Amy
I enjoyed learning about 100 women from throughout history and around the world who were extraordinary in some way. The single-page story format simplified some stories way too much, but I could see this as a teaser for kids to want to learn more about these women, and I really enjoyed the illustrated portraits that accompany each story.
This is definitely my favorite Harry Potter book so far, although I really think I would like it best if the fun wizard-y things remained and all the dark, creepy wizard stuff was taken out. Basically, I would have enjoyed a book about wizard camping and the Triwizard Tournament tasks, without any of the return of the dark lord. The creativity and world-building continue to be incredible. And that includes all of the dark parts, which are so well-written and why I could definitely do without them. I will say that the reveal of who Voldemort's servant at Hogwarts was legitimately surprised me–I had spent a lot of the book sifting through the clues.
As I continue my introductory journey through Harry Potter, I continue to be appreciative of the compelling writing and excellent characters. It is also very revealing to me of what interests me most in books, which is character development and relationships, much more than plot, so I am not very excited by the constant peril of the books. I also find, so far at least, that the plots follow a pretty consistent formula: Harry's miserable summer with the Dursleys, adventures in Daigon Alley, adventures getting to Hogwarts, introduction to this year's classes, struggles with teachers, a few Quidditch matches, and then DANGER, with a wink-wink from Dumbledore, who always seems to actually know what's going on but leaves it to Harry and his friends to take care of it.
On that note, I think it's interesting to examine Dumbledore from the perspective of an educator. As an adult reading these books, it has sort of bothered me that Dumbledore leaves his students to take on these potentially deadly situations, especially when it seems like he knows what's going on. But when I think about it more, I know that as an educator myself, I'm often trying to give my students the space to try things out and learn for themselves without my always stepping in to fix things. That's a perspective I want to keep in mind as I continue with the series.
My favorite book is Little Women. So I came into this book with high hopes – the story of Mr. March sounds like a wonderful idea. Instead, this turned out to be one of the few books I didn't want to finish, although I did keep going in hopes that things would turn around. The result of the book is that I like Mr. March less. I also read in the afterward that Geraldine Brooks's mother told her, “Nobody in real life is such a goody-goody as that Marmee,” which I think is a gross mischaracterization of Marmee from Little Women, and it seemed to shape the way Brooks decided to portray Marmee in her book. It would have been interesting to me to see how Marmee, who admits to Jo as to having a temper, learns to corral that passion into care for her daughters and community. Instead, Brooks creates a Marmee who seems to be always seething under the surface and who has been made to be smaller by both herself and her husband.
An additional note about Marmee is that I always interpreted “Marmee” to be a version of “mother,” whereas Brooks introduces Marmee as having had that nickname from childhood as a version of Margaret. That makes no sense to me; why would her own children call her by her nickname?
Finally, the actual Civil War was horrific, and I can't even imagine the terrors that the soldiers and the enslaved went through. But I am also not interested in reading the gratuitous violence portrayed in these pages. I barely made it through the first chapter, which is one of the reasons I almost gave up on this one. I'm sure the writing was more accurate to the actual experience, but it was too much for me.
I am continuing to find that the Harry Potter works are extremely well written and enjoyable stories, but I am not yet finding reason to be as utterly obsessed with them as much of the rest of the world seems to be. The lasting thought at the end of this book for me was, all of this could have been avoided if you had just told a trusted adult when strange things started happening. This was particularly true for me when Dumbledore directly asked Harry if he had anything to tell him, and Harry just said no. Tell Dumbledore! I realize this is the trope in a lot of children's and young adult books, and there wouldn't have been a book without it, but I personally find that frustrating. I also really found the unpleasantness in the book to be unpleasant, such as the overall existence of the Dursley family and Professor Lockhart. My favorite aspects are the friendship between Harry, Ron, and Hermione and particularly the humor that comes through Ron.
As I am finally tackling the world of Harry Potter, I'm seeking to keep an open mind to why everyone loves these books so much. The writing is definitely very captivating, and I was easily immersed into the story. I love the friendship between Harry, Ron, and Hermione. I'm convinced that Dumbledore is actually Gandalf taking a vacation from Lord of the Rings. And my favorite parts were the little bits of humor. Overall, I enjoyed the book, although I'm still waiting to be swept off my feet.
