One of Our Thursdays Is Missing: A Novel

by Jasper Fforde

Hardcover, 2011

Status

Available

Call number

823.92

Collection

Publication

Viking Adult (2011), Edition: First Edition, Hardcover, 384 pages

Description

It is a time of unrest in the BookWorld. Only the diplomatic skills of ace literary detective Thursday Next can avert a devastating genre war. But a week before the peace talks, Thursday vanishes. Has she simply returned home to the RealWorld or is this something more sinister?

Media reviews

Even those new to the Nextian universe must admire the audacity of the world Fforde has created, with its Steampunk-influenced contraptions, double entendre literary landmarks and skewering of the publishing industry, even the popularity of "the ghostwriter's" books. Ironically, this abundance of
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material may also make this latest installment, remade world notwithstanding, a bit bewildering for those new to the series.
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3 more
There is no denying Fforde’s supersized imagination, linguistic agility and love of books, Books, BOOKS. One of Our Thursdays is Missing is crowded with both classical references (he tweaks Russian literature for its of clusters of impossible to distinguish names) and bestseller citings (Shreve
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Plaza and Picoult Junction are suggestively close). Dickens and the great, deleted Samuel Pepys; Hemingway and FitzGerald; Ludlum and Grisham; Lord of the Rings and I, Robot — no era or genre or style of books gets left out.
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Read the earlier books, then read One Of Our Thursdays Is Missing. It is pure, inspired lunacy and the funniest book you will see this year.
With places like Our Blessed Lady of the Lobster, a designated love interest and diabolical wordplays, puns and hilarious illustrations including one captioned “Don’t anyone move…I think we’ve driven into a mimefield” complete with a license plate reading ISBN, this madcap tale delivers
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great good fun.
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User reviews

LibraryThing member ljbwell
When I was really little (maybe around 5 years old), I was completely befuddled by how records worked. At some point, I had semi-convinced myself that the band or orchestra or singer was somehow squished into this thin platter and they started playing when the needle touched down. Oddly, this made
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more sense to me than whatever the actual technical explanation was (again, in my defense, I was very young). And I obviously gave no thought to how they could be playing in more than one place at once - that would have blown my tiny, inquisitive little mind.

BookWorld is a bit like that. Every book we RealWorlders read is a case of Schrödinger's cat - a book isn't a fixed, definite thing, and we don't know what it is until we open and experience it ourselves. Every time we read a book, the fictional characters jump into action, and it can change with every reading. Sometimes characters need to cover for each other; sometimes they change up their interpretation of the text (there's a great section about Hamlet and how he plays it different ways, to the confusion and endless discussion by students and academics); they get annoyed when we stop mid-chapter; when something goes wrong, or when there are too many RealWorlders reading a book at once, they can panic and hit 'snooze', making the reader fall asleep.

This 6th in the series takes place mostly in BookWorld, and is narrated by the fictional Thursday Next (Or is it? Or isn't it? Or is it?...). There is trouble brewing in BookWorld, and a war between genres is looming. Peace negotiations are in the works, but are at risk of falling apart when the real Thursday Next disappears. Fictional Thursday Next is called on to step in and find out what's going on, but there's a suspicion that she's been hired not only for her resemblance to the real Thursday, but for her comparative incompetence, and that unknown forces don't really want the truth to be discovered.

This was probably one of my favorites in the series. It spent a lot of time traveling around and getting to know BookWorld, created wonderful images of and personalities for the different genres, and with all with clever wordplay, lit-related science (or is that science-related lit), and tongue firmly implanted in cheek. Lots of fun for any booklover.
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LibraryThing member suetu
Thursday is here at last!

Way back in 2001, buzz rippled through the American publishing industry for a British debut novel, The Eyre Affair. It was this country’s introduction to two unlikely-named characters: Jasper Fforde and Thursday Next. We’ve had a decade to get to know them now, and they
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haven’t worn out their welcome yet. On the contrary, Fforde ffanatics long for Thursday’s return, as she has not made an appearance since 2007’s First Among Sequels.

