First among Sequels

When it’s easy for me to blog a novel and it makes sense to do it because it has a lot of quoteworthy stuff, I can justify doing it here. This blog is perhaps a little dry at times.

I’ve given Fforde’s book five stars on goodreads, just like the four previous books I’ve read by him. I pointed out in a brief review on goodreads that perhaps I should stop giving all of his books five stars, but as long as they keep being awesome I’ll keep giving them that rating. And this stuff is awesome. It’s also a bit silly, but that’s the price you pay. I saw many of the major plot-developments coming, but even so it was a very entertaining read.

I have added some quotes from the book below – I don’t think there are any spoilers in the stuff I have included:

….

“I opened a small parcel that contained a copy of the third book in my series: The Well of Lost Plots. I showed it to Landen, who pulled a face. ‘Are they still selling?’ ‘Unfortunately.'”

“Since I’d made it into print I’d been naturally curious about meeting the fictional me”

“‘I’m barely eighty-two,’ she said indignantly, ‘I’m not on the scrapheap yet. […] I’ve got a few friends coming around, and after we’ve discussed who is the most unwell, we’ll agree voluably with one another about the sorry state of the nation and then put it all to rights with poorly thought-out and totally impractical ideas.” [that passage reminded me of this]

“we are finding that more and more minor classics and a lot of general fiction are going for long periods of time without even being opened. Because of this, Text Grand Central are worried that bored characters in lesser books might try and move to more popular novels for work, which will doubtless cause friction.’
We were all silent. The inference was not lost on any of us – the fictional characters in the BookWorld could be a jittery bunch and it didn’t take much to set off a riot. […] The last thing we need right now is a band of disgruntled bookpeople besieging the Council of Genres, demanding the right to be read.”

“the Health and Safety Inspectorate are coming in to make sure we’re up to speed.’
‘On safety procedures?’
‘Good Lord, no! On how to fill the forms in properly.'”

“A chunk of burning Camembert on your doorstep meant only one thing – a warning from the Swindon Old Town Cheese Mafia”

“‘You’ll forgive me for saying this,’ said Webastow, looking over his spectacles, ‘but this is the most hare-brained piece of unadulterated stupidity that any government has ever undertaken anywhere.’
‘Thank you very much, replied Ms Yogert courteously. ‘I’ll make sure your compliments are forwarded to Mr Van de Poste.'”

“The young girl came and sat down next to me. She patted my hand reassuringly.
‘I didn’t want to be rescued anyway,’ she announced. ‘If I survive, the whole point of the poem is lost – Henry will be furious.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘it’ll all be repaired.’
‘And everyone keeps on giving me their jackets,’ she continued in a huffy tone. ‘Honestly, it gets harder and harder to freeze to death these days.'”

“We were standing in the opening chapter of The Eyre Affair, or at least, the refurbished first chapter.”

“there was room on the hangar floor for not only Darcy’s country home of Pemberley, but also Rosings, Netherfield and Longbourn as well. They had all been hoisted from the book by a massive overhead crane so the empty husk of the novel could be checked for fatigue cracks before being fumigated for nesting grammasites and repainted. At the same time an army of technicians, plasterers, painters, chippies and so forth were crawling over the houses, locations, props, furnishings and costumes, all of which had to be removed for checking and maintenance.”