(no subject)

[owlectomy]

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 --



I just got to the part where we find out he's from Wales!!

Comments

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Ha. I hadn't read anything or much (can't remember) by her either, for very similar reasons. I need to read it again! And try some others.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Oh hey, Brooklyn. Now I have two other friends living there--a longtime online friend and an even more longtime in-RL friend. It's like a convergence! Too bad there's virtually no chance of my winding up in the NYC area again in the foreseeable future. :(

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

(Also, I cannot imagine reading this in Japanese. And I'll stop responding to myself now, really.)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Jones isn't easy in *English*, she says morosely. Some stories are easily followed; some have more twists than a garden hose left out in the rain. Like dreams, they make sense while reading, but afterwards I have the hardest time remembering the plot. I've read the sequel to Howl twice, and I don't think I could tell you anything about it.

That said, how *could* you have missed DWJ?

[ex-gnomicut.livejournal.com]

I pride myself that I finally understand the timelines in Hexwood. Now, to be fair, I needed to because I wrote a paper on them, and it didn't happen until after there had been double digits number of reads over the years and finally I sat down with pen and paper and reread the book about five times in a row until I made to make sense. But I never thought that would happen!

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Precisely. This is what it takes to understand DWJ: read twenty times, keep copious notes, then map time line on graph paper.

And it still doesn't work for Fire and Hemlock.

(Chrestomanci is easier, I'll grant you that.)

[(Anonymous)]

DWJ is also a great read-aloud. That's a great way to make sure you don't miss anything. With most authors, you can skip over descriptions of (say) cloud formations. Not with DWJ. Everything is potentially important.

[hapaxnym.livejournal.com]

DWJ is the absolute master of the Ourobouros narrative.

HEXWOOD is fiendish.
DEEP SECRET is brain-splodey.
And ARCHERS GOON is the only book to be written on a Moebius strip.

(I didn't realize that the over-arc of the Dalemark books was another infinite loop, until I finished CROWN. Curse you and your twisty plotting, DWJ!)

(Oh, and if you can find it, TOUGH GUIDE TO FAIRYLAND is the funniest "How Not To Write Fantasy" ever crafted)