Lost in a Good Book: 07/27/06

Today I finished the second of the Thursday Next books, Lost in a Good Book by Japser Fforde. I have to admit that I didn't enjoy The Eyre Affair as much as I had hoped but another BookCrosser had already sent me the sequel and I thought I should read it before passing it along to another member. I went into reading Lost in a Good Book with low expectations. I was pleasantly surprised.

The second book didn't waste as much time with setting up the alternate world of a 1985 with an on-going Crimean war, time travel, vampires and the ability to travel into books. In Lost in a Good Book the world building is set aside and the characters allowed to live their lives. Thursday Next finally develops as a character and by the end I actually liked her.

Here's my BookCrossing Review:

The second book in the series is a big improvement over the first. The plot focuses more on Thursday Next and less on her wacky co-workers and the crazy version of 1985 in which they all live. There are still a few annoyances like the characters' stupid names. I realize it's a literary tradition that includes Dickens but Fforde's choice of names are just ham-fisted.

Besides the stupid names (Jack Schitt, for instance), there is a corny ending that was frankly done much better by Douglas Adams. The big secret end of the world wasn't much of a secret to anyone who had paid attention and knew anything about junk food. Yet the book was enough of an improvement that I was to give the third in the series a try.

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