Chapter Sixty-One: Thursday Next Series

So my entertainment for the long long month of March has been reading the Thursday Next series, by Welsh author Jasper Fforde.  This is a really fun and wacky series of adventure/police novels set in an alternate version of England starting in 1984 and spanning almost through the present and starring Literary Detective Thursday Next, a spunky and engaging heroine.  These books are really a hoot, and they're also totally absurd and ridiculous.  I think this is what makes them so much fun, but if you don't have a taste for the bizarre, I might not recommend them.  They are full of fun literary references, which a bibliophile like me particularly appreciates, but even if you haven't read most of the books referenced (and I certainly haven't) you can still follow the plot with ease and enjoyment.


Here's a full list of titles in the series:
The Eyre Affair
Lost in a Good Book
The Well of Lost Plots
Something Rotten
First Among Sequels
One of Our Thursdays Is Missing
The Woman Who Died a Lot

*The series is not yet complete, but these are all the books published to date.

Chapter Sixty: My Family and Other Animals

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell is basically a memoir of the five years in the early 20th century that he and his family lived on Corfu.  Narrated by his 10-15-year old self, he recounts his own exploits on the island--mostly involving local flora and fauna--and his mother's and older siblings' adventures and misadventures.  Plot is a little thin--descriptions of the natural life of the island are more frequent than action--but it is a charming, calm, sun-drenched story.  I could almost believe I was reading it in the shade of an olive tree on a quiet summer's day.  In sum, it's not the most exciting book, but it is rather beautiful in its descriptions.

Chapter Fifty-Nine: The Blue Castle

The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery is a very light, very romantic, very fun little story about an old maid who is totally dominated by her large family until she decides to take matters into her own hands and start doing as she pleases.  And then things get fun.  I don't want to spoil it for you--you should read it yourself--it's just such a happy, affirming little story that reminds you that you are in control of your own life, and with a little spunk, you can make your life fun.

Chapter Fifty-Eight: The Borrower

This is a strange, original story by Rebecca Makkai about a young children's librarian who inadvertently finds herself kidnapping a child patron and embarking on a road trip from Missouri to Vermont.  The extreme realism of this story makes it almost believable and also a little depressing, although the narrator's Russian mobster father adds some (dark) humor to the tale that helps lighten it up a bit.  It's less a story about a kidnapping than a story about the narrator's search for home, although you can see how the two ideas are related.  It's not really a happy story, but it is well-told and well-written and a little quirky, and it's an interesting read, for sure.

Chapter Fifty-Seven: Blackout and All Clear

These two books tell an amazing, ultimately heart-warming story about three historians from 2060 Oxford who travel back in time to WWII to study it and end up getting stuck there.  (It's nowhere near as corny as it sounds.  I promise.)  As they await rescue from the future--rescue that seems increasingly unlikely to come--they band together to try to survive the war, making enormous sacrifices to help each other and to help the people they meet.  The wartime setting adds extra tension and excitement to the novel, and I couldn't help but love the characters--time travelers and contemporaries alike.  The protagonists try so hard to do what's right, even when they're not sure if their actions are having good or bad effects.  There's also a good element of mystery to this story, and it's not until the second book that the pieces of the puzzle all start to come together, adding to the suspense this novel maintains right until its end.  But perhaps the best part of these novels is how Willis manages to mix in a good dose of humor amid the fears and horrors of the war.  These are great novels and I highly recommend them.

Chapter Fifty-Six: This Book Is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

Have you been looking for a non-fiction book about librarians and their role in our lives as the Internet and other new technology allow easy and instant access to information?  You probably haven't been looking for such a book, but if you're at all interested in librarians, books, the Internet, or free access to information, you should check out this book by Marilyn Johnson.  It weaves an interesting account of dozens of past and current librarians and trends in the worlds of librarianship, especially as the field changes and grows under the influence of the Internet and other new technologies.  I still feel like I'm making this sound far more dry than it is--although maybe it would seem dry to someone less interested in librarianship than I am.  Still, if you give it a chance, you just might enjoy it and learn a few new things.

Chapter Fifty-Five: One for the Books

I started out really loving this book about books by writer and book-reviewer Joe Queenan, although it started to wear a bit thin by its end.  It is a non-fiction book for avid crazy readers (like myself) about Queenan's own insane reading habits.  I cannot recommend that anyone read this book who is not obsessed with reading.  Let's just say that Queenan makes me look almost illiterate.  Anyway, it was really fun for me to read about another reader's experiences, although some of his prejudices about what he will and won't read--and especially his views on children's literature irritated me.  (Children's literature is for children, he says at one point, anathema for me, considering that I spent my last year of college writing a hundred-page thesis trying to explore what the heck children's literature even is.)  (I was almost equally irritated when he said he hated people from Massachusetts and therefore wouldn't read Hawthorne--this was only slightly redeemed when he said he refused to read books about Yankees fans; while I don't share that prejudice, I do have untoward feelings towards Yankees fans in general.)  Anyway, Queenan at times is a bit snooty about certain things: what he will and won't read, how much he reads as compared to the average American, etc.  Still, despite some irritations, as an insatiable reader myself, I largely enjoyed this book, but I'd only recommend it if you are also an avid reader.