Bogormen

Title: Thyme Out (also published as "Second Thyme Around")
Author: Katie Fforde
Genre: Chick-lit
Rating: 2.5/5
# pages: 384
Date read: May, 2016

When Perdita Dylan delivers her baby vegetables to a local hotel and finds that her unpredictable ex-husband, Lucas, has taken over the kitchen, she is horrified - particularly when she discovers he's being groomed as the latest celebrity chef and needs her picturesque, if primitive cottage, and her, in supporting roles.

Her life is further complicated when Kitty, her 87-year-old friend, has a stroke. Perdita needs someone to lean on - and Lucas seems so keen to help that she starts to wonder if he's really such a villain. Can she cope with all this alone? Or should she face up to the fact that 'You can't cuddle lettuces'?


It's difficult for me to give this a fair rating, as the different parts of the book were of so very, VERY varied quality.

The first 100 pages infuriated me, and I felt like tossing it across the room. If it hadn't come very highly recommended by people whose opinions I trust, I wouldn't have gotten any further. But I stuck with it, and fortunately it improved, until the last 100 pages, where I had a very had time putting the book down. So with the first 100 pages deserving just 1 star, and the last 100 pages deserving 4 stars, I decided to average it out.

My problems with the book can be boiled down to just one thing - lack of boundaries. In those first 100 pages, Perdita decides she knows better than Lucas how to run his restaurant ("Oh, but she did it for a good cause!" Grrr. So what if she did? That doesn't give her the right! Lucas would have had every right to fire Janey because of it), and Lucas stomps all over Perditia's boundaries not one, not two, but three times. But because he turns around and helps her with Kitty, we're supposed to just forget all of that? In any real-life relationship where somebody behaved like this, I'd call red flags all over the place. Seriously, the "jerk with a heart of gold" trope is getting old. The good things he does later, don't cancel out his jerk'ish behaviour earlier.

*Sigh*

Fortunately after the first 100 pages both Perditia's and Lucas' behaviour improved, and the plot turned a lot more enjoyable, so I no longer considered giving it up as a DNF. I was still slightly disappointed in it, as I'd had it recommended to me as a "foodie novel" which wasn't the case at all - it was a romance, plain and simple. Sure, one of the characters worked in a restaurant, but that part took up a LOT less page-space than I had expected. I also wish we'd have gotten to see Roger's reaction to getting his comeuppance, but that's a minor detail.

All in all, not a book I'd recommend. But if you do end up reading it, try to just ignore the first 100 pages, and the rest of the book will be a lot better for it.

Title: The Last Dragonslayer
Author: Jasper Fforde
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 281
Date read: August, 2011

In the good old days, magic was powerful, unregulated by government, and even the largest spell could be woven without filling in the magic release form B1-7g. But somewhere, somehow, the magic started draining away.

Jennifer Strange runs Kazam!, an employment agency for state-registered magicians, soothsayers and sorceresses. But work is drying up. Drain cleaner is cheaper and quicker than a spell. Why trust a cold and drafty magic carpet when jetliners offer a comfy seat and an in-flight movie? And now potions are eligible for VAT...

But then the visions start. The Last Dragon is going to be killed by a Dragonslayer at 12.00 on Sunday. The death will unleash untold devastation on the UnUnited Kingdom, setting principality against dukedom and property developer against homesteader. And all the signs are pointing to Jennifer Strange, and saying"Big Magic is coming!"

An interesting mix of classic fantasy and modern technology. Rather different from what I have expected, but I guess I should have known better than to expect anything traditional from Jasper Fforde. I tend to like the absurdity of his universes and fortunately this was no exception.

I loved Jennifer Strange as a main character, and got quite fond of Timmy Prawn as well. I would have loved to hear more about Kazam! so I wonder if Jasper Fforde is planning any sequels. I'm not entirely sure if the universe would allow it, but if anybody can make it work, he can.

Title: Lost in a Good Book
Author: Jasper Fforde
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 8/10
# pages: 371
Date read: September, 2006

Summary: In an alternate 1980s England, woolly mammoths migrate through the countryside, Tunbridge Wells has been given to Imperial Russia as Crimean War reparation, and the prevailing culture is based on literature. Due to her adventures in "The Eyre Affair", newly married Thursday Next has become a media darling, but when an unknown work by Shakespeare surfaces, she is happy to be back to work. However, the megacorporation Goliath hasn't finished bedeviling her: Thursday's husband has been "time-slipped" and exists only in her memory. Further complicating matters, her Uncle Mycroft gives her an entroposcope-a jar of lentils and rice-revealing that the chaos in her life is rapidly escalating. So once again, Thursday jumps into a surreal literary world. This time, she has joined the "Jurisfiction" division and is paired with Charles Dickens's Miss Havesham, who has a penchant for leather jackets and driving recklessly. Absurd and amusing scenes take readers through discussions on theoretical physics, geometry, literature, art, and philosophy. Fforde not only tilts at ideological and insipid corporate windmills and human foibles, but can also make the naming of minor characters hilarious, as in the two unfortunate members of the dangerous SO-5 division, Phodder and Kannon.

Review: I read and loved "The Eyre Affair" in August of 2006, so figured I had to read the sequels as well, and this one at least didn't disappoint. I love how the author uses the media of a book to get his point across... if somebody hears voices in their head that nobody else can hear, this is shown by that conversation being held in footnotes! If somebody's whispering, it's written with a smaller font etc. Absolutely hilarious! I have to keep a look out for the next one.

Book List