solve the case. And since Jack was unable to win his latest case, Mr. Wolff vs the Three Pigs, NCD is in more trouble than normal. Here's an example

Since the death by scalding of Mr. Wolff following his ill-fated climb down Little Pig C's chimney, we at the Nursery Crime Division have been following inquiries that this was not an act of self-defense, but a violent and premeditated murder by three individuals who, far from being the innocent victims of wolf-porcine crime, actually sought confrontation and then acted quite beyond what might be described as reasonable self-defense. 10

As with any Fforde book, it's tough to describe the books and make them sound like anything other than a mash up of genres. Which is what the book is, if the whole Nursery Crime title didn't clue you in. And while that could end up a big confusing mess in lesser hands, Fforde knows exactly how to handle things so you stick with the story, no matter how ridiculous it gets. It's hilarious and witty and a murder mystery.  How can a page turner like that not break someone of their reading slump?

I know this review is mostly gushing but I also kind of don't care about that. I'm not sure how many times I've read this but I love it each time. The Thursday books might be my favorite series, but this is a spin-off of that series. It's Frasier to Thursday's Cheers. 

Title quote from page 33

Fforde, Jasper. The Big Over Easy. Penguin Books, 2005.

Apart We Are Together

I've just recently finished up Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey. Fforde is one of my favorite writers, but he's a difficult author to describe to those unfamiliar with him. His books can fall into so many categories and so many genres, it's hard to say who would enjoy him. I've told people his work is "absurdist literary humor". A fellow Fforde enthusiast, The Book Stop, recently reviewed the latest book from the Thursday Next series and begins her post trying to describe Fforde's writing. Because she said it better than I did, I want to quote her directly:

No one writes like Jasper Fforde. He's been compared to Douglas Adams but even that's kind of a stretch. His books are kind of the adult version of The Phantom Tollbooth, with adventure and time travel thrown in. Bottom line: if your tastes range from fantasy to science fiction to classic literature humor, these are the books for you.

 She was directly referring to the Thursday Next series, but this fits for his other books as well.

Like the Thursday Next and Nursery Crime series, Shades of Grey takes place in its own world but is the first of his works that is a dystopian novel. The new world is called Chromatacia and social hierarchy is completely determined by how much and what color you can see. The world is dominated by "the Rules", which dictate every part of life, from the micro ("2.3.09.23.061: Slouching is not permitted under any circumstances" [location 5249]) to the macro ("3.9.34.59.667: In order to maintain the quality of breeding stock and to maintain public decency, complementary colors are absolutely forbidden to marry." [location 522]) and a series of "Leapbacks" means inventions as simple as the light bulb are not available, even though people can't see anything after twilight. It's not entirely clear when this is taking place. It's sometime far in the future of our own world, but information about "the Previous" is withheld, so it's never clear exactly when this is or what happened to destroy our current civilization and create this new selectively hued humanity.

This took me longer to get into than the other Fforde books simply because becoming familiar with this completely new world is difficult when you have to search for clues as to what's going on. Believe me, I prefer this to a narration dump, but it does mean it's a little harder to find your narrative footing. Once I have an idea of the world and our main character Eddie Russett makes it to East Carmine, the story really takes off. It has what you expect from a dystopian novel: oppressive government, an unbending society that does not deviate from the rules, and people trying to subvert the stasis to make the world a good, fair place. As much as the word of Munsell wants to simplify the world into a series of black and white rules, the world is full of shades of grey (see what Fforde did there? pretty clever) for people who want to acknowledge them.

Despite the dystopian setting, this is by Fforde and is in no way as dark as a 1984, Brave New World or The Handmaid's Tale. It is a smart, funny, absurd story that deals with heavy topics in a light way. Here are a couple quotes to demonstrate Fforde's sense of humor that is imbibed throughout the book

"Constance had refused me a tango on the grounds that it was a 'gateway dance' to something bolder, such as a lambada" (location 2376)

"She laughed. The sound was lovely - yet quite out of character. It would be like hearing a fish sneeze." (location 3957)

"First, time spent on reconnaissance is never wasted. Second, almost anything can be improved with the addition of bacon. And finally, there is no problem on earth that can't be ameliorated by a hot bath and a cup of tea." (location 4261)

I'm excited to see that this is the first in another Fforde series. I can't say I enjoyed it as much as Thursday Next, but still, I can't wait to read the next books in the series when they come out. It deals with heavier themes and thus doesn't have the same lightness and easiness that comes with TN or NC. It's sadder and darker and wonderful.

Title quote is repeated throughout the book as the motto for the Colourtocracy.

Fforde, Jasper. Shades of Grey 1: The Road to High Saffron. Viking Adult, 2009. Kindle edition

Authors who deserve more recognition

It's Tuesday, which means the group over at The Broke and the Bookish have a new top ten list for us: what are the top ten authors that deserve more recognition.