One of Our Thursdays is Missing is Fforde’s sixth novel in the series. There is always danger of a continuing series growing stale, but Fforde manages to keep things fresh in a variety of ways. First, he rotates the Next novels with those in two other series. Also, there was a bit of a paradigm shift in the last book, as Fforde moved the action of the story ahead by 14 years. Our heroine was suddenly in a very different place in her life.

Now, she’s just in a different place period, and nobody seems to know where she is. Per the title, one of our Thursdays is missing. However, that leaves one remaining. The fictional Thursday has noted her counterpart’s absence, even if no one will own up to it. She’s on the case—which is just as well. Things are getting somewhat contentious in her book.

This volume, for the first time, delves into the real nitty-gritty of what it is to be read day in and day out. We get a lot of new information about the BookWorld, in part because there’s new info to be had. Fforde recreates his creation in the opening chapter. It’s fiction; he can do that. Also new is Sprockett. As literary characters go, this mechanical manservant falls somewhere in the intersection of P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves, Matt Ruff’s electric negroes, and Paolo Bacigalupi’s Windup Girl. He’s a welcome addition to the series.

While Fforde has added several new elements this time around, other familiar aspects are absent. This novel takes place almost entirely in the BookWorld. I quite missed the cast of RealWorld (or Outland) characters, but as I became more engaged in the story being told, I missed what was left out less. The Next books are beloved for their unique and affectionate brand of literary satire. That’s very much in evidence here. In addition to lampooning the classics, there are plenty of playful references to Fforde’s contemporary peers. But on top of that, it’s not a half-bad mystery plot that Mr. Fforde has penned.

The one thing we can count on from any Fforde offering is the author’s trademark wit and humor. His idiosyncratic cleverness is abundantly on display, so I’ll leave the last words to him:

“Budgetary overruns almost buried the remaking before the planning stage, until relief came from an unexpected quarter. A spate of dodgy accounting practices in the Outland necessitated a new genre in Fiction: Creative Accountancy. Shunned by many as ‘not a proper genre at all,’ the members’ skills at turning thin air into billion-dollar profits were suddenly of huge use, and the remaking went ahead as planned. Enron may have been a pit of vipers in the Outland, but they quite literally saved the BookWorld.
Bradshaw’s BookWorld Companion (16th edition)”
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LibraryThing member riverwillow
This is the much anticipated sixth instalment in the Thursday Next series and I'm pleased to say that it doesn't disappoint. The main setting for the book is BookWorld as we follow the adventures and misadventures of the fictional Thursday, whose resemblance to the real Thursday is so striking that
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she has to remind her fellow characters that she is 'the written one.' The real Thursday is missing so, accompanied by her faithful robot butler Spockett, the fictional Thursday investigates her disappearance.

This is a cracking read, the mystery element really holds together, I really wasn't sure if the real world Thursday had chosen to disappear or whether she had been kidnapped or murdered. Fforde's satirical humour is as sharp and funny as ever - Vanity Island has the '""Siblings of the More Famous BookWorld Personalities"" self-help group' whose members include Loser Gatsby. 'the youngest of the three Gatsbys' - Great and Mediocre - Sharon Eyre, Jane's younger sister, 'Rupert Bond, still a virgin and can't keep a secret' Tracy Capulet, who has slept her way round Verona twice; and Nancy Potter, who is ... well let's say she's a term that is subject to several international trademark agreements.'
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LibraryThing member reading_fox
Weird. But then it was always going to be. You really need to have read the previous books in the series before starting this one. There is a lot of oblique references to thinks that did and did not happen in the series beforehand.

