Thursday Next Series

I finished reading Jasper Fforde’s First Among Sequels last night.  This is the fifth book in his Thursday Next series, which starts with The Eyre Affair.  I first discovered the series listening to an audiobook of The Well of Lost Plots, got hooked, and went back and read the earlier books.  This is a very unusual series, and I slightly prefer listening to someone else read it than reading it myself, but either is good.  Thursday Next is a secret agent in fiction area of the BookWorld (a place Jasper Fforde has made up where all the books ever written or conceived are stored, in all their editions, and where things like grammatasites or word storms cause problems in the books and have to be dealt with).  In addition to the usual literary references, humor, play, and suspenseful plot, First Among Sequels deals with issues such as reduced reading rates, shortened attention spans, instant gratification, identity, and financial or power motivations instead of value motivations, etc.  It’s both a hoot and a thought-provoking, troubling view of society/culture.