Once again, I marvel at how Jasper Fforde is able to come up with a wholly original, completely absurd idea, and it make it feel plausible and real. The satire was a little heavy-handed, but given the state of the world we live in now, it also feels applicable and necessary. I enjoyed this more than Early Riser, but not as much as Shades of Grey or the Thursday Next series – maybe about the same level as the Nursery Crime books for me.
I did not think I liked this book at all for at least the first quarter. But, as with most Jasper Fforde books, once I better understood the world he had created, I was more compelled as I got deeper into the story. It is definitely darker and more of a thriller than his previous works, which is probably why it is not my favorite. But I am once again blown away by the imagination and creativity of the story and the world he's built.
This is the third book in Jasper Fforde's Chronicles of Kazam series. I don't generally gravitate towards fantasy (but I'm reading through Fforde's entire bibliography), but I actually enjoyed the first two books pretty well, I think because they were light on the strange creatures and peril and more about the relationships between the characters and the main character finding her strength. This third book, on the other hand, takes Jennifer Strange on a (not a) quest into a neighboring kingdom, meaning she is leaving behind the characters from the previous books that I enjoyed, and is mostly strange creatures and peril. It also ends with a pretty major cliffhanger, which I'm guessing Fforde is planning to address in future books, but these future books haven't arrived yet.
I have to say, this Kazam series is growing on me. I honestly think that the illustrations on the covers, albeit beautiful, made me skeptical because I am not very interested in hard-core fantasy. But the series is definitely fantasy with the Ffordian wit and humor. The protagonist, Jennifer Strange, also has some young Thursday Next vibes, particularly in keeping her cool in hectic situations and wanting to be left alone but actually enjoying her adventures. The Song of the Quarkbeast offered an opportunity to get to know the characters a little better and therefore made me more interested in them.
This was a free Kindle download at some point that I started reading several years ago and finally picked up again and finished on a recent trip. It was beautifully written, but I spent most of the book wondering what the point of it all was. The protagonist, Antonia, says at one point that she can't forgive Vittorio for making her into a cliché, and really, that was probably my biggest issue with the book. She just seemed like a cliché of a woman who will let a man completely control their relationship because of some notion of love, which seems to be based purely on their physical relationship or his alluring nature that enables him to get away with being a jerk. It was fine for an airplane read, but I wouldn't recommend it.
I'm reading my way through Jasper Fforde's entire collection, so I have now come to his middle-grade fantasy books. I don't read a lot of books about magic and dragons, but I generally enjoyed this, especially as it definitely still has Fforde's trademark off-beat style, even if simplified a bit for his middle-grade audience. The protagonist is great, a responsible but behind-the-scenes girl who is thrust into the spotlight and discovers that she has a much larger role to play in the arrival of Big Magic. There's also a great collection of oddball characters, and the story is well-woven so that you're not quite sure whom to trust.
Since I don't read a lot of fantasy, though, I'm not sure how it compares with other books from the genre. I don't know if I would continue in the series if I wasn't trying to read all of his books, but I will likely continue on in the trilogy.
When I first started reading this book, I realized that I forgot how hard it is to wrap my brain around the worlds that Jasper Fforde creates in his books. But once I understood Chromatacia, I was mesmerized again. Fforde crafts amazingly logical yet absurd societies. I really appreciate how everything fits together. And I was intrigued by this chromatic society and gripped by the characters and story. This is supposed to be a trilogy, although the other two books never came out. I hope they do one day, as I am definitely wanting more.
Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books are brilliant. The Nursery Crime books don't quite live up to the Thursday Next ones, but I've still enjoyed them. The Fourth Bear is clever, tongue-in-cheek, and a good read. It can be hard to immerse yourself into the Ffordian world, but once you make it, the (il)logic starts to make sense. And as a book nerd, I love the word play and the literary references.