Thursday is missing. Fortunately there are other Thursdays around,
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some left over from the previous book, and a few new ones as well.None of these quite have the vitality of the 'real' Thursday, but each plays their part in Thursdays greater story. Events in the Bookworld are not that much more confusing than normal, despite the great Remaking, which has altered the geography from a vast library to that of an inverted sphere, the the genres now as islands within the TextSea - that eternal constant of the literary world. With a cross genre war looming over the disputed racy novel territories, cheese smuggling still rife, and political machinations between the Council of Genres and it's own police force Jurisfiction, poor written Thursday languishing in her now unread 'happy' series, is asked to investigate a crashed book. The book was in transit and fell apart over Aviation scattering graphemes along the way. Aided by her mechanical butler (everyone needs a butler) written Thursday starts to find some pieces of evidence that lead in surprising directions - well they would, this after all is fiction on the border between Fantasy and Adventure, close to the boundaries of Thriller. Does she have sufficient depth of character to piece together the clues, overcome the villains (there are always villains) separate the consequential from the random (how many random events happen in novels?) and find the real Thursday next, whilst discovering true love in the process?

If none of the above makes any sense to you, you obviously don't remember the previous books well enough, go and read them again. If it does make some sense, but still seems a little confusing, then you're in the right place. Enjoy the book, and try and solve the mystery before the grand denouncement. It's inventive and wacky, set almost entirely in the (new) BookWorld. Mostly it makes enough sense to follow along, and although some favourite characters don't make an appearance, there are enough new ones to enjoy. I wasn't completely convinced by he written Thursday's character - she changes too much to be believable as the version the Real Thursday wanted her to be, but other than that the writing is as good as ever. The wackiness and inventiveness are dialed right up, and while lacking the social commentary that Goliath normally adds to the proceedings, it is still very enjoyable.

A worthy continuation.
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LibraryThing member BeckyJG
In the Nextian Universe there are, basically, two worlds. In the RealWorld, dodos are household pets and Neanderthals productive members of society, there is an active black market for cheese and a Socialist Republic of Wales (where, its tourism board proclaims, it's "Not always raining). There is
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also a BookWorld, in which the genres vie for domination, characters from books are ranked socially according to how often their books are read, and raw metaphor is one of the hottest commodities around.

One of Our Thursdays is Missing is the sixth of Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books (or the seventh, if you count the no longer available The Great Samual Pepys Affair). As it opens, the BookWorld has been remade into an inverted globe (just go with it), making it no longer necessary to jump from book to book to travel there. The Thursday Next featured in this installment, we quickly learn (although it took this dense reader somewhat longer to figure it out and then make sense of it) is the written version, the somewhat more accessible, kinder gentler version that the real Thursday Next thinks she would like to be. The real Thursday, it turns out, has gone missing...just as she's about to attend the peace talks between Racy Novel and the rest of the genres.

It becomes the written Thursday's assignment to take on a mission for which she's not been trained, namely, to find the real Thursday and ensure that the peace talks go as scheduled. But she has to do so while juggling a would-be boyfriend with a dark backstory, a crush on the real Thursday's husband (who was never written into the books and so exists only in the RealWorld), and dissent among the ranks of the characters in her series. Good thing early in her narrative she rescues a mechanical man about to be stoned to pieces by some particularly paranoid inhabitants of Conspiracy, a sub-genre of Thriller, thereby gaining a sidekick who mixes a mean cocktail and thinks deep thoughts. He needs to be wound every once in a while to keep him going, but well, really, when you think about it, who doesn't?

The reader must let go and comes to term with the fact that the antic, madcap, and bizarrely violent action may never make perfect sense. Once she accomplishes this, One of Our Thursdays is Missing reveals itself to be fun, clever, mind--and genre--twisting fun.
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LibraryThing member lorax
I was disappointed in the previous Thursday Next book, First Among Sequels, so I was a little apprehensive about this one, thinking the series may have run out of steam. Fortunately my fears were groundless. This volume focuses not on the Thursday Next that we met in The Eyre Affair, but on her
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fictional, written counterpart, the star of the Thursday Next books -- which aren't, however, our Thursday Next books! The real Thursday has gone missing, shortly before she's due to participate in key peace talks between genres, and the written Thursday needs to find her.

