Something Rotten...

[fajrdrako]

Why have I been so tired all day?

I went to hear Jasper Fforde speak at the Table Vegetarian restaurant, an odd but pleasant place for such a reading. Jasper Fforde was everything I might have hoped: funny, inventive, informative, and with a lovely Welsh voice... not a Welsh accent so much, but a Welsh voice. Some quotes:

• Ideas are promiscuous. They lead to other ideas.


• I reread the books so I can understand them better. Or maybe misunderstand them on a deeper level.


• Academics with baseball bats.


• I was forced to read Wuthering Heights at school and hated it. It nearly put me off the Brontes forever. What everyone in that book needed was a good rage channelling session.


• If you can have Predator v. Alien, you can have Hamlet v. Iago.


• Lethal Weapon is basically Hamlet. Mad Max is Hamlet too, but with less talking.


• The government is giving us more choice, which is a euphemism for less choice... When you give Hamlet a choice, he spontaneously soliloquizes.


• I play music in a continuous loop, usually music from the 80s, to my children's horror. But it keeps them out of the room.


• I wrote about people dressing up as fictional characters and I thought it was so original. Then I was walking down the street in Calgary one day and met two Klingons.... I went away thinking nothing I write is so unusal at all.


• I wanted to write about a director named Diddly Squat but I couldn't fit him in.


• What's the connection between Emma Hamilton and Hamlet? They both had best friends named Horatio. And Nelson laid siege to Copenhagen.


• Lord Nelson is trying to commit suicide by using the whole French navy.


• I always read Thomas Hardy backwards so it has a happy ending.


• I think Jane Eyre is a fantastic book, a fantastic character.

It was fun to see dargit there, too. Without her early arrival, we probably wouldn't have got a seat - I am grateful! There were five of us from Apaplexy, with assorted friends and spouses.

Comments

[slashy-me.livejournal.com]

lol!! all great comments! I especially loved: I reread the books so I can understand them better. Or maybe misunderstand them on a deeper level.

nancy

[katkim.livejournal.com]

Oh! I adore his books. I queued once to get my book signed, but would loved to have heard a talk. I'm not jealous at all ;)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I loved that one too. (Story of my life!) He was great.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Aren't the books fun? He says his next book will be about the murder of Humpty Dumpty, which he finds very suspicious.

His talk was terrific. He's beautiful and charming, and has such a lovely voice. I was trying not to gush too much.