I went back and forth about whether or not to take part in this. I know I won't come close to listing out 10 authors. And the authors I'll list are ones I've talked about and talked about almost ad nauseum. I don't want to include authors if I'm not familiar with a few of their books. A single book isn't enough for me to recommend an author. A book yes, but the author, no.

On the other hand, I do love these authors and want more people to check them out. And I figure I'll be hopping around to see what other authors are out there people want to spread the word on, so I may as well take part. If you are a regular reader, you already know who I'll say so feel free to skip over this.

Jasper Fforde - I have a post about his book Shades of Grey planned for tomorrow, so you'll see some fawning then. Fforde writes absurd, literary humor that doesn't easily fall into any genre without sticking a toe into several other pools. He has 3 series: Thursday Next, Nursery Crime and Shades of Grey. Thursday Next is about a Literatec agent who spends time policing literature in both the real world and the book world. My favorite series which has my favorite book (The Well of Lost Plots) and stars my favorite character (Thursday Next). Nursery Crime is a spin off of TN, and is a hardboiled detective working in a Nursery Rhyme world. And then there's the latest series Shades of Grey, which I'll go into in tomorrow's post.

Christopher Moore - He seems to have a fairly substantial following so he might be on the fence as to an author that needs more recognition but I figure I'll include him anyway since I've yet to read a book of his and not enjoy it. Another author with an absurd sense of humor though without the literary aspect of Fforde. Don't think that means the stories aren't smart, it just means there are less allusions to classic literature and scenes with jerking off.

Octavia E. Butler - I've only read one series of hers, Xenogenesis/Lilith's Brood,  but it was 3 books so I'm counting it for these purposes. She was an African-American female (obviously) science fiction author. A minority within a minority and she turned out some fantastic, literary science fiction. Writing literary science fiction pretty much adds another level to that minority status.  She should not be over-looked.

Alright so that's really all I've got. There are other books I've enjoyed, but I can't recommend an author based on a single book. Then there are the other authors I love, but I'm pretty sure Stephen King and even Bill Bryson don't need that much extra push from me.

So what are some authors you think need to get more recognition?

If you're curious to see some posts I've written about the above authors, check out the links below!
Jasper Fforde
The Eyre Affair
They keep an eye on...overtly thespian interpretations.
We try to make art perfect because we never manage it in real life.
You're Upsetting The Wo'rms! They're Starting to hy-phe-nate!

Christopher Moore
Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story
It was as if vampirism carried with it a crampless case of rattlesnake PMS

Coyote Blue

For a guy that maintains a low profile, you've built quite a little snowball of resentment
You can't just go around breaking people's legs like some Mafioso fairy godmother

Fool

We're all Fate's bastards

You Suck: A Love Story

You shouldn't kill a guy without asking. It's inconsiderate.

Octavia E. Butler

Lilith's Brood trilogy

A cancer growing in someone's body will go on growing in spite of denial.
Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status
Helpless lust and unreasoning anxiety were just part of growing up

Do you give up on books?

Remember how I said I was having trouble getting through Bate's Soul of the Age so my solution was to read an age, read a different book, come back for another age, repeat until I finished? And I even said in my last post about the book how things were looking up and getting more interesting? At least I'm consistent in my failing to keep up with promises to myself, because I've already failed. This is why I stay away from challenges.

I finished up the Lover age, read Christopher Moore's You Suck, and then I was all prepared to pick up Soul of the Age again. (This is going to seem like I'm just rambling, but I promise you, it does come back to books.)  Since I now work from home and live in the suburbs without a car, I spend a lot of my time hanging around the apartment and Saturday was so beautiful, I decided I needed to get out. Boyfriend had to work and they didn't have anyone to take pictures of the game, so I volunteered my services to be the photographer for the women's lacrosse game. I do this sometimes if they don't have someone else, and they let me because I work for free and have my own equipment. It's actually probably good they don't rely on me, since when we got to the university I realized the memory card was in my other camera. I could have gone back and gotten it, but they were fine without pictures, and I'm lazy. Instead I hung around campus for awhile and just watched the game. And by watched the game I mean I randomly looked up from my book to see why there was cheering.

This is the point I wanted to get to: I brought You Suck and my Kindle with me. Had I actually remembered my memory card, I would have had a lot less reading time, and therefore wouldn't have finished You Suck and wouldn't have needed another book. But that's not how things went, and I finished You Suck and needed something else. So I bought an ecopy and started reading Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde, which I've wanted for awhile but was originally waiting for it to come out in paperback. Thank you Kindle, for allowing me to purchase things I'm too impatient to wait for.

