Ffinished Another Fforde

After retrieving the Eiffel Tower cross-stitch, creating and assembling the mug and choosing the next project to complete, I sat down to stitch and, gasp, didn't want to. Seriously, I pulled the cat out of the bag, looked at it and stuck it back in. I didn't want to cross-stitch. I looked at the pile of magazines to my left. I have been plowing through them at a rate of roughly 2 a week. The pile has gone down significantly over the first 6 months of the year. It won't be gone, by any means, by the end of the year but it won't seem like an oppressively huge pile either. Once it's gone, I'll just be getting Cooking Light, one Scottish magazine and Best Friends magazine. Much, much more manageable than before. In a way, I miss Discover because I learned a lot, but I simply can't read that much in a month and they become an impediment to my mental order. Part of putting the house in order is feeling like you have control over what comes into it.

But what to do now? I need something to wind down at night, after playing WOW or doing the other things that are in my life. I went to the stack and, viola, the answer was right on top.

The next book in the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde. I have enjoyed this series immensely. If you love books, I really think you'll like this series. Fforde is British so be prepared for British humor, but it's a honkin' good read. In fact, I stayed up too late in the week it took me to read this, in an effort to get just one more chapter done.

The premise is that Miss Next has jumped into a book to rest. This book has a terrible plot line and is one of the millions of books down in the bottom of the library which will never be published. Miss Next just has to, on occasion, take the place in the story, of Mary, who is getting a vacation of her own from the tedium in the book. As you can imagine, things don't go swimmingly for Miss Next and a whole variety of events happen to her and as a result of her interactions with fictional characters. Toss in a plot to make libraries and second-hand bookstores a thing of the past and all controlled by one entity and it's fast-paced and very enjoyable reading, keeping you wondering what's going to happen in the subsequent chapter.


There are 7 books in this series. I have read the first 3. I can't justify buying the next one (harde har har), Something Rotten, with the budget as tight as it is. I have a wide variety of other books to read. I can, however, strongly recommend this series. Start with The Eyre Affair and then read Lost in a Good Book. After that comes this one.

Now that I've read this book, I'm back to cross-stitching, although I can feel the tug of a Terry Pratchett. Good books grab you and make you want to read more.

Beverage:  Water

Deb