Jasper Fforde's debut novel, The Eyre Affair. Here's the blurb from the back cover:

Welcome to a surreal version of Great Britain, circa 1985, where time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pets of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem, militant Baconians heckle performances of Hamlet, and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection, until someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature. When Jane Eyre is plucked from the pages of Bronte's novel, Thursday must track down the villain and enter the novel herself to avert a heinous act of literary homicide.

I enjoy the books: they're cute and clever, and make me feel oh-so-intelligent when I catch the jokes. (I know I miss a lot, but Jane Eyre was one of my favourite stories when I was 10 or so, so I caught most of that one.)

I look forward to your review.

I'm not crazy about that jokey Eyre Affair stuff, but I LOVE "To Serve Them All My Days." I've read it at least four or five times, most recently a couple years ago, and I can't think of a better or more moving account of why teaching is a vocation and not just a regular old line of work. I especially like how he handles the problem of needing to convey that there are large numbers of schoolboys that pass through over the years while simultaneously showing that as a teacher, you always end up with a few special relationships, and they're rarely with the most academically talented or "star" students.

To Serve Them All My Days is one of my all time favorite top three books! I'm so happy that you are enjoying it. I re-read it probably every couple of years.

Can't believe Fforde is appearing to you *just now*! -- but so glad he is! Hilarious - and they get better (I think). Enjoy!

Didn't Woody Allen write something like this in the mid 70's? I believe it was in one of his books of VERY short stories. Its a dim memory, but it seems to me the story was about somebody who was able to enter into works of literature. He started dating Madame Bovary, which greatly distrubed English professors everywhere.

IF you like time travel, you might like Connie Rice's work. I'm esp. fond of "To Say Nothing of the DOg", as I love Three Men in a Boat.

Agree with Kate on "To Say Nothing of the Dog" (Though "Doomsday Book" is better, and "Bellweather" is even funnier)... but the author is Connie Willis, not Rice.

Bellwether's *really* funny if you know the area. As a friend of mine said about Boulder: "They want to be laid back, but they're trying too hard."

Erin, I loved To Serve them All My Days. The BBC also did a wonderful version of it. If you can find it in your local video store - by all means rent it.

I have Fforde on my too read list but haven't quite gotten there yet. I do look forward to it.

fspotenz,

The Woody Allen story is The Kugelmass Episode, published in the New Yorker in 1977.