Jasper Fforde is a master at creating utterly fantastic yet completely logical worlds and societal structures, like this one where detectives are ranked and murders solved based on how the write-up will read. “The Big Over Easy” is not quite as engrossing as the Thursday Next books, but it still has the Fforde wit and fun.
I've read and loved the rest of the books in the Thursday Next series, but somehow in my earlier readings of the series, I never made it all the way to this one. And starting out, I really didn't think I was going to like it – I thought that Fforde had jumped the shark a bit. But as usual, the further along I made it into the book and the more absorbed into the Nextian universe, the more I enjoyed it. I wouldn't say this is my favorite in the series, but I ended up liking it much more than expected.
However, one of my favorite things about this series is the world-building that Fforde has done, and there were a number of inconsistencies from previous books that threw me off. For example, in First Among Sequels, a major plot point is that Friday wants to prevent the invention of time travel. Then in this book, the dis-invention of time travel is presented as more of a mistake from another time traveler. It's almost as if Fforde regretted that he wrote out the ChronoGuard, so he reinvented his own book's history to make up for it. In addition, my favorite of the Thursday Next books are the ones that involve both the Outland and the BookWorld, so I also was missing the BookWorld in this one.
I can never quite explain Jasper Fforde books to other people; unless they've read The Eyre Affair, it is hard to fully grasp the Ffordian universe. And because I love Thursday Next and her world, I was skeptical that I would enjoy a sequel that featured a different main character and a different manifestation of that world. But I shouldn't have doubted. The remaking of the Book World allowed for new adventures that wouldn't have worked in the Great Library, and this self-doubting version of Thursday was a relatable character whom I enjoyed in different ways. Another gem.
Although I still think The Eyre Affair is the best of the Thursday Next books, the series continues to delight me. What I especially enjoy is that the more you are immersed in this world, the more it makes sense. Time travel and bookjumping, mind worms and multiple Thursdays–all are more comprehensible the more time you spend in Thursday's world. I also love the little details that reference back to previous novels; they make me want to go back and look for those clues.
I picked this up from a library display, because I've read PS, I Love You and vaguely remember enjoying it. This one was hard to get through. I didn't really enjoy the main character, Holly, and I thought the writing of interpersonal scenes between characters was pretty unrealistic. I realized that I think what I liked best about PS, I Love You was Gerry, and since this book is about Holly's life after Gerry, there just wasn't much for me here.
Each book in the Thursday Next series is as good as the rest. (I won't say better, just because I like them all so much, I couldn't pick a favorite.) What I find so amazing is that Jasper Fforde has created an entire world (two worlds really) and somehow everything makes sense. The explanation of the ImaginoTransferenceDevice seems entirely logical. And as a book and word nerd, I love all the little references that explain why Americans spell honor while the British spell honour, or how Uriah Hope became Uriah Heep. I can't get enough of these books.
There was a lot to like about this book. I love books about people who love books, and Christine Feret-Fleury does a great job of conveying what it's like to be a person who loves books. It was easy to read and the character sketches were lovely. But I say “sketches” on purpose, because overall, this book was just incomplete. It was as though the author had started a bunch of ideas and then jumped along from one to the next. So in the end, I didn't quite feel like I understood what the book was actually about, although I enjoyed what was there.
It's been many years since I've read the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, but I remember really liking it, so at some point, I picked up this book from further along in the series. It is a pleasant read, although there isn't really much actual mystery in this one. In fact, there isn't much story arc at all. It's more just a nice opportunity to get to know Mma Ramotswe and the people in her life.
I love the Thursday Next series, although I hadn't read The Eyre Affair in a long time. In rereading it, I realized that while I still enjoyed it and it's important for world-building, I don't love it as much as some of the later books in the series. The first half is darker and more intense than I remembered, and then the end of it wraps things up a bit too quickly. But I do love how deep this book goes into Jane Eyre, and I do just love Thursday Next.
This book is definitely well-written and drew me in. But I did not enjoy reading it, mostly because the characters were all so unlikeable. There wasn't one character among this conflicted family that I thought, aha, this is the person I can latch on to. The readability kept me going, and I also was kind of holding on to hope that someone would make a turnaround, but in general, just bleh.
