A romping, fantastical, fun read . . . full of puns, wordplay, and literary allusions. This book chronicles the literary adventures of a British special agent pursuing a heinous criminal who is intent on kidnapping characters from classical literary works in order to destroy those works. It's complicated, but the description of the heroine, Thursday Next, found on the back cover seems appropos: "She's part Bridget Jones, part Nancy Drew, and part Dirty Harry". This book was unlike anything I've read before -- part detective story, part sci-fi, part comedy of manners. Sometimes the plot became overly intricate and convoluted which often caused me to have to go back to look up small details. And sometimes, I muttered: "What?!" However, on the whole, I enjoyed this book quite a bit and will definitely read its sequel, Lost In A Good Book. It gets high marks for sheer originality. If you like literary history, you'll probably delight in this very imaginative tale.

I got this in the mail a couple days ago, and I'm finished with it already. I loved this book, it was just what I needed to clear all that academic library school stuff out of my head for a little while. I liked the film noir style writing, it was almost like reading a superhero comic book story. I don't think I caught half the literary references I should have, but the ones I did catch were fun. The character names were something else.
The chapter that most caught my attention was Dr. Runcible Spoon. There's a little restaurant here in Bloomington called the Runcible Spoon, and it's not the sort of word combination that you come across every day. It's a librarian's dream, this restaurant. It's walls are lined with bookshelves that are packed with the restaurant owner's private collection. There are plants in the windowsills and they play NPR for background music. It's dark and quaint, and all the tables have inlaid gameboards. They roast their own coffee on the premesis, and though I've never had it, I hear it's the best coffee in Bloomington. It's the perfect place to leave a bookcrossing book, so the next time I go in there, I'll have some of the coffee and leave this book with the Dr. Runcible Spoon chapter marked.