Summer's Here

And the first book on my list is Something Rotten, the fourth in the Thursday Next, Literary Detective series. I've written about this series before, but the basic premise is that Thursday is a member of a special police force in an alternate England who can enter books to correct changes caused by things like by other people illegally entering the books or characters escaping from the books. It's difficult to explain, especially when I add that time-travel and a vampire hunter are involved, but what I really love about these books is all the clever wordplay and smart literary references to all periods of popular fiction. For instance, as you can tell from the title, Hamlet (the character, not the play) plays a major part in this book, and towards the beginning, Thursday brings him out of his play and into the real world, at which point she has to convince him to stop speaking in iambic pentameter so that the average population will be able to understand what he's saying. It's a fun book, but you still have to think a little bit, which is why I'm liking it.

I refuse to go through this weekend without seeing Batman Begins. Don't know what's taking me so long.