Okay, so I confess to being a bit of an on-line survey junkie - sometimes, I even get paid for answering pointless questions (about 10p an hour, but it's a start). To take part, I have to tick a list of my interests. The official line is, it helps them match me up to the right sort of surveys. The real line is, it helps them know what sort of junk mail to send my way.

I ticked practically every interests box on the form (all those extra 10p's!) and 'no thanks' to everything else. Despite that, I've since received a steady stream of 'carefully selected' junk mail - everything from Argos beds to Z-list celebs.

This one is the first I've had from a bookseller, though. In fact, it's the first book-related marketing I've been sent of any kind. As God is my witness, I have never had any dealings with this company. I never buy or enquire about books on line - I go to high street stores and pay with cash, usually. In other words, there is no OFFICIAL way this company could have known I was a closet Ffordophile.
If you don't believe me, I'll even post up my MSN link:

*********************************************************

Mystery - - Whimsical Mysteries by JASPER FFORDE .... Buckingham Books, ABAAş
From: sales@buckinghambooks.com (sales@list.buckinghambooks.com)
You may not know this sender.Mark as safe|Mark as unsafe

Sent: 30 October 2008 14:26:57
Reply-to: sales@list.buckinghambooks.com
To: Mystery@list.buckinghambooks.com

Hello.
Listed below are books written by JASPER FFORDE. Fforde has created several different series, all of them whimsical. The first three books are from his Thursday Next series. The heroine of this series, Thursday Next, "lives in a world where time and reality are endlessly mutable--someone has ensured that the Crimean War never ended for example--a world policed by men like her disgraced father, whose name has been edited out of existence. She herself polices text--against men like the Moriarty-like Acheron Styx, whose current scam is to hold the minor characters of Dickens' novels to ransom, entering the manuscript and abducting them for execution and extinction one by one."
In this series, "Fforde is endlessly inventive: his heroine's utter unconcern about the strangeness of the world she inhabits keeps the reader perpetually double-taking as minor certainties of history, literature and cuisine go soggy in the corner of our eye. The audacity of the premise and its working out provides sudden leaps of understanding, many of them accompanied by wild fits of the giggles."
The fourth book, The Fourth Bear, is from his Nursery Rhyme series. "This isn't quite the Fforde mixture as before. The skill in this outrageously entertaining (and rigorously plotted) concoction lies in a double conjuring trick: we are always amazed to find ourselves reading so assiduously about ludicrous figures when common sense dictates only children should find such conceits entertaining. Not so! No child could appreciate the dazzling wordplay and witty imagination on offer in this series, and most readers will be more than happy to encounter detective Inspector Jack Spratt (and his contrary sidekick kick Mary Mary) again and again."
Perhaps you'll want to add these books to your collection.The 5 books listed below are priced at $375. We do have additional copies of some of Fforde's books so, if you're only interested in particular titles, they are priced as marked. Contact us at at sales@buckinghambooks.com or call us anytime at (717) 597-5657. Also, don't forget to visit us at our website - www.buckinghambooks.com
We look forward to hearing from you.

Nancy Anderson
Buckingham Books, ABAA
8058 Stone Bridge Road
Greencastle, PA 17225
(717) 597-5657
Email: sales@buckinghambooks.com Website: www.buckinghambooks.com

