About this title: In an alternate 1985, where the Crimean War still rages 130-odd years later, Thursday Next works for a special operations unit that prevents criminals from damaging the world of literature. Though normally a fairly low-stress job, it heats up for Thursday when one of the three most evil villains in the world is accused of permanently altering the ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Book shows minor use. Cover and Binding have minimal wear and the pages have only minimal creases. A tradition of southern quality and service. All books guaranteed at the Atlanta Book Company. read more
Description: Good. Book shows minor use. Cover and Binding have minimal wear and the pages have only minimal creases. A tradition of southern quality and service. All books guaranteed at the Atlanta Book Company. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Viking
Date Published: 2002
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Nice soft cover, lightly read, light shelf wear to cover, light creases on spine, stk #2284t8. 374 p. read more
Edition: Second Printing
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Viking, New York
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9780670030644ISBN:0670030643
Description: Near Fine; Has been gently read. 0670030643. In a world where one can literally get lost in literature, Thursday Next, a Special Operative in literary detection, tries to stop the world's Third Most Wanted criminal from kidnapping characters, including Jane Eyre, from works of literature.; Trade PB; 374 pages. read more
Binding: Book on Tape
Publisher: Highbridge Audio, St Paul, Minnesota
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9781565115453ISBN:1565115457
Description: Very Good. 1565115457. Slightly abridged: 10 hours on 6 cassettes. Read by Elizabeth Sastro.; Highbridge Distribution; 2.12 x 5.54 x 5.4 Inches. read more
Binding: Cassettes
Publisher: High Bridge
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9781565115453ISBN:1565115457
Description: Good/Very Good. 6 cassettes in individual cases in orig box. Box has tear and PO markings. Slightly abridged 10 hours on 6 cassettes. read more
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Viking Press, New York
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9780670030644ISBN:0670030643
Description: Fine in Fine jacket. 8vo-8"-9" Tall. First printing hard cover with dust jacket. Crisp, tight, unmarked copy. Appears unread. Dust jacket in new mylar cover. 374pp. read more
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Tapes and box in very good condition, from a private collection. Slightly abridged, on six cassettes--gently used. 6 cassettes. Audience: General/trade. read more
Edition: First US Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Viking Press, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9780670030644ISBN:0670030643
Description: Good-Minus/Good. 0670030643 Ex-Library First US edition/printing of this novel, the first in Jasper Fforde's series featuring Thursday Next. An ex-library book, there are some library markings. The dust jacket has only one sticker; its mylar cover is taped down to the book's boards. The book is clean and solid, though there is one spot (at page 90) where the binding shows a light split and the page block as a whole shows some uneveness. read more
I've known Compelling ever since I moved to Midwestern City. I'd never met anybody with a name like hers before. Compelling Introduction. Whose parents would do that to a kid? She left the city for places like New York and Key West, but she again lives here now with her husband and daughter. I was at a barbecue at her house this weekend and spoke with an old friend of hers I hadn't seen since I first moved to Midwestern City, a tall, dark, mysterious and charming man, Acheron Hades, whom I hated deeply. Mexican-prison-time-hated.
"You follow the Open Source movement, right? Wikipedia?" he asked me.
"Sure, the power of crowds to consolidate knowledge in their free time and just give it away has always fascinated me," I answered.
"I believe that certain intelligent readers such as myself should have the power to alter fictional stories," he said. "Sort of an open-source editing process."
"That's silly. Even if it were possible, what would that mean for copyright law?"
"Certainly, only a truly evil person would alter a book for personal gain or glory. What I'm suggesting is entering the world of the book and making slight changes that like a butterfly's flapping wings would reverberate through the rest of the story, altering the entire imagined world in the process. Kidnap a character, pull them out of the book, set a house on fire, that sort of thing. The sort of thing that would change the story forever."
"The author might not want to re-write their whole book," I said.
"The author wouldn't have anything to do with it. The changes would just happen as events in the story unfurl naturally."
"Without somebody writing? How is that possible?"
"You'd have to get the original manuscript," he said. "Nothing later than the last draft before publishing, to be sure."
"How would that help? The book's already been printed."
"So it has," he replied, arching an eyebrow. "Clearly, I'm only speaking metaphorically. Tell me, Why did you never marry and have a family, Main? No Mrs. Character and little baby Mains running around?"
"I don't know," I replied, confused at the sudden turn in the conversation. "I guess I never met the right person."
"How do you know that you haven't met her already, but weren't aware of it at the time and the moment slipped by, changing your life forever?"
"Timing is everything, huh? Why, did you have somebody in mind?"
