THE WELL OF LOST PLOTS

I'm enjoying some light fare, The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde. It's the third book in a series about a detective named Thursday Next who lives in a parallel universe where the Crimean War never ended and dodos are popular pets and literature is incredibly important. Next and different fictional characters jump between the real world and various books to solve mysteries. Sometimes the writing can be gimmicky and the stories chaotic, but the literary jokes are worth it. Take this, for example, when Next visits an unfinished fantasy novel (all setting, no characters or plot) that has become a sanctuary for fictional animals:

“There seem to be an awful lot of rabbits,” I observed, looking around.
“Ah, yes,” replied Perkins . . . “we never did get the lid on reproduction within Watership Down—if left to their own devices, the book would be so full of dandelion-munching lagomorphs that every other word would be rabbit within a year. Still, Lennie enjoys it here when he has some time off.”

But then, I love, love, love cheap Of Mice and Men jokes.