*** If you would prefer NOT to receive listings and information from our collections, simply reply to this message with "DELETE" in body of the e-mail. ***
1. FFORDE, JASPER. THE EYRE AFFAIR. [London]: Hodder & Stoughton, [2001]. First edition. Signed. Author's first novel. Fine in fine dust jacket. The year is 1985, Wales is a Soviet Republic, Dodos are available in home-cloning kits, the Crimean War is 131 years old, and time travel is commonplace. Great literature is being devoured by the masses --- the true authorship of Shakespeare's plays is being debated, and children are merrily swapping Henry Fielding bubble-gum cards. Archeron Hades is intent on destroying national literary treasures by altering original manuscripts. Somehow, he is able to step into the manuscript of Jane Eyre and kidnap her. Suddenly everyone's copy of the book goes blank. With its narrator missing, half the book is blank, and the world waits and wonders. Thursday Next, literary detective, is called in on the case where she encounters a range of characters, both fictional and real, as she attempts to save Charlotte Brontee's masterpiece. $275.00 (23425)
2. FFORDE, JASPER. LOST IN A GOOD BOOK. [London]: Hodder & Stoughton, [2002]. First edition. Signed. Fine in dust jacket. Literary detective Thursday Next has made an enemy of the corrupt Goliath Corporation by imprisoning one of its executives, Jack Schitt, in the pages of Poe's The Raven. In retaliation, the corporation kidnaps Thursday's new husband. Thursday enlists the help of Great Expectations' Miss Havisham. The two leap into the pages of Kafka's The Trial, Austen's Sense and Sensibility and Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Thursday battles with corrupt politicians, saves the world from extinction, is apprenticed to Miss Havisham, and helps the neanderthals to species self-determination. Mastodon migrations, trips into books, and violent life-and-death struggles in the summer sales are all part of a greater plan. $75.00 (23426)
3. FFORDE, JASPER. SOMETHING ROTTEN. [London]: Hodder & Stoughton, [2004]. First edition. Signed. Fine in fine dust jacket. Mass Hardback. Thursday Next resigns from her position as Head of Jurisfiction, to return to her native Swindon with her son Friday ... leaving behind her fictional world and re-entering her real world, where her problems begin. To begin with, Thursday's father informs her that if the Swindon Mallets croquet team doesn't win the tournament next week, the world will end three weeks later! And then there's the problem of having her husband uneradicated. To top things off, clones of Shakespeare are turning up dead everywhere, and Thursday must determine how to smuggle ten truckloads of banned Danish literature into neutral Wales before the government burns them! Who or what is creating all of these problems? None other than the madman fictional character, Chancellor Yorrick Kaine, head of the evil Goliath Corporation. With all of these balls in the air, can Thursday help but drop a few? $55.00 (20696)
4. FFORDE, JASPER. THE FOURTH BEAR. [London]: Hodder & Stoughton, [2006]. First edition. Signed. Fine in dust jacket. Jack Spratt and Mary Mary locate missing journalist Henrietta "Goldy" Hatchett. The last witnesses to see her alive were the The Three Bears. But all is not what it seems! How could the bears' porridge be at various temperatures when they were dipped at the same time? Is there a fourth bear? And if there is, who is he, and why did he try to disguise Goldy's death as a freak accident???? Postcard laid in. Larger size Deluxe Collector edition Hardcover. $65.00 (24216)
5. FFORDE, JASPER. THE FOURTH BEAR. [London]: Hodder & Stoughton, [2006]. First edition. Signed. Fine in dust jacket. Postcard laid in. $45.00 (24243)
BUCKINGHAM BOOKS
BOOKS FOR THE KNOWLEDGEABLE COLLECTOR
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Which begs the question - HOW DID THEY KNOW?!
They are forgiven Acheron Styx - they were probably too excited to type straight.
Clumpety-clump-clump time, or ... something more sinister?

Halloween, Halloween, happy happy Halloween ...





:

I've got a couple of those too, and I haven't done any online questionaires for a while (and certainly never mentioned Fforde in any of them).

I've also received a couple of e-mails from someone called "Cort Lawrence" who seems to want info about the books, and specifically trying to get details of a character and plot, and some more in-depth theme stuff to "pass a class".

The fact both have come at the same time suggests to me it might be someone/thing scanning the e-mails of users on our profiles. But who knows? I'm not going to respond to anything unsolicited like that...

Once upon a time there were quite a few requests to the fforum for us to do all the graft for homework projects, dissertations, whatever. they received short shrift from those around at that time.

I would assume direct mail to my inbox from anyone like "Cort" to be spam and deal with it accordingly.

however, from the experiences of poor J_S, it may be time for us to hide our e-mail addresses and only pass them on by p.m. to those we don't mind having them.

Yes, I got the exact same message. Since I am in Germany, informations from a british bookseller a are pretty strange thing to get. I can not imagine they got this specific address from anywhere but my profile page here.

