Right now re-reading The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. It’s a weird comic scifi dystopia set in England where literary allusions abound, puns and tropes are plot devices, and Jane Eyre gets kidnapped and makes the ending of the book better. There are so many John Milton’s that they have a numbering scheme. Shakespeare is a target of forgery. It’s also ferociously anti-war, and imagines a world in which Thatcher is alive and well, and the Crimean war had had two charges of the light brigade… And has continued until the 1980s.
I can recommend it on its own for the Richard III is Rocky Horror Picture Show scene.
A phenomenal summer read, light but intelligent. And it happens to be the beginning of a good series.
What are you reading? (August 2023)
Hey Beehaw (and friends)! What’re you reading?...