I was there, but it was my undergraduate time, so I have no memory of the period!



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I have no memory of the time, but was there. Born in '86, I will be around in Something Rotten! Hope Thurs walks past me. '88 was when I named a lego man Michael Burke... what a child I was!



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'Pompadour,' spat my mother. 'Living in sin with his pompadour.'

Maybe those people who were dissapointed read it during the Bookie Awards....remember, generics hold down the fort whilst everyone else attends the awards ceremony.

Yes, try it again, I really didn't have any problems with it, I still thought it was great, but it just wasn't my fave, nothing to complain about though.



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'Pompadour,' spat my mother. 'Living in sin with his pompadour.'

I seem to be alone in prefering Jurisfiction to SpecOps. I read all three books for the first time this week in one Ffordian marathon, and I find SpecOps rather mundane in comparison. Not bad, and the presence of Spike is an underexploited plus, but Jurisfiction has the UA of W Cat, which overrules anything.

Of the three, I'd say Lost in a Good Book was the poorest - it lacks any real plot and suffers from the exposition Jasper mentions so much.

You are not alone....I prefer Jurisfiction too



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Some days I see the point

I came at this in a sort of leap-frog fashion. Someone lent me TEA and then I picked up WOLP in a hurry at Borders as my third choice in their two-for-three offer. I haven't actually read Lost in a Good Book yet, so I didn't actually come to WOLP with any very great expectations (excuse the pun!) and I really enjoyed it. I thought Jurisfiction was great and I didn't find the narrative choppy myself - at least, I read it in one sitting which I probably wouldn't have done if any unevenness was bothering me.

Personally, I'd love to see what Jurisfiction would make of fanfiction, where the characters are tortured away from their writers' original characterisations and subjected to unimaginable mispelings, not to mention savage attacks by hordes of rampaging grammasites.

TEA was my favourite, but I wasn't disappointed by WOLP. And I also agre that Jurisfiction is better than SpecOps but only just.

Sorry, objectors, I thought it was great, and rolled about laughing (v. bad for domestic harmony).

Mystery Cat: What's a mater criminal? Infanticidal parent?

Well of Lost Plots was by far my favorite in the series. Writing about the world inside of fiction--what a novel idea! And I loved the "had had" discussions, etc. So much literary humor.

How's this for picknitting?
On page 177, Lucy Deane says, "Everything would be so wonderful between my darling Stephen and I ... ."
So, who's the ungrammarian, Lucy or Jasper?

I just finished Well Of Lost Plots yesterday. I thought it was a great book. Although, I only picked it up at a discount bookstore for about $3.99 having no idea what I was getting, but from reading the inside cover it sounded interesting enough. Now I'm going to have to hurry up and read all the other three before the fifth book comes out.

Well, you've got at least a year to do it in. How fast do you read?

WOLP dissapointing? I cannot agree. Please don't shoot but I appreciated this book so much more than TEA. There were so many laugh out loud moments and I feel like so much more was revealed about Thursday herself. In this book, Fforde really humanised her as he let us in on her past, her hopes, her fears. I thought it was an exceptional piece of work.

I agree with Dottie. Maybe it's because I'm such a huge Lit nerd, but I was thrilled to have book set entirely in the Bookworld. I also noticed going back to read TEA how much Thurs has matured over the course of the series. In book 1, even her relationship with Landen was more of a light love-interest, but now that they have a son we really see how much Thursday's family means to her - it is one of her major motivations.



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Metaphors be with you!

I don't know, I really liked Thursday's angst in TEA over the Charge, her guilt about being in love with Landen who betrayed her brother, who in turn had messed up...I don't think Jasper's ever quite got back that dark edge.

Even though WOLP revisits the Charge in a big way - its not quite the same. However rage counselling in Wuthering Heights is one of the all time great chapters.

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World is crazier and more of it than we think



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World is crazier and more of it than we think

I am ploughing through WOLP...at times it's hard going because for me there is a major lack of sustainable plot. The first two were SO ingenious, while WOLP is almost a collection o skits and one liners. I was especially disappointed with the destruction of Aornis. I thought the concept of the generics was brilliant....some great 'momens' but on the whole disappointing. Its not meant to be a critism....is just the first two were so brilliant...waiting now for the next one.

I did find there to be a few problems with WOLP. Just how many times are BookPeople required to return to their books and act out the chapters? It would seem that two people reading a page apart would muck up the whole works.

I'm becoming disapointed with the increasingly-transparent plot saving devices. Fforde wove them in quite masterfully to begin with that they seem innocent at introduction and remained unsuspected until needed, such as the silver bullet in TEA. While a few kept a low profile in WOLP, such as the original idea, I thought the Shot Rang Out! plot device wasn't quite up to scratch. And I generally frown upon Deus Ex Machinas (pull in case of unprecedented emergency), no less to skip the resulting scene entirely.



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Um? Game?

I liked the Panjandrum ex machina quite a bit, myself, because - if his fffforum screen name is anything to go by - the Panjandrum was none other than the Author himself appearing in various guises.

The Shot Rang Out! device was a mere bagatelle - and a clever one at that.



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Metaphors be with you!

it may be the weakest of the 3 but have yet to find a book that as interesting or funny