Inkheart - Cornelia Funke

I finished Inkheart just after lunch today. It's an interesting book, and the pace certainly accelerates over the last few chapters, but some of the early ones seemed rather stodgy. I don't know if this is just the effect of it being an English translation since I can't read German, and therefore I can't check just how stodgy - or not - the original was in German. It's got some pointed warnings about the perils of getting too involved in a story: in this case Mo, the father of the book's heroine Meggie, possesses the power to bring the characters of a book out of the book and into the real world, which sounds delightful, but turns out to have terrible consequences.

I liked the chapter quotations from The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Pete Pan, etc., although they didn't seem to have much relationship to the actual chapters' contents, except in the case where Tolkien's works were quoted, oh and one from (I think) The Borribles. However, I didn't think much of the villains - they were rather two-dimensional, and even the main character did not seem very 3-D, but Meggie's mother's aunt (!), Elinor, the book-obsessed spinster was great fun. Elinor cares only for her books, and does not much like people, and especially she does not like people to touch her books, except Mo, who is a bookbinder (or Book Doctor as Meggie prefers to call him). This trait of Elinor's reminded me irresistably of Terry Pratchett's Librarian, who dislikes people wearing out the words in his books ! For someone who is so disinterested in people, Elinor nevertheless manages to get very involved in the "adventures" that are forced on Mo, Meggie and (by default) Elinor herself.

I think this is a YA book for real bookworms - if the reader has never lost themselves in a book to the extent where they've been utterly oblivious to what's going on around them, then this book will be wasted on them. On the other hand if, like me, the reader is quite capable of being so immersed in a book, then they'll enjoy it a good deal.