Quotables
Tag Archives: Jasper Fforde
Quotables
15 Literary Heroines That I Wish Were Real
Sadly, this list was harder to compile than the male counterpart. Not in any particular order.
Add yours in the comments!
15 Literary Heroines (from books I’ve read) That I Wish Were Real
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1. Elizabeth Bennet Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen |
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2. Thursday Next Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde |
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3. Hermione Granger Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling |
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4. Lucy Pevensie Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis |
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5. Leslie Burke Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson |
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6. Kristy Thomas The Babysitters’ Club series by Ann M. Martin |
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7. Penny Nichols Rather series by C.A. Belmond |
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8. Cather Avery Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell |
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9. Tibby Rollins Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series by Ann Brashares |
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10. Veronica Mars The Thousand Dollar Tan Line by Rob Thomas & Jennifer Graham |
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11. Brooklyn Wainwright Bibliophile Mystery series by Kate Carlisle |
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12. Luna Lovegood Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling |
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13. Anne Elliot Persuasion by Jane Austen |
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14. Cassandra Mortmain I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith |
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15. Trillian aka Tricia McMillan The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams |
Book Review – Off Book
Off Book by Jessica Dall
Eloise was one of the top students at the School, where characters live and learn until they join their novels. And yet, she still hasn’t been chosen. If she doesn’t get assigned soon, she’ll fade away, forgotten. So when Eloise is offered a job at the Recording Office, she jumps at the chance. There she meets Barnaby Fitzwilliam, a post-storied romance hero but just as their relationship takes off, Eloise gets sucked into a story where she is not meant to be. With Barnaby helping from the outside, Eloise must find a way back out of a world where authors rule and anything is possible. Off Book has a very fun premise. It has the same meta, book-loving feeling as Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series. While not as ridiculous as Fforde, Jessica Dall has created a rich literary world where characters have lives and personalities before they are written into books. I liked how Eloise grew during the course of the book. She started out as a little bit of a blank slate, lost without an author but gradually she begins to take control of her own story. My only complaint about Off Book is that the formatting in the Kindle version I read was terrible. There were line breaks in the middle of sentences which made the whole thing difficult to read but the overall story was worth the headache.
*Disclosure: I was provided a free copy of this novel with a request for an honest review.*
Mystery, Intrigue, Suspense
15 Great Murder Mysteries (that I’ve read)
- Murder on the Orient Express
- The Da Vinci Code
- The Flanders Panel
- Homicide in Hardcover
- The Eight
- The Daughter of Time
- The Big Over Easy
- The Dante Club
- The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
- The Malice of Fortune
- The A.B.C. Murders
- The Rossetti Letter
- The Egyptologist
- The Club Dumas
- The Sherlockian
Side question: Why do you think so many mystery title start with “The”?
Book Review – The Last Dragonslayer
The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde
Review: Classic Fforde. A semi-recognizable place filled with fanciful people and things becomes the setting for a fantastical story about magic and dragons. I really cannot fathom what goes on inside Mr. Fforde’s head. The imagination, silliness and depth behind his writing is remarkable. Another great story to file under the category “Young Adult Literature Everyone Should Read.”
Happy Summer!
In honor of the first day of summer, enjoy a list of some great beach reads!
15 Reads for a Summer Day at the Beach (in no particular order)
- A Rather Lovely Inheritance by C.A. Belmond
- Pride & Prescience by Carrie Bebris
- The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde
- Chasing Shakespeares by Sarah Smith
- Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie
- The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour
- Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte
- Homicide in Hardcover by Kate Carlisle
- Stardust by Neil Gaiman
- The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
- The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen by Syrie James
- Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
- The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
- A Salty Piece of Land by Jimmy Buffett
- The Boy Next Door by Meg Cabot
Author Profile: Jasper Fforde
Born: January 11, 1961 in London, England 
Website: http://www.jasperfforde.com/
Jasper Fforde began his writing career working on movies such as “Goldeneye,” “The Mask of Zorro,” and “Entrapment.” After nineteen years in the film industry, Fforde decided to write his own stories. Ten years and 76 rejection letters later, Fforde’s first novel, “The Eyre Affair” was published and his heroine, literary detective Thursday Next was born.
Fforde’s Thursday Next series consists of seven books and was a hit in both the U.K. and U.S. Thursday Next’s novels are set in an alternative world where Wales is a socialist republic and pets are clones of extinct animals. Thursday’s job as a literary detective includes rescuing characters who have been kidnapped from their books and mending plot holes.
Fforde has also started three other series. The Nursery Crimes books feature Jack Spratt solving Humpty Dumpty’s murder and Goldilocks’ disappearance. In 2010, Fforde released “Shades of Grey,” which is set in a color-blind, post-apolcalyptic world where your worth is determined by which color you can see. His latest series is a for the young adult genre. “The Last Dragonslayer” was released in the United States last year and it’s sequel “The Song of the Quarkbeast” will arrive later on this year.
Fforde is known for his comedic absurdity and rich worlds. My favorite example of his oddity is in his Thursday Next novels. As a literary detective Thursday can jump in and out of books and while she is inside a book she communicates with her colleagues via the footnoter phone where they talk in the footnotes.
Bibliography:
Thursday Next
Nursery Crime
Shades of Grey
The Chronicles of Kazam
52 Books in 52 Weeks – Week #23
The Woman Who Died A Lot by Jasper Fforde
Total Reading Time: 4.25 hours
Review: The best way of describing a Jasper Fforde Thursday Next series novel is: very odd in a scintillatingly scrumptious way. This latest installment includes memory manipulation, doppelgangers, and an honest to God (pun intended) deity smiting. Mr. Fforde’s imagination, humor and story construction are just to die for!
Novel Escapism 