Lost in a Good Book

A Thursday Next Novel

By: Jasper Fforde

Narrated by: Emily Gray

Length: 13 hrs

Publisher's summary

The second installment in Jasper Fforde’s New York Times best selling series follows literary detective Thursday Next on another adventure in her alternate reality of literature-obsessed England - from the author of The Constant Rabbit.

The inventive, exuberant, and totally original literary fun that began with The Eyre Affair continues with New York Times best-selling author Jasper Fforde’s magnificent second adventure starring the resourceful, fearless literary sleuth Thursday Next. When Landen, the love of her life, is eradicated by the corrupt multinational Goliath Corporation, Thursday must moonlight as a Prose Resource Operative of Jurisfiction - the police force inside the BookWorld. She is apprenticed to the man-hating Miss Havisham from Dickens’s Great Expectations, who grudgingly shows Thursday the ropes. And she gains just enough skill to get herself in a real mess entering the pages of Poe’s “The Raven”. What she really wants is to get Landen back. But this latest mission is not without further complications. Along with jumping into the works of Kafka and Austen, and even Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, Thursday finds herself the target of a series of potentially lethal coincidences, the authenticator of a newly discovered play by the Bard himself, and the only one who can prevent an unidentifiable pink sludge from engulfing all life on Earth. It’s another genre-bending blend of crime fiction, fantasy, and top-drawer literary entertainment for fans of Douglas Adams and P. G. Wodehouse. Thursday’s zany investigations continue with The Well of Lost Plots.

Delve into Jasper Fforde's literary universe with the other books in his Thursday Next fantasy/detective series.

©2011 Jasper Fforde (P)2011 Penguin Audiobooks

Much better than the first one!

I'm so glad there is a different narrator for the other Thursday Next books after the first one. This second book in the series is much better than the first in several ways. Emily Gray seems to get the humor a lot better, and therefore the book is funnier. Jasper Fforde books are generally meant to be humorous. The reading of The Eyre Affair was a bit heavy-handed. And while there is a lot of drama in Lost in a Good Book, there is more humor than in the first installment. While I liked The Eyre Affair, I LOVED Lost in a Good Book. In fact, The Eyre Affair was a little confusing in some ways because there were these characters with these ridiculous names, and yet the tone of the book seemed like it was supposed to be high drama. In this installment, we have many memorable combos like Chalk and Cheese, Lamb and Slaughter, Cannon and Fodder, Walken and Dead... But, they are funny in context this time! Emily Gray does better voice characterizations as well (IMO). If you kind of liked The Eyre Affair, then you'll really love Lost in a Good Book. You should read The Eyre Affair before reading this one though because it is a continuation. And the second book is quite as daft as the first, which I think is a good thing!

excellent story!

highly recommended
great dialogue
interesting plot twists
a little in-character and logical swearing, but no gratuitous sex or violence to blur the enjoyment with its cheap and empty shock value.
well written.
loved Thursday and Landen.
so sweet.
feel good ending.
read The Eyre Affair first for the best experience.

Good offbeat book

Witty and funny; great plot and word play; looking forward to the rest of the series

so clever and unexpected

I FINALLY see some appeal for Great Expectations. This book creates such a complete and clever universe. I want to be an Agent of Jurisfiction!!

Such a fun adventure

This story kept me coming back for more. It was fun and interesting from the start. I am looking forward to reading more about this very intriguing universe she has created.

Long pauses

Pauses between paragraphs, chapters, etc were too long. Otherwise the performance was fine, as in previous books.

It takes a little while to get lost...

I had a bit of a hard time with the narrative transition. I listened to 'The Eyre Affair' and 'Lost in a Good Book' back to back, I enjoy running to audio books, and had a hard time switching from listening to narrators Susan Duerdan to Emily Gray. Gray tends to make the male characters sound slow and stupid, including Landen and she seems to have a hard time changing characters using the same voices for characters in conversation as well. However, once I was able to move past the quirks of getting used to a new narrator I thoroughly enjoyed the second installment in the 'Thursday Next' series.

Fantastic series!!

I'm on the third listen of this series in two months! I relistened to it a second time as soon as I had finished the seventh book. Now, here I am again, listening for this third time after having listened to several other books. It is so engaging, the narrators bringing you into the story in a wonderful way, details revealing themselves that I had missed previously, just as delighted to be taken into these wonderful worlds Jasper Fforde has created. Highly recommend!!

Excited for the next book

Middle starts to sag just a bit and then picks up to the end. Good

Not as good as the first Thursday Next

Book one had a better story line. Also they should have kept the first reader. But it is still a enjoyable novel. I love Fforde's writing style. It kinda reminds me of the Harry Potter books :)