(no subject)

First, a horrible confession: I have never read a book by Diana Wynne Jones.

Which is fairly inexcusable for a YA librarian. And I don't know how I missed her, exactly; she had books coming out all through my childhood, though I missed out on a lot of books because I stopped reading children's books in favor of a steady diet of Pern.

In 2001 or 2002, after the movie adaptation of Howl's Moving Castle had been announced, I was prowling around the children's section of a Japanese bookstore and found the Japanese translation of Howl's Moving Castle.

I bought it. I thought it would be easy.

I read two pages and put it down with the full intention of picking it back up again. That's how it usually goes.

So now, after having seen the movie twice and picked up the book again, it looks as though I might actually finish it. It is so delicately and tightly plotted, and having seen the movie, feeling like I know the characters, it delights me when something that wasn't even hinted at in the movie version shows up. I don't think you could do it justice in a 90-minute movie anyway, and I don't bear the movie any ill will for being an extremely loose adaptation. But you could have knocked me over with a feather --

( Spoilers! )