…or whichever book you started with?
(Courtesy of ElizaBennet who first asked the question in another thread)

I started reading The Eyre Affair because I had just seen a local production of the musical Jane Eyre. I loved it so much I wanted to read the book, because it really is a wonderful story. Then I heard about The Eyre Affair from somewhere, and I thought it sounded interesting, but while I'm here at school there's only one bookstore around and it's pretty small, so they didn't have it. That was when I discovered that my school library had both The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book, so I read them both, got thoroughly hooked, and didn't want to return them.
Eventually I got my own copies of the books, although the library has continued to get the next books, including a signed copy of The Big Over Easy!

I was at a launch party for another Hodder book when someone told me about it and promised me a copy. It arrived two days later and I read it that weekend.

I had been to Cardiff for the day and was looking around the WHSmith in the train station whilst waiting to come home and discovered it sat on the shelf. The rest is history.

I had to read it because it was based in Swindon.

Who on Earth would base a book in Swindon? A question asked by anyone living in Wiltshire.



Post Edited (05-28-06 19:06)

(Wonderful! mumbled the bookworms.)

I adore Jane Eyre, which I've read many times, so I'd go out of my way to find any book or film that involves these characters. Remember Jean Rhys's moving novel (it was also made into a movie in the '90s) The Wide Sargasso Sea? But, of course, one has only to read a single page of TEA to realize that it has so much more than that. I picked it up in the bookstore and was hooked -- couldn't stop reading it. Thank goodness this was 2004, so I could go on to the Next book after that and the Web site.



Post Edited (05-28-06 21:18)

Saw it in my local WHSmiths, and passed over it for a few weeks, then a guy I know who worked there suggested it too me as being up my street. Bought it, passed it round lent it to a girl 2 weeks before she became another ex.

Just happened on it in a bookshop, liked the cover, read a couple of pages, bought it, loved it, bought for everyone else I thought would like it, was skint.



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If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.

Read the reviews for Well of Lost Plots, resolved to start at the beginning but an inept girl at Waterstones told me that Lost in a Good Book was the first one so read that THEN The Eyre Affair, was hooked from the first couple of pages...

Saw it (TEA) on the New Books rack at my library.



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Metaphors be with you!

Heard about WOLP on the radio.

About a year or so later I came across a "box set" of the first three books at a ridiculously low price and got that.

I'm now.... an... addict.... <sob>



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'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

My first thought when I saw it actually was: "What a weird name that author has!" That sufficed to pick it from the shelf and open it. As soon as I read the first of the chapter headings and saw that the content was even weirder, I had to buy it.

Hey, a welsh name can look a bit conspicuous to the foreign eye.

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Design #3609494995:
It's a newly-discovered breed of fish that keeps your teeth clean, tastes delicious and dissolves in water.
generated with The Prior-Art-O-Matic

I used to belong to a fantasy and science fiction book club and they offered TEA and LIAGB as a two for one package! Fantasy? Science Fiction? Never mind, been hooked ever since

Actually, I think that's where I heard of it.

Notice how many of us say that we were "hooked" on TEA and the other books from the very first page we read? So aren't you surprised that these books haven't attained the level of popularity reached by those concerning a certain young wizard? (I'm a Harry Potter fan myself, so no offense to those of you who love J.K. Rowling as well.) Perhaps it's as in Steppenwolf: not for everybody.

hmmm.

I don't think you can compare the two. Fforde is, in my opinion, a much better writer.

It's a pity that everyone just reads HP and never moves on....



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'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

Well yes Fforde is the much better writer, but his books aren't as slickly marketed as JKRowlings, and when it comes to talent v marketing , marketing wins.
I think Bill Hicks covers this very well in his 1993 DVD at london.

I was recommended it on a terry pratchett newsletter thing... I believe the message started "I know this isn't pratchett related, and I don't normally recommend books, but..."

HP had better publicity - being banned from schools and denounced by churches certainly didn't harm sales.

Rob



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That statement is either so deep it would take a lifetime to fully comprehend every particle of its meaning, or it is a load of absolute tosh. Which is it, I wonder?
Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

I was in a bookshop with my wife, Heather, who was looking for a book to read on holiday. She chanced upon the then latest novel by the writer Katie Fforde, whose work she'd enjoyed before. I saw the then newly published 'The Eyre Affair' which was filed nearby (for obvious reasons), lifted it off the shelf out of idle curiosity - and bought it on the spot. The rest, as they say, is herstory.



Post Edited (05-29-06 23:30)

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* I'm backing the campaign to get the official Stalker for 2007 evicted *

Well, I said it on the other thread, but here it is again.

We had to write a book review in my AP Lit class over Christmas. I chose "The Once and Future King". Lol, but we got into groups to share our reviews and a girl in my group had reviewed "The Eyre Affair". And as soon as I heard what it was about, I ran out and got it. And now I'm hooked! I just finished "Lost in a Good Book"!!! It was awesome!! :)

"HP had better publicity - being banned from schools and denounced by churches certainly didn't harm sales."

Let's get all the libraries to ban Thursday Next! After all, it's clear that anyone who's reading Jasper's books will want to try bookjumping themselves, and think what horrors and havoc that would cause in your local library! Jasper Fforde's books will encourage our nation's youth to make deals with the devil (and Archeron Hades) and they must be protected! So ban the books from the libraries!

(There--you think that'll be enough publicity to start earning Jasper the fame he deserves?)