This was one of the better attributes of the Reader Feedback Loop. When readers imbue a book with their own interpretations the weather always comes first, then colours, symmetry, trees, architecture, fixtures and fittings and finally texture. Birdsong, however, is generally not something brought alive by the reader's imagination, so the birds still have to be provided. Since we were now in the unread zone of the novel, the birds were either off duty or populating another book elsewhere. There is a certain amount of economics within the BookWorld; Austen birds are the same as Brontë ones - listen carefully and you'll hear.

(Jasper Fforde, One of our Thursdays is missing, Kapitel 12)


The Lady of Shalott was of an indeterminate age and might once have been plain before the rigours of arstistic interpretation got working on her. This was the annoying side of the Feedback Loop; irrespective of how she had once looked or even wanted to look, she was now a pre-Raphaelite beauty with long flaxen tresses, flowing white gown and a silver forehead band. She wasn't the only one to be physically morphed by Reader Expectation. Miss Havisham was now elderly whether she liked it or not, and Sherlock Holmes wore a deerstalker and smoked a ridiculously large pipe. The problem wasn't just confined to the classics. Harry Potter was seriously pissed off that he'd have to spend the rest of his life looking like Daniel Radcliffe.

(Jasper Fforde, One of our Thursdays is missing, Kapitel 7)


*Seufz* Eigentlich könnte man fast jeden dritten Satz aus dem Buch zitieren, aber die müssen erstmal reichen. Weitere Fundstücke folgen. Auch aus anderen Büchern natürlich.