Ideas never penned

"Dark Reading Matter: the hypothetical last resting place of books never published, ideas never penned and poems held only in the hearts by poets who died without passing them on." Jasper Fforde "One of our Tuesdays in Missing" Penquin Books, 2011

If you are a writer or an aspiring writer then you need to read Jasper Fforde. If you want to read works that move in a riotous universe that allows travelling into Shakespeare's plays and tampering with the novels of Austen and Dickens with wordplay, humour and satiric wit then read Fforde.  Jasper Fforde is one of my favourite authors. His work is, in my opinion, a salute to his readers, and they challenge the reader with his constant references to other great writers. In his books he expects the reader to have read the books he alludes to and to understand the skills needed to write. So if you are an aspiring writer or an accomplished writer, you will enjoy the wit and humour in any of Fforde's work. Fforde published his first novel, The Eyre Affair, in 2001.

On his website, he says: Hello! If you are completely new to my writing, the best place to start is either with the 'Thursday Next' series or the 'Nursery Crime' Series. I Agree as I started reading his work with the book "First Among Sequels" and then went back in order and read the Thursday Next series in order and the read the Nursery Crime series in order and am now looking forward to reading his latest work.   

Fforde's books are noted for their profusion of literary allusions and wordplay, tightly scripted plots, and playfulness with the conventions of traditional genres. His works usually contain various elements of metafiction, parody, and fantasy. None of his books has a chapter 13 except in the table of contents where there is a title of the chapter and a page number. In many of the books, the page number is, in fact, the page right before the first page of chapter 14. However, in some, the page number is just a page somewhere in chapter 12.

I recommend him to you. Visit his website to find out more. When you visit the website, be prepared to spend hours exploring the wonderful and quirky worlds he has created.

His published books include a series of novels starring the literary detective Thursday Next: The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, and First Among Sequels. The Eyre Affair had received 76 publisher rejections before its eventual acceptance for publication.  Fforde won the Wodehouse prize for comic fiction in 2004 for The Well of Lost Plots.

The Big Over Easy (2005), which shares a similar setting with the Next novels, is a reworking of his first written novel, which initially failed to find a publisher. Its original title was Who Killed Humpty Dumpty? and later had the working title of Nursery Crime, which is the title now used to refer to this series of books. These books describe the investigations of DCI Jack Spratt. The follow-up to The Big Over Easy, The Fourth Bear, was published in July 2006 and focuses on Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

I also love his book Shades of Gray (not to be confused with the book, Fifty Shades of Gray) and his series the Last Dragonslayer. HIs next book, Early Riser is due out in 2017 and I cannot wait.