I enjoyed most of the new introductions in this entry; Sprockett, Thursday's clockwork butler rescued from an obscure vanity-published book, and the flat multitudes of Fanfiction Island were particularly amusing. I did find references to recent works jarring; Thursday's world is so different from our own that it strains credibility to suggest that it, too, has a tremendously popular Harry Potter series. (Still, the Potter references are brief and ignorable, and thus only a minor nuisance.)

Overall I was quite pleased. Fforde seems to have ffound his ffooting again, and after my trepidation I'm once more looking forward to the next Next.
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LibraryThing member craso
The Book World's version of Thursday Next is trying to keep the first four volumes of her series respectable even though their readership is down, the other characters are disgruntled, and the books have become remaindered. She decides to bring in an understudy so she can do some work away from her
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novels for Jurisfiction. Her first case is an accident that drops narrative debris over Conspiracy Theory. While investigating the mishap she discovers that the real Thursday is missing somewhere in the Book World. She is needed for the peace talks between Racy Novel and Women's Lit. Does the downed book have anything to do with the missing Thursday?

I loved reading about the Book World. Jasper Fforde is a terrific world builder. The Book World is a landmass with each genre having it's own boundaries that expand and contract based on readership. Each little book "country" has it's own idiosyncrasies; it's always wet and dreary in Physiological Thriller, Comedy has a clown army. Yet, even though this book realm is very interesting and extremely funny, I missed the real Thursday and her life in Swindon. The storyline was not as exciting or complicated as the other Thursday Next novels. I missed Thursday's family and her battles with Goliath. I hope the next book is about the real Thursday.
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LibraryThing member JRuel
I think it had been too long since I had read the adventures of Thursday Next : the plot was too confusing, I couldn't care about the characters and whether they reached their goal (whatever that was). I think, maybe, that this series is being stretched too much: there is only so much you can do
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with only one developped character.
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LibraryThing member TimSharrock
I have not got far into this book yet, but is has already leaped to the front of the queue of "currently reading". Great fun as always - but I could really do with a bigger version of the map of Fiction Island - I guess that Goliath Corporation will sell me one! .... to be continued
LibraryThing member lynneinfla
I was so disappointed when it looked like Jasper Fforde had given up on Thursday Next in First Among Prequels. He had wrapped up all the final details and it certainly seemed like the end. So I was extremely delighted to find another book in the series, and it is Fforde's usual inventive self. The
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way he writes about Thursday without writing about Thursday is amazing. I hope there are more to come.
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LibraryThing member horomnizon
Jasper Fforde just keeps writing stuff that I devour as soon as I can get my hands on it. This one is a little different as we're not following the real Thursday Next, but instead are thrown into the life of the written Thursday Next in BookWorld - or are we? Since nobody has seen the 'real'
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Thursday for a while, the 'written' one begins an investigation with the help of a new sidekick (an automaton called Sprockett) and some of Thursday's friends.

For me, the addition of Sprockett was one of my favorite things. After all, everybody needs a butler who can make you a cocktail at a moment's notice. It turns out that this Thursday has almost as exciting a life as the real one....or maybe she is the real one and just doesn't know it?

What I love about Fforde's writing is that although there is a mystery involved, I almost never figure it out - or at least not all of it. There are so many twists and turns and absurdities (oh, and red herrings) that it's difficult to know where he's going - but it's a fun ride getting there!

If you haven't read the other books (or like me, it has been awhile since you read the others) you may feel a bit lost for the first couple chapters, but just go with it - or go back and read the others; they are enough fun to be worth it! His Thursday Next series is definitely more fun if you 'get' the literary/grammatical jokes.
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LibraryThing member Larxol
I wonder if Jasper Fforde, like Thursday Next, might be getting a little tired of BookWorld. One of our Thursdays is Missing seems a bit lackadaisical. The author seems more interested in playing with the nuts and bolts of his fantasy setting than in character and plot development. The bad guy
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isn't around through most of the book, so the ersatz Thursday doesn't really have someone to go up against. Even when she is taken by the reliably villainous guys from Goliath Corp., she is effortlessly rescued via a deus ex machina chapter-ender. The denouement of the main plot line takes place in a few pages of talking about it, a bit of a let-down for an action series. If there are to be more in the series, I hope Fforde gets back to his plucky heroine working her way out of the cliff-hanger spots she is thrown into.

