... by Jasper Fforde, the second of three books, first being The Eyre Affair;
I'm into the second half and it's mind bogglingly funny. Not hilarious, not a scream but very, very clever .. and thought provoking!
Throw away the rules of time travel and it's enormous fun.
I just had to tell you. I have The Well Of Lost Plots after this. I didn't think I'd get soo absorbed into a book - it could almost be a spin-off of Dirk Gently. There! that's my justification for mentioning it here
Oh, and our Doctor Who, two weeks back kind of paid tribute to Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, albeit was only Earthdeath, not the Universe

that's one of my favorite places to get lost..lol... I'm between mysteries at the moment, so I'll go search eBay for the first one.

I'm in the middle of a fantasy novel right now, with two more books out from the library, and there are at least... seven books I'm planning to read after that, but it sounds good...

Hi Bilbo!

I read all four of these books ('The Eyre Affair', 'Lost in a Good Book', 'The Well of Lost Plots' and 'Something Rotten') last summer. I thought they were brilliant. I'm not sure I picked up on ALL the literary jokes though.

Petunias

Hi BoP, there's a fourth? Wow!

Hi Luke, I know the problem well - I rarely read books but Mrs WordSmith (as was) bought me these three for a Christmas present so they kinda jumped to the top of the pile
Further down the pile are Starship Titanic and Salmon of a Doubt .. only been there two years .. such is my reading habit!

.. due to my reading 'history' .. I probably picked up on very few of the literary jokes!

I love the 4 books I've read, and now it seems there is a 5th coming up in July (refer Jasper's website on http://www.jasperfforde.com/). But Thursday Next doesn't seem to be in it this time - pity.

um .. that was me being anonymous two posts back LOL
Eek! a fifth? Can someone tie Jaspers hands behind his back while I catch up .. like for a year? LOL
Good to see you Redape