The Summer of the Re-Read

I think I'm going to call this summer "The Summer of the Re-Read." Being too lazy to find new books to read at the library, too cheap to buy new ones and too lazy, again, to write the books I'd want to read, I'm re-reading many of the better books that have passed through my hands in the past several years. I plowed through the rest of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin books at the end of May, demolished all seven Harry Potter books in a scant weekend (even that one impresses me) and am now working through Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series with my sister in tow.








Let me be frank with you -- Fforde's books are book-reader's books. You know how you have actor's actors? Yeah, well, these are books designed for biblophiles. They're complex, they're filled with jokes and characters pulled from other famous books, and in books two, three, and four, Fforde actually takes you inside the BookWorld where books are supposedly created.

Yes, I know, it's awesome. If I could die and become anyone I wanted to be, living or dead, I'd vote to come back as Jasper Fforde. I can't express how much of a genius I think this man is.

So, while I wait for the fourth Next book to come via Interlibrary loan (I don't own Four or Five, more's the pity) I whipped out a Thursday Next fanfic, because I'm ambitious and slightly suicidal like that. I'm calling it The Hunting of the Sue. It deals with how I think fanfiction might be impacting the BookWorld, which is governed by very specific rules with which the fanfiction world kind of interferes. Coming soon to a Fanfiction Site near you or wherever Archontic Literature is distributed.

Beware the Mary-Sue, my son,
the hands that catch, the eyes that burn
Beware her pretty looks and shun
T’desire to return!

– doggerel attributed to Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat (Cat Formerly Known as Cheshire) after finding a MarySue version of Alice snooping around inside the Looking Glass