If you are not a Thursday Next fan you might just want to skip this one; if you have never heard of Thursday Next what are you waiting for?!? Run, don't walk to your local library & get the Eyre Affair. It is good if you have read Jane Eyre but it is not worth postponing the Eyre Affair to get caught up.
Let me begin (again) by saying I have been the side-car on more than one of A's business trips. In the old day, if I didn't tag along some of the time, we would never have seen each other. At first, when people knew I was coming it did not matter that he attended every meeting, every lunch, every dinner & that I went off & did my own thing, whomever he was meeting with acted as though we were taking advantage of this trip to take a vacation. Considering that I/we paid for my own travel expenses, our meals if we did eat together & any past-the-business-portion portion of the hotel bill, while passing on to whatever organization paid for him to be there the reduced airfare (for a Saturday he would never have stayed over if I hadn't been there), the reduced hotel (because we extended our stay beyond the conference, meeting, whatever) this frosted me a bit. The funny thing is how much this has changed; you cannot imagine what perks a company was prepared to throw in if we would leave a few days early for our own vacation, make a stopover near SanFran & spend a couple days/nights there.
Where was I again. Oh, right, M****** was tagging along on a trip & needed to lay low while her husband did the work he was being paid to do. Also she needed something(s) to read while en route to the opposite corner of this country & then out of it. Our bookclub had met a day or so before she was leaving & so I handed over my (library's) copy of Peyton Place, a book we decided against mostly because 1/2 the group had already read it & not for the reasons bookclubs might discard it (it was so potentially popular, next year I am floating Valley of the Dolls). Anyway, she took it & planned to read it & everything was settled...
...when suddenly, the following day...
...I happened to stop at the library & what should I be given but the brand new Thursday Next book, released that very day & I was numero uno on the book holds list. I was so excited I started reading it in traffic (at the red lights, I'm not suicidal). But while I was driving, I realized there was no way I would have time to read this book with the schedule I am looking down on for the next ten days at least (& more like 20, really). & it really truly pains me to have a book I know others want & not read it; it just seems greedy & thoughtless & wrong. I was on the verge of returning it so as not to have it on my conscience when it occurred to me, Thursday Next could go to Vancouver! I could get the good-friend points for passing on a book I didn't have time for anyway & maybe, just maybe if I knew it would be back in a week I could clear & make time for Agent Next.
So it happened that a brand new copy arrived here in Alachua County & 72 hours later traveled due west & then north out of the country. That Thursday, she gets around. I just wish she could hop on back here three weeks ago when I could have spent some time with her, but for now I am rereading all the other Thursdays (because I found a few pockets of time, also most of them are on disc & in this way I can read Thursdays & do something else at the same time).
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