The Fourth Bear

It seems like we wait forever to summer to start, and then it's over before we ever really had a chance to enjoy it. School is starting in just a couple of weeks, and with it will come a coolness in the air and color to the leaves. Wasn't it just yesterday that we were still waiting for the river to warm up enough for swimming? I feel like autumn is sneaking up on me. I'm sure that much of it is due to the upcoming move. I'll be getting the kids ready for school while trying to pack up everything we've acquired in the last two years. It never seems like much until you start putting it in boxes.

The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde is the second book in the Nursery Crime series starring police detective Jack Spratt and his partner Mary Mary. In this entry, Jack and Mary investigate the mysterious disappearance of Goldilocks after she vandalized the home of the Three Bears. Fforde's world is populated by the many strange denizens of fairy tales and nursery rhymes along with the occasional mythological or Shakespearean creature, oh and don't forget about the aliens. His books are full of in-jokes and literary references. Each chapter is headed by a quotation from a nonsensical, nonexistent book that sometimes relates to the following chapter and sometimes makes the reader shake their head in confusion. This book is much stronger than the first in the series which seemed to wander off a bit into Fforde showing off his intellect rather than entertaining. In The Fourth Bear, he's settled into a rhythm that I can see him easily sustaining in future installments of the series. There are few laugh out loud moments in the book, but it's definitely a book that will leave you with a smile on your face.

I finally broke the top 5000 reviewers on Amazon.com yesterday. It's hard to believe that there are that many people reviewing things for Amazon, but when I started back in March I was around 55,000. My goal is to be in the top 1000, because then I get a snazzy little button under my name on the site. I'm still reading The Weather Makers. Sometimes it's an easy read, but then it gets bogged down in heavy scientific reading. This was supposed to have been written for layment without science degrees. I'd hate to read the difficult version! Have a great day!