Time for another author I love, and if you’ve never read him, you’re in for one of the biggest treats of your reading existence. He’s a reader’s writer, he’s hilarious, and his imagination will leave you spinning. If you haven’t yet tried Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series, what the heck are you waiting for? You’ll be laughing in mere minutes.

And his other books are also amazing. Note: Bucking the trend, I did not, in fact, make a total fool of myself when I went to a signing of his, braving a snowstorm to get there, back when every day wasn’t a snowstorm. So there’s that, too.

The Eyre Affair: A Thursday Next Novel by Jasper Fforde. Amazon for $10.99. The first installment in Jasper Fforde’s New York Times bestselling series of Thursday Next novels introduces literary detective Thursday Next and her alternate reality of literature-obsessed England

Fans of Douglas Adams and P. G. Wodehouse will love visiting Jasper Fforde’s Great Britain, circa 1985, when time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously: it’s a bibliophile’s dream. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection. But when someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature and plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Brontë’s novel, Thursday is faced with the challenge of her career. Fforde’s ingenious fantasy—enhanced by a Web site that re-creates the world of the novel—unites intrigue with English literature in a delightfully witty mix. Thursday’s zany investigations continue with six more bestselling Thursday Next novels, including One of Our Thursdays is Missing and the upcoming The Woman Who Died A Lot. Visit jasperfforde.com.