Fifth in the Thursday Next series. SpecOps has been disbanded and Thursday is ostensibly working as a carpet fitter, but actually she is still doing SpecOps work and mostly working for Jurisfiction, funding this by smuggling cheese. Her son Friday has become a teenage layabout and refuses to join the ChronoGuard even though he needs to do so to save the world. And Thursday has to stop Pride and Prejudice becoming an interactive reality book, with only the help of her apprentices, the hippy Thursday5 and arrogant Thursday1-4. Still funny but somehow I wasn't quite in the mood for this.

Travelling in a ray:

Lamilla (Belarus, send international)
Winterbirth (UK, send EU)
dutch-book (Netherlands, send Netherlands or EU)
bookguide (Netherlands, send EU)
lunatum (Finland, send international)
FraukeRo (Sweden, send international)
HappyHarryBabe (UK, send UK) skipped due to no response
bluezwuzl (Germany, send international)
slipperbunny (Finland, send international)

Off to Lamilla who is first in the ray. Enjoy!

Both books arrived today. Thank you for sharing!

I need to read it soon and send further!

You've found a travelling book. Hurray!
The book's journey continues by its finder's cooperation and creativity. By making a journal entry on this book, you can add to the book's story as it travels from reader to reader around the world.
Enjoy your reading!

Привет!
Спасибо, что нашли время зайти на сайт и сделать запись в журнале! Напишите, когда и где вы нашли книгу.
Перед тем, как попасть ко мне, она побывала в других уголках света. История ее путешествий записана на сайте, и теперь к ней добавился еще один пункт. Я очень рада, что она нашла нового читателя в вашем лице.

Book arrive today. Thanks!

Continuing on its journey to dutch-book

Arrived today. Looking forward to this one!

And it's finished. Enjoyable as always. Although it took some time for the story to be on a roll. I will send this book, along with number six, to bookguide when number six is finished too.

Traveling to bookguide, along with book 6 in the series. Enjoy!

Arrived safely today. I started reading The Well of Lost Plots yesterday, you'll be glad to hear, and it's brilliant, so it won't be long before I get on to Something Rotten and beyond.

First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde


Thursday Next's life seems to have settled down. Jurisfiction has been disbanded so she's retired from her life of excitement and set up shop with Spike as carpet fitters; from putting spikes through werewolves to a nail gun. Landen is working from home as a not entirely successful novelist and their teenage children are acting just like normal teenagers, with their youngest daughter Jenny never turning up for meals and their son Friday turned into a grunting heavy metal fan who never gets up before the afternoon. In fact, Thursday's life sounds so much like mine that this description sounds like it could have come from my diary:

"I knocked on his door, received no reply and opened it to a fetid smell of old socks and unwashed adolescence. Carefully bottled and distilled, it would do sterling work as a shark repellent, but I didn't say so. Teenage sons react badly to sarcasm. The room was liberally covered with posters of Jimi Hendrix, Che Guevara and Wayne Skunk, lead guitar and vocals of Strontium Goat. The floor was covered with discarded clothes, deadline-expired schoolwork and side plates with hardened toast crusts on them. I think the room was once carpeted, but I couldn't be sure any more."...
"'I expect he's raring to go?' suggested Landen when I came downstairs. 'Had to lock him in his room to curb his enthusiasm?'
'Champing at the bit,' I replied wearily. 'We'd get a more dynamic response from a vapid slug on tranquillisers.'"

If this was all there was, this would have been a very boring book, but of course, there is far, far more entertaining stuff going on. In actual fact, Thursday's boring job is a front for off-the-record Book World detective work. There's a crisis in the Book World as more and more books are relegated to the unread category. There's a plan afoot to allow the public to vote on the plotlines of some of the most popular books, threatening the integrity of the stories and reducing everything to the level of a reality show.

Thursday is attempting to train two characters who both irritate her more than usual, for some reason. She knows that Friday should have a brighter future, but if he doesn't change his ways soon, something disastrous will happen. Perhaps the worst thing is that Thursday is keeping all this from Landen because she doesn't think he'll approve.

Confusing, full of mayhem and madness, exploding cheese and of course, the lovable Pickwick, this is classic Thursday Next. In other words, hilarious.

View all my reviews on Goodreads

Due to a crazy work schedule, unexpected trips and ones that left earlier than expected, leaving me no time to visit our local part-time post office, I finally managed to get this in the post last week. My sincere apologies to everyone who I've inconvenienced, hanging on to these books for so long. There are now 4 books on their way to Lunatum.

This book has been released as part of the following BookCrossing challenges:
- The Ultimate Challenge - read and release books, with extra points for a monthly theme
- Reduce Mount TBR (To Be Read) - read and release books on the TBR list since before the end of 2014. My reading goal is 36 books.

The books arrived.

I finally had time to read the book. Sorry for taking this long! I really enjoyed reading. I'll send the book forward tomorrow.

Thanks for sending, I'm looking forward to read this :-)

Wow, what a mess Thursday keeps getting herself into... but as usual, it was a highly amusing and very entertaining mess :-) A lot of open plot-lines in this one, though. I'm curious to know what happens about the Cheese and about Sherlock Holmes...

Travelling to bluezwuzl now because of cheaper postage - enjoy!

The third Thursday this month... thanks for sending the book my way! I'm planning a week of Thursday at the beginning of next year. And then I'll try to find out, who will get which book next... 😁

The book arrived safely! Since I'm the last in line I won't hurry reading this. =)

Not as good as the previous volumes, mostly because
Fforde started too many plot lines in this one which he didn't finish. But I still enjoyed reading this a lot.

This and The Well of Lost Plots are going to be released at the Worldcon tomorrow. =)

Caught this at Worldcon75. Wow, it has already travelled quite a lot! I've only read the first Thursday Next book and I want to read them in order, so this'll have to wait for a while.

I finally managed to read this book! After a very enjoyable Something Rotten, this book was a bit boring especially the first third or so. It got better with the other Thursdays and some events, but remains the weakest link of the series so far for me. However, because it's still a Thursday Next book, the weakest link isn't that weak when it comes to books in general.

Reserved for Mecu.

The book stays with me but can be borrowed to a trust-worthy reader.