Bookish Thoughts

I was absolutely shocked when my book club chose this for our November meeting. It's a huge departure from the mainstream books we usually read. So I guess it wasn't all that surprising when no one in the club actually managed to finish it. But I enjoyed getting a chance to read it again. I followed it a lot better my second time through, and I understood way more of the jokes. The sequel is still sitting on my shelf, and I can't wait to read it, and the rest of the series.

Jasper Fforde's The Last Dragonslayer  is a lot more accessible than his other books. I liked The Eyre Affair , though I get the feeling that that series requires a PhD in English to be truly appreciated. And Shades of Grey  is one of the most difficult books I've ever succeeded in reading. By comparison  The Last Dragonslayer  is positively straightforward. Which makes sense, as it was written for children. The world he creates is still absurd, a mishmash of high fantasy and modern technology that is a little too unrecognizable to really qualify as urban fantasy. But I felt like I understood most of the references this time around. It's not that his plot require that much brainpower. This is a pretty simple chosen one story about an orphan who finds out that she's the last in a long line of dragon slayers and it's been prophesied that she will slay the final living dragon. There are twists and turns, but nothing too outlandish. No, the absurdity is in the details...

It's interesting to completely hate the ending of one book, and then finding yourself rooting for the exact same ending in a different book. But Fforde managed to write a pretty sympathetic Rochester. A Mr. Rochester that I could cheer on, and who I felt almost deserved to be happy with Jane by the end of the book. Though that could also be because he just skipped over the grosser aspects of Rochester's character, focusing on his good qualities, and the limitations imposed on him by being a fictional character. Jasper Fforde writes some really weird stuff. And while The Eyre Affair wasn't as much a trip as Shades of Grey , it was still a strange experience. Albeit, an experience that I could empathize with a bit more. This is a world that I almost want to live in. The Eyre Affair takes place in an alternate-London in 1985. In this alternate world, England has been at war with Russia for over 100 years, time travel is possible, and the boundary between fic...

Jasper Fforde's novel, Shades of Grey , is a complete mind fuck. This book is weird, deliciously so, but also in a way that can kind of make your head hurt. It throws you in to a far-future dystopia in which everyone's perception of color is greatly reduced and class is determined by how much and what part of the color spectrum they can see. This book doesn't hold your hand. It throws you in the deep end and expects you to figure things out. The language is strange and references to the past (our society) are always mangled. But if you can stick with it, the rewards are great. The humor is subtle, but wonderful. The characters are fascinating and wholly real. And the society is just endlessly fascinating. I had to read this book in bits and pieces, taking breaks to absorb everything. That said, it picks up towards the end, and I flew through the last 100 pages or so. There's a ton of world-building in the beginning, and half the fun was figuring out wh...