As an aside, who at Viking Penguin decided that the 50s bodice-ripper art of Thomas Allen would be a good fit for the American edition of a Thursday Next book? The line art in the book, credited in an appendix to Bill Mudron and Dylan Meconis, is faithful to the text. But on the cover, we have a permed Thursday wearing heels and a calf-length skirt. Please.
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LibraryThing member SashaM
Not as good as the first few books in this series but still enjoyable
LibraryThing member A_Reader_of_Fictions
Originally posted on A Reader of Fictions.

Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series has been for me a very uneven read. Certain installments rank among my favorite books, while others I had to force myself to get through. In fact, I almost gave up on the series after book three, until my parents, who I
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started on the series, insisted that book four, Something Rotten, was amazing and that I just had to read it. Thus was I sucked back in. Last week, I read book five, which I found quite slow, but with One of Our Thursdays Is Missing, Fforde has once again made me glad I did not give up on the series.

What I will always love this series for, even the books that I would never try to reread, is its utter originality. Of course, that's a term that gets thrown around a lot in the book-reviewing world, but, if asked to name a book or series I thought truly original, I would probably have to go with this one. I simply have never encountered anything else like Fforde's work. It's utterly irreverent, absurd, self-referential, off-the-wall, confusing, pop culture-tastic, humorous, silly, and, occasionally, quite deep.

In One of Our Thursdays Is Missing, we have a new heroine. In place of Thursday Next, we have Thursday Next. Confused yet? Welcome to Jasper Fforde. THIS Thursday Next is the written Thursday, rather than the Outlander Thursday. Told in the first person, the reader follows Thursday Next (from this point the Outlander Thursday shall be called just that for clarity), the tree-hugging one from the Thursday Next novels.

As established in the last book, Thursday Next has been trying to change the series a bit to fit better with Outlander Thursday's actual image and personality, the original written Thursday Next in books 1-4 having been more like a paranormal romance heroine. Her changes to the series have not gone over particularly well, the whole series now dangerously close to being unread, which displeases her costars greatly.

When she gets an offer to go investigate a mysterious book-crash in Conspiracy, she jumps on the chance, a bit bored with the irascibility of her fellow characters. On the way, a Man in Plaid (think men in black, only...you know...plaid) tells her that a Thursday is missing and disappears. These two elements combine into one big mystery that Thursday Next feels a compulsion to solve. What happened to Outlander Thursday? Will she be back in time to negotiate peace between Racy Novel and the rest of the BookWorld? Why did that book crash?

I thought the first person perspective and change to the basic formula of the previous books brought new life into the book that was missing from the last. I really like Thursday Next, even if she's not quite as bright or capable as Outlander Thursday. She is perhaps a bit more approachable. Also, her narration allowed for a clever 'will the real Thursday Next please stand up' kind of confusion.

Also, there was some really hilarious commentary on published vs. self-published books in here, done in the standard ridiculous Jasper Fforde way. A fact I'd forgotten until I read this is that self-published books used to be known as vanity titles. This still amuses me. In light of all of the recent changes in publishing, I found these themes and his attitudes very interesting, particularly that on fan fiction, though I do wonder if that would be different now that so much fan fiction is getting published.

I apologize to those of you who are probably rubbing your heads in mystified confusion. Jasper Fforde's books are rather complex, particularly since there are so many of the same (though very different in personality) character running around. However, if you have the patience to disentangle his books, they are a book nerd's delight, full of puns and jokes poking fun at literary tropes.
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LibraryThing member JenniferRobb
What I enjoyed most about previous books in this series was the author's clever use of created word combinations to describe elements in the book (for example, JurisFiction) and the contrast between his fictional BookWorld vs. the Outland (real world).

