Last week, I went to the local library, which is really quite a fine library for a small community. While there, I discovered the latest novel in Fforde's Thursday Next series. So I decided that before I read the fifth and most recent novel in the series, I'd reread the first four. So now, I'm on The Well of Lost Plots. And I'm trying to put my finger on what it is that makes this series so entertaining. First, I like that one gets the feeling that Fforde really loves literature but doesn't take it or himself too seriously. There's something wonderful and fun and funny about his play with language and his use of parody. For example, in the fourth in the series, Something Rotten, Hamlet appears as a character who's been transported from Shakespeare's play to Thursday's England, this crazy, alternate England where everyone is all into literature. Anyway, Hamlet is having this identity crisis, which seems somehow apt. And he goes out and rents all these videos with different film adaptations of Hamlet. He can't decide if he wants to be more like Sir Laurence Olivier's Hamlet or Mel Gibson's. And it goes on and on--he analyzes the merits of each, asks others for their opinions. And there's something really funny and absurd but also nearly true, somehow, in all this. And it's indicative of what Fforde does throughout the series. It's all really wonderful. I also recommend Fforde's Nursery Crimes series. It's good light reading. It's funny and clever and not predictable. Fforde is all-round entertainment for English majors.
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