The implication of this would be that someone got himself a fforum membership for the sole purpose to harvest our e-mail addresses. What people do to make others pissed off at them...

(I know someone named "Cord" for real. It took me five years to realise it was meant to be a fancy way to write the german name "Kurt". His last name would translate to something like "snipper", so his parents may have wanted to give him a boost.)

And Leonard, don't you just wish his surname had been "Short" rather than "Lawrence"?

I got that one, too! Security!!!

Oh, sh*t. I replied to this Cort Lawrence fellow... since I saw that he had the e-mails of several people form this fforum, I assumed he was just a member I hadn't met yet... so I answered his question. Just told him the basics about First Among Sequels and sent it. The next day he sent me another e-mail thanking me for the information. Weird. And in retrospect, I probably shouldn't have sent him my social security number just because he asked nicely. (Ha!)

Oh, and that Whimsical Mystery bookseller sure has some bloated prices.

----

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die. -Mel Brooks

I wrote back asking whether they had any of the much rarer *unsigned* editions. Never did receive a response, oddly enough...

I feel very left out. Why aren't the scammers trying to get me?

Me too - I don't even get spam - never had one - in fifteen years, granted I don't need a penis enlargement but would like to be offered the occasional Nigerian Prince.

Don't worry, BK, I have sent your home address to U.K. readers' Digest. Expect to be the lucky winner of many quizzes, anyday soon.

<quickly hides company headed note-paper>

<rolls around happily in junkmail>

I don't know if anyone here has joined an on-line company called Eulance, but I have. I keep getting posted work I supposedly have skills for, but I've yet to earn a dime. I give up the moment I see what the job involves - and how little people in the Third World are prepared to accept for doing it. Having 'Eu' in the title, I was hoping to get proofreading/copywriting work in the UK or Ireland, but the company address is in Singapore, the people posting work all seem to be sited in India, and most of the creative writing 'jobs' come under the banner of 'data entry/posting on blogs and forums.' The pay is ludicrous - 200 plus forum posts at a dollar a hit. I did wonder why the hell anyone would want to pay people to do this. Now I know. I also know just what you are expected to do, to earn that dollar.

I'm sending a mail back to them, pronto: 'OY, YOU! GET ORFF OUR FORUM AND GET A REAL JOB!!!' Um, like filling in Survey forms like what I do, then; point taken.

Chances are, they've targeted the Pratchett lot as well. So maybe something along the lines of, 'Mr Chrysophage has heard about you, and he's very, very ANGRY' would be a good alternative.

We know where you live. We know where your children play ...

Terry Pratchett is overrated.

I tried reading The Colour of Magic and The Thief of Time.

Both sounded awesome in concept. Both bored me to tears. I didn't finish either.

Jasper's where it's at. And Douglas Adams, too.

----

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die. -Mel Brooks

I'd agree that Pratchett's overrated in general but some of his books are very good, especially the City Watch cycle. Ah well, it's all just individual taste in the end. For example, some people don't even like chocolate.

Got to disagree with PC. I won't get into the tiresome business of recommending other titles to try (there are enough other threads with long lists of all our faves.)

As ES points out it is all down to individual taste. After all a lot of people read and enjoy the Harry Potter books, and there is even a small percentage of the population who don't like P.G. Wodehouse!

I'm a fan mainly because of the Guards books, although I enjoyed most of his stuff post COM, which was obviously an early attempt. Got to admit, I didn't get on with Thief of time either, PC. Try the Guards series, especially the first two. Just finished Men at Arms for the umpteenth time. Didn't quite fall off my chair this time when Detritus got sworn in, but it was a close thing.

Yes, I try to and statements like that with "End of Discussion. The Kitten Has Spoken! ALL GLORY TO THE BOTTLED CAT! 10,000 YEARS TO THE BOTTLED CAT!*" just so everyone knows that it's only my ever so humble opinion.

But then, I wouldn't have dreamed Pratchett was over-rated.





*I have GOT to get that on a t-shirt or something.**


** See how much I like Pratchett!

<dons impenetrable disguise and builds secret bunker to protect Planet Cool>

<removes disguise and stands on sidelines pretending to agree with everybody else>