"The Well of Lost Plots" by Jasper Fforde

Summary: In this third Thursday Next installment, Thursday is hiding out in the book Caversham Heights, awaiting the birth of her child in relative safety.  However, Thursday's much needed rest is not about to come easily.  Thursday finds herself forgetting about her eradicated husband, Landen, through the work of her nemesis Aornis.  Meanwhile, as Thursday becomes a full member of Jurisfiction, the policing force within books, she becomes embroiled in the mystery of the deaths of several members.

Musings: I had so much fun with the last book in the series that I was eager to pick this one up.  In fact, a large reason I reread Wuthering Heights was because it makes an appearance in The Well of Lost Plots.  This book follows the familiar path of the first two and is equally enjoyable, though not significantly different.  In fact, the general plot of the story is already hazy to me, but I had a good number of laugh out loud moments and chuckling at the literature and grammar jokes.  I enjoyed the explanation for why Americans don't use "u" in words like color and flavor and for why an entire chapter of Joyce's Ulysses has no punctuation.  Seeing the whole Wuthering Heights crew in anger management was fabulous (I would have loved more with those characters!).  Probably my favorite part, though, was a entire page about "an untidy man wearing a hat named Wyatt" (15).  If only I could convince my students how hilarious misplaced modifiers can be.

I love this series because it makes me proud of being a stringent grammarian and proud of having read so many "classic" texts.  It's like discovering other people share your nerdy habit.

- See my reviews of book one in the series, The Eyre Affair, and book two in the series, Lost in a Good Book.