I used to listen to the Book Radio Channel.  This as a 24/7, 365 internet channel where books and radio serials were read aloud to the subscribers and I liked it.   Instead of the same 250 songs in rotation, I got stories.  Some were familiar and loved but often they were something new and either way, I was entertained.  Imagine, a channel whose programming targeted my special interest!  Evidently that interest was too specialized to be profitable because they closed the channel down but not before I found another book worth keeping.   Trust Book Radio Channel to read Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair out loud.   This fantasy is a bibliophile’s dream.

The Eyre Affair is one of those alternate-universe stories but one where Readers are the Cool Guys on Campus.   Seriously.   Writers are treated like rock stars.  The populace likes watching Shakespearean plays (In one place, “Richard III” is watched and performed nightly by a group of  Rocky-Horror type devotees) and the Baconites go around witnessing like Mormons.  There are other, less-startling ideas like a time-traveling guard and a Crimean war that lasts longer than a century but nothing compares to a public that cherishes books. The security force for all this bibliophila is the agency LiteraTec.   And LiteraTec’s top agent and narrator here is the incredible Thursday Next.

In many ways, Thursday is a standard fictional detective.  She has tragedy in her past, (PTSD from her own service in Crimea as well the sorrow of a lost brother and injured fiance) she has to fight her superiors in the service almost as much as the bad guys and (oh yeah) she’s as resourceful and cool as James Bond.   She doesn’t see this, but we do.   And she’s the only one who can save great published literature from the arch-villain, Acheron Hades.

“How can anyone hurt a published novel?” I hear you cry.   Well in this universe, an author literally creates another reality when writing fiction and someone with an original manuscript and the right skills or technology  can breach the novel’s reality and change the story.  When the original manuscript is changed, all of the subsequent printings change to match it.  (Now imagine if this was true. They’d have to lock up the Harry Potter manuscripts to keep people from leaping into Hogwarts.)  Acheron Hades acquires this technology and murders an incidental character in Martin Chuzzlewit.  Great Britain goes nuts.  Then, he’s threatens Jane Eyre.

How Thursday goes after the bad guy and solves a few other problems is the rest of the story and I can promise Jane Eyre fans a delightful twist but I won’t reveal the rest.   Give The Eyre Affair a try if you like fantasy or books in general and if you like it, there are more in this series.  At least you’ll see a world where literacy is Cool.   A place where Book Radio is King.