Recently I made some pasta salad; the way I make it first requires sauteeing cubes of chicken breast in a couple of gloves of crushed garlic and a little olive oil. So I was doing that, and a lovely, savory, garlicky aroma was permeating the kitchen. Alan commented on how great it smelled and how much he loved garlic. At that point, I had an idea: you know what would be great? A super-villain named Garlicious, who inflicts people with irreversible halitosis. His partner in crime is Flatulor. I’ll let you guess what Flatulor’s super-evil-power is.

I’m behind on book reviews - I want to tell everyone about The Big Over Easy, by Jasper Fforde. Afton commented that she’s read it already, but the rest of you - to Borders, posthaste! This is a very, very funny book, with the best-ever premise and it’s a pretty darn good murder mystery as well. The premise is that, when Humpty Dumpty (real name Humperdinck) sat on a wall and had a great fall, maybe that fall wasn’t accidental. Or maybe it wasn’t the fall that killed him! Maybe he was shot - or drugged - or something even more sinister. There are some decent surprise twists in the murder-mystery portion of the narrative, which is itself a plethora of literary allusions, puns, and parodies of traditional mystery plot devices. It’s an extraordinarily fun read for anyone who enjoys mystery, fantasy, humour or suspense novels - heck, for anyone who enjoys reading! Find it, read it, laugh yourself silly.

I liked The Big Over Easy so much I bought another of Fforde’s books, The Eyre Affair, which is the first of a series of four books starring detective Thursday Next, a literary operative in a quirky universe that has some parallels, but also surreal and hilarious differences, to present-day Great Britain. I found this one both better and worse than TBOE. Again, there were lots of great puns and a narrative fraught with literary allusions, such as the appearance of Detective Inspector Oswald Mandias, Yorkshire CID - get it??? Heh, I’ve always had quite a thing for Shelley. On the negative side, I was completely bored by and ambivalent to the romantic storyline; I wanted more action from Thursday and less mooning about Landen Parke-Laine. But so many other things were hysterically funny - for example, a couple of the characters go to a show that requires props and audience participation, but instead of Rocky Horror, it’s Richard III. A common complaint I read on Amazon reviews was that the concept was more interesting than the story itself; while I don’t think that’s completely fair, I do think that the more of a literature buff/bibliophile you are, the more you will like this novel. Overall verdict: quite enjoyable and, while I plan on picking up the rest of his “Thursday Next” novels, it wasn’t great enough to compel me to drop everything and hightail it to the bookstore.