I do plan on making it back to Soul of the Age but it seems like it's going to take longer and longer to complete that one. So I have a couple questions:
Do you ever stop a book in the middle? What makes you stop?
Do you have any books you stuck with and in the end you were happy you kept with it?
Do you have a book you finished despite your better judgement and regretted it?

Book Blogger Hop II

I enjoyed last week's hop so I figured I would give it a go this week as well.

This Friday's Book Blogger Hop question is who are some of your favorite authors and why?  I have 3 favorite authors, at the moment anyway.

Bill Bryson: A friend of mine (the same one that recommended Kitchen Confidential and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell) lent me Bryson's book Made in America: A Brief History of the English Language in the United States and I have been hooked since.  I'm pretty sure he could write about paint drying and it would be funny.  He mostly writes travel books but he has a few language books, a memoir and even a science book.  I constantly re-read his work.  It's my go to book when I'm in the mood to laugh.

Jasper Fforde: Another author I was introduced to do via a lent book.  It's my favorite way to learn about new works.  Anyway, his works are generally a mix of satire, dark humor, fantasy, lots of literary allusions and overall hilarious.  One of the first books I re-read for this blog is The Eyre Affair the first book in the Thursday Next series, which I'm pretty sure I've read at least 5 times.  I anxiously await his latest work Shades of Grey to come out in paperback.

Christopher Moore: This is a relatively new favorite author, for me anyway.  A co-worker had been bugging me to read Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal for months before I finally got around to it and I don't know what I was waiting for.  I loved that book.  I've since read 6 of his other works and have had to hold myself back from buying more each time I go to the bookstore.  I'm taking a little break to read someone else's work, at least for a little while.  I wrote a couple entries about his book Coyote Blue for this blog.

One other thing I love about these authors is they all reference Shakespeare and I love Shakespeare.  Bryson wrote a biography on him, Shakespeare: The World as Stage.  Fforde references Shakespeare in at least some small way in all of his books I've read so far and Hamlet is even a character in Something Rotten (see, there's one of those references).  And Moore retells the story of King Lear from the point of view of the Fool in his book Fool.  Fool is a close second to Lamb as my favorite Moore book.

If you are looking for a book, I recommend anything by the author's above.  I'm yet to be let down.

Next Up: The Eyre Affair

I decided it was a genius idea the other day to read The Eyre Affair as my next book, mostly cos that I meant I wouldn't have to buy a book and I didn't sit around staring at my bookshelves for 20 minutes this morning before work trying to decide what to read. Not that I dislike buying books. I very much like buying books. I just dislike parting with money.

I've read The Eyre Affair at least 4 times before, as well as the rest of the Thursday Next series. And yet I've never read Jane Eyre. I probably should. Maybe I will at some point, but I always find something else I'd rather read. It's the same with Austen. I read Sense and Sensibility because my Brit Lit class made me but that's it. I've read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies twice, so I have the gist of P&P. But with zombies so obviously superior. I did buy a real copy of P&P but I've yet to start it. And I have a feeling if I do start it I'll think "I could be reading this same story, but with zombies and ninjas" at which point I'll switch to P&P&Z. I'll probably post about that book at some point. I think it's made it into the circle of books I read multiple times. Actually, I guess even if I never read it again it's already in that circle. So there you go.

I'm not really good at coming up with a nice, smooth ending to these posts, but seeing how no one is actually reading them I guess I'm just annoying myself with the abruptness. And I annoy myself often enough that I'm mostly used to it.

Excuses for not writing more

Don't worry, I haven't given up on this blog. Not yet anyway. I have been reading Brave New World and marking all these pages with torn Post-It pieces so I know what I want to write about but I haven't had the chance to actually sit down and write any of this down. You might be saying (or would if anyone was reading this) "But you're typing now, so clearly you have time." Well smarty-pants, I'm at work right now so while I can be on the computer giving you this brief update, I can't really have the book out in front of me while I reference it for all those nuggest of gold I generally write. And because I am on a computer roughly 8 hours a day, getting on one when I get home isn't number 1 on my want list. But I will post an update soon. Maybe even later today.

I'm also looking for the next book to read/write about since I'm almost done with BNW. The last couple months financially kicked my ass a bit, so I may be re-reading a few more books before I cave and buy something new. And I know the library is an option but I'm a bit OCD when it comes to my books and would rather just own them instead of borrowing them. I'm thinking The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, even though I've read it 100 times. I love it and not enough people read him.

Another note! I'll probably have a single post about Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore. I'm in a book club with some friends, though it's much more of a drink wine and talk club. Anyway, I recommended that book so that will be the topic of the next book club. I've already read it but it became one of my fav books instantly. I'll probably have a whole separate set of posts about it sometime down the road when I re-read it, but a quick post will probably come up after book club.