This book held little of either of those
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elements and failed to engage me. I read it mainly because I'd read the earlier books in the series. If the next book in the series is the same as this, I will probably drop the series from my reading list.
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LibraryThing member ShannaRedwind
Pretty good. I'd give it a 3 1/2 if I could. I started with this one, not realizing that it was the 6th in the series, but I was able to pick things up pretty well. I'm certainly going to read the others in the series, but I think I'll wait a while before I pick one up.

LibraryThing member readafew
One of Our Thursdays is Missing is the 6th book in the Thursday Next series. I’ve read all 6 books and after the first in the series this one is my favorite. The series had a little dip in the middle but even the ‘worst’ in the series was still a good fun read. I will say, in my opinion, this
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should not be the first Thursday book you pick up to read. While I think it’s OK as a stand alone novel, to truly enjoy the book you need to have read at least 2 of the previous 5 books, so much happens a new reader will likely be lost. Though if you’re going that far why not read all 5? Jasper does a great job at humor, writes a pretty good mystery and tells a compelling story. A word of warning, quite a bit of the humor is meta humor, which Jasper only occasionally points out to the reader (kind of like an saying “See how I did that? Now can you find any more?”). I find it fun to read just looking for his play on words.

We start with Thursday, but we’re not really sure which Thursday. It soon becomes apparent we’re supposedly following the written one. She’s an agent of JAID (the Jurisfiction Accident Investigation Department) and is sent to investigate the litter strewn around Conspiracy (the genre) from a book that dissolved while traveling overhead. Commander Red Herring would like Thursday to come to a quick and obvious conclusion to her investigation. On her way she runs into a stranger who says ‘One of our Thursdays is Missing’. Shortly after which she saves Sprockett from a mob, who then becomes her willing butler and side kick. Sprockett is a cogman, a clockwork android, and a butler by trade who can make a mean martini in no time flat (as long as you keep him wound). Things just keep getting weirder and weirder.

Thursday's missing and she’s supposed to head the peace talks with Racy Novel (another genre), the Men in Plaid seem to be chasing our Thursday around, her man Whitby is having problems with his back story, and the cast of her book is getting mutinous between the story changes and her constant absences leaving her understudy to do her job. All in all it’s another royal mess in Bookworld and it’s up to the written Thursday to try to fill some big shoes.
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LibraryThing member AJBraithwaite
More enjoyable language- and literature-bashing from Jasper Fforde. BookWorld has been re-designed to be geographical, ebooks are having an impact on reading processes and the written Thursday is faced with the disappearance of her RealWorld counterpart and an imminent war between the Racy Novel
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and Women's Fiction parts of the world.

I don't think you could get the most out of this book without having read the earlier ones - which isn't a criticism at all. Quite the reverse, as it means that there's a lot less explanation than there was in earlier books, which is a good thing.

I love the way Fforde mucks about with language and with literary conventions. "Double negatives were a complete no-no" was one of my favourite lines.
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LibraryThing member ethel55
Fans of the Thursday Next series won't be disappointed in Fforde's long awaited return. The Book World has been re-drawn in a New World fashion with border scuffles a new worry for lesser genres. The maps included are worth the read, very clever! The introduction and placement of written Thursday
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as a main character did feel a little different, but soon I was swept up in Fforde's imagination and worried that Racy Novel would indeed ruin their peace talks. I tried to savor each literary bit in the novel, but eventually, I came to the end. It was not so final that there won't be hope for another Thursday adventure, real or written.
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LibraryThing member bookheaven
Another humorous romp through Book World with Jasper Fforde. Any lover of reading will get a kick out of this series.
LibraryThing member Gwendydd
Yay, so wonderful to have another Thursday Next book! After TN4 and TN5, I was a little nervous that Fforde was overextending himself, and that he should have stopped before the series got bogged down. But TN6 is fantastic. Fforde is fantastic at writing himself out of holes: he clearly sat down to
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write this book and thought to himself, "Darn, there are a bunch of things that I've been doing wrong in this series from the very beginning." So he fixes them. Boom, in one fell swoop he plausibly changes the Bookworld from a library layout to a geographic layout. Boom, this book explains why the Thursday Next novels within the Bookworld are different from the real-life Thursday Next novels (and fixes the discrepancy).

