Band Name of the Day

04/12/04’s illustrious band:

Prose Portal

Brought to you by Jasper Fforde, author of The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book and The Well of Lost Plots.

Jasper Fforde’s are sci-fi for the literary set or literature for the sci-fi set -- the best of both worlds for me. In his version of 1985 England, literature is the popular art form of the masses, with fans rabid enough to start up gangs devoted to their favorite novelists, poets and playwrights. There’s also a whole division of the Special Operatives Network, the Literary Detectives (LiteraTecs) that concentrates on nothing but crimes involving the printed word.

The heroine of Fforde’s works is Thursday Next, a LiteraTec about my own age who tracks literary criminals throughout the country -- and even into the pages of the books themselves. Her eccentric uncle has invented a device called the Prose Portal that can, using some strange combination of maggots and megawatts, insert a person into the story of a book, or bring a character from the book into the real world. You could literally get lost in (or hide out in) a good book, and in Thursday’s world, people do.

Now how cool is that? Imagination becomes reality! Like any bibliophile, I’ve spent many an hour immersed in books. But to actually go there, to meet the characters, see what they see, hear what they hear, smell what they smell . . . well, I’d pay a handsome sum for the device that could enable such transport. And so would the bad guys. I’m not going to spoil it for you by telling the whole story, but I do highly recommend these absorbing adventures.

I spent most of Easter weekend on the couch at Sensational Acres lost in good books and movies. The cats and I enjoyed some welcome R&R and entertained friends for a Rite of Spring bonfire, complete with ritual s’mores, and ate ice cream for dinner at least once. It was very nice to enjoy my pleasures at leisure rather than squeezing them in around obligations. I hope your break was as restful as mine.

Today around the world: April 12 is Easter Monday to quite a few people, and it’s Cosmonaut’s Day in the Russian Federation.

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