Thursday Next

I’m not a big fiction reader. A novel has about ten pages to catch my interest. If it doesn’t; there’s the recycling bin. I need fast pace and extraordinary characters, extraordinary events, or both. Jasper Fforde is an author who is on the bubble. I think his Thursday Next series is smart, funny and well written. I recommend it to people all the time. It’s English major sci-fi with characters named Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday Next, Brick Schitt-Hawse and Braxton Hicks. Thursday has the ability to jump into books and interact with the characters. You’ll never see Ms. Havisham from Wuthering Heights the same again. What’s not to like? I think the only reason there hasn’t been a Thursday Next movie is because there are way too many allusions and puns that most of the American movie watchers won’t get, and while I get most of the allusions and puns I don’t have time for character development, Fforde needs to pick up the pace. If you don’t have a problem struggling through what I think is a plodding first hundred pages, I recommend The Eyre Affair.