"Now that you mention it, what do you think about Ms. Other over there?"
He pointed to a shortish blonde woman named Significant talking to Compelling. She was attractive, certainly my type, but I'd only met her once before at an outdoor concert over a dozen years ago, before Mexico. Oh, that dress! Those legs! That smile!
"Wait a minute," I said, "I remember her. I saw her the same day I met you, at PlotPoint Music Fest in 1995, right after I first met you and you gave me all that money to move to Cancun to judge topless beauty pageants but instead left me naked in a Mexican jail for thirteen years. Say, you told me at the time that she was a kitten-raping lesbian with a serious drug addiction and the IQ of a rock. How could she be my right woman?"
His sharp and too-white teeth appeared behind a crooked smile. "I may have misinformed you," he said. "Well, I shan't be seeing you again. Make my apologies to Compelling, I must go." With that, he turned and headed into Compelling's basement.
It was such an odd goodbye that I had to follow. I saw him round the corner down the stairs and hastened after him. What I saw was nothing short of astounding: he had disappeared into a laptop sitting on the bare concrete floor, its glowing screen showing the GoodReads website. On the screen was my review of a book called The Eyre Affair, a book that I'd never heard of, let alone read or reviewed. I felt a breeze from behind me, and as the screen faded I fell into it.
I fell into PlotPoint Music Fest, in 1995. I could see myself sitting under a tree with my other oddly-named friend, Minor Character, as a tall shadowy figure approached. I recognized that shadowy figure. I remembered that conversation well, after I'd just met him then. Soon to be met, for the first time. Given the odd nature of our most recent conversation, I went up to my(1995) astonished self as I(1995) left to get a beer. I(2009) explained to him that this wasn't reality, that it was in fact a review of The Eyre Affair, a book that wouldn't be published for another six years; and that in it certain events were about to unfold, and that I(1995) was to watch me(2009) from behind this car, and that I(2009) would take my(1995) place under the tree instead, and my(1995) life would change for the better if I(1995) never spoke to that shadowy man. I(2009) knew I(1995)'d do it. I(1995/2009)'m cool that way.
I sat down with Minor and waited for Hades to reach us, hoping he wouldn't notice that I was wearing the same clothes he had just seen me in. I agreed to go with him right then and there to judge beauty contests in Cancun for a ridiculously large sum of money. Just as I'd remembered it. I obtained a copy of The Eyre Affair while in prison, wrote a really good review of it on GoodReads that eventually won a Pulitzer Prize as it took the form a short but stunning, insightful and inspirational first-person narrative on how I met my wife at PlotPoint Music Fest.
I was disappointed that Acheron Hades would ruin my review with his evil 'open-source editing' machine, but at least I(1995) lived happily ever after."
"For the first hundred pages or so, I couldn't decide whether I liked this book or not. It's the tone, not that anyone mentions that sort of thing outside the classroom. I kept thinking about some poor translator trying to render this book into Russian or Swahili or something, and what a bugger all time of it she would have. Cheeky Britishisms, silly names, referents to historical events that didn't happen, or certainly didn't happen that way.
By midway, I was having a ball. I mean, the People's Republic of Wales? Richard III being staged like Rocky Horror? Surrealists rioting on the anniversary of their legalization? Hai-larious. In all of the silliness, however, lurks the satisfying vision of a world where books and their ideas are important, tangible, like they are to nerds like me who read too much."
"I had heard good things about the Thursday Next series and had picked up a copy of the latest installment on Border's Buy One, Get One Half Off table. After I got it, I learned that you really have to read the preceding novels to understand it. The last two books I read left me really depressed, so I decided to pick up the first of the Thursday Next books, "The Eyre Affair."
This book provided me with the literary escape I needed. It made me laugh out loud with lines like "My name is Schitt. Jack Schitt." Jack Schitt appears quite a lot and I couldn't help giggle every time I read his name.
This book is absolutely packed with literary and historical references. Don't worry if you dozed through literature and history classes though; Fforde pretty much ignores anything you might have learned about those subjects in school. "The Eyre Affair" works best if you just go with the flow and don't try to figure out the background."
"I've been noticing that many of my GR Friends are reading these delightful books.
I'm not overly familiar with 19th century novelists (of any country) -- this may irrevocably tarnish my reputation in the eyes of some, but I've never read any Austen and have avoided Dickens like Typhoid Mary since Oliver Twist so I'm sure many of the literary references go right over my head -- but Thursday Next and the alternate Earth she inhabits is a marvelous conceit and Fforde is a very good writer.
Even us poor illiterate savages can enjoy him :-)"
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