And now that the bar’s over, I get to read for actual long periods of time. Talk about luxury—I read an entire book yesterday, Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair, which I’d started over graduation weekend but never had the time to finish.
I really wanted to like this, but it ended up feeling somewhat flat. Granted, that may be my fault; I was really tired, since my grand plan to sleep until noon yesterday was foiled by, first, waking up on the uncomfortable living room couch (apparently it was so hot that night I slept-walked to a room with a ceiling fan), and second, smelling Chad’s toast and realizing I was too hungry to sleep, even though I was back in bed. Also, it was still really hot—it’s no coincidence I finished this in the doctor’s office, which was air-conditioned. At any rate, I think the problem is that the narrator is the wrong kind of deadpan for me to feel involved in the story. There’s still great silly bits in the background, but overall I never cared all that much. I’ll read the next one when it comes out, but I was still distinctly underwhelmed.
I just finished reading this for the first time, and I very much agree with your assessment. I feel like this book was, in an odd way, very close to being one of my favorite books — but it missed. And I’m having a hard time figuring out in what particular dimension it missed.
Some of the individual jokes were pretty good, though.