This is another classic Thursday book - lots of action crammed into a few days, crazy adventures, a plotline that you think can't possibly all come together and then it does at the last moment. Fforde's fount of creativity is amazing: he keeps coming up with new and wonderful and hilarious things. Of all the alternate universes I have ever read about, this is the one in which I would most like to live.

I hope he writes more!
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LibraryThing member birdsam0610
I was lucky enough to win this book in a competition run by Borders bookstore. I’m glad that I won it, because I’m not sure whether I would have liked this as much had I shelled out hard earned cash for it.

This is the sixth book in the Thursday Next series and like the others, is told in first
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person by Thursday herself. But in this book, it’s the second fictional Thursday telling the story, not the real Thursday Next, who has disappeared and not the first fictional Thursday Next, who was erased. This is the loving, gentle, hippy Thursday Next that failed Jurisfiction, unlike the real Thursday Next.

Too many Thursdays in the above paragraph? This is a book whose plot could be difficult to grasp without reading the previous books. Let me try to summarise: in an alternate universe where cheese is illicit, everyone loves reading and the world is nearly completely controlled by the Goliath Corporation resides Thursday Next. An ex-SpecOps agent, she lives with her husband Landen (who was erased by Goliath temporarily) and children (one who is never seen but anyone besides Thursday). Thursday is also a Jurisfiction agent, meaning she has the ability to ‘jump’ into books and solve crimes/issues in the BookWorld.

But Thursday is missing from this book and fictional Thursday, a resident in the BookWorld (who acts out the Thursday Next books as you read them) tells this story. The story mainly takes place in the BookWorld and while this world is interesting, we’ve heard about Netherfield Park and grammacytes in previous books. The ‘reworking’ of the BookWorld wasn’t really interesting and not particularly necessary. The overall plot is basic - that Thursday is looking for Thursday. In her travels, she meets the adorable Sprockett, her robot butler as well as interacts with many well-known fictional characters (e.g. The Lady of Shallott).

This books moves a lot more slowly than the previous Thursday Next books (not the fault of fictional Thursday, she doesn’t really have a detailed plot line to work with) and the conclusion is tied up oh-so-neatly. It lacks the witticisms and fiction in-jokes of the previous books. I think I’ll wait for the reviews of Thursday Next #7 before I enter competitions to win it.
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LibraryThing member TheDivineOomba
Its a fun read through the book world. This story shouldn't work, but it does. It has a lot of techno-babble that actually works in this setting. Its a fun read, not very deep, has great characters, and a world that actually seems like it should be real. I keep wondering, how books got created
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before bookworld realized they weren't real?
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LibraryThing member AwesomeAud
The sixth Thursday Next novel, and the first not told from Thursday's perspective - or rather it's not told from 'our' Thursday's perspective. This book is from the POV of the 'written' Thursday Next; the character that took over from an 'evil' version of Thursday. The currently, written Thursday
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is a portrayed as a hippy, and tends to be gentle. She washed out of Jurisfiction training, and now investigates accidents in the Book World, which leaves her somewhat frustrated.

Now the 'real' Thursday is needed to negotiate peace talks between genres, or an all out genre war may tear the Book World apart. It's only a weak until the talks, and written Thursday seems to be the only one who realises that real Thursday is missing.

I enjoyed this Thursday book quite a bit! Written Thursday goes from a meek generic book character, to a detective worthy of her inspiration.
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LibraryThing member saffron12
This sixth book in the series is told from the perspective of the "written" Thursday Next. Personally, I highly enjoyed this new point of view. It showed even more fully how BookWorld works, and I found the technical descriptions fascinating. Written-Thursday started to come into her own as a
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person, which was also fun to watch. It is one of the best books I've read so far this year.
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Awards

RUSA CODES Listen List (Selection — 2012)

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2011-03-08

Physical description

384 p.; 8.3 inches

ISBN

0670022527 / 9780670022526
Page: 2.3969 seconds