Skip to content

Tag: Diana Wynne Jones

Second (or third, or fourth) chances

Published 7 Aug 2010 by Gin Jenny

The story of my Diana Wynne Jones reading life is this: Stage One: Begin book. Find world it is set in confusing. Find characters depressing and unpleasant. Give up reading it, or finish it with grim sense of duty to beloved author. Lament dissimilarity to books previously read by Diana Wynne Jones. Attain acceptance by telling self that no author can write good books every single time. Reread Fire and Hemlock consolingly. Stage Two (discovery of DWJ – 2003ish): Receive assurances from sister that book in question is good. Doubt her taste because of Juliet Marillier and similar. Point out…

Continue readingSecond (or third, or fourth) chances
43 Comments

Review: House of Many Ways & Enchanted Glass, Diana Wynne Jones

Published 30 May 2010 by Gin Jenny

I love Diana Wynne Jones, and because I have not told you why I love her with sufficient vehemence or frequency, I will tell you why right now.  It is because her characters discover things about themselves!  They discover things, and they learn!  Glorious!  People in her books proceed by instinct and guesswork, and although these are not my own preferred means of proceeding, I like it that Diana Wynne Jones’s characters succeed.  Their approach to magic is beautifully matter-of-fact.  People can learn to do magic better, or more specifically, from teachers; but at a fundamental level, and often very…

Continue readingReview: House of Many Ways & Enchanted Glass, Diana Wynne Jones
19 Comments

Review: Fire and Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones

Published 14 Feb 2010 by Gin Jenny

So Fire and Hemlock is a retelling of the ballad “Tam Lin”, but it incorporates elements from a dozen other fairy tales, myths, and legends.  I read this article one time that Diana Wynne Jones wrote, about the process of writing Fire and Hemlock and all the different strands of stories she used, which was quite, quite interesting.  The story begins with a young woman called Polly, who is packing her things for Oxford and has come across a book that she remembers being quite different to what it is now.  This leads her to the realization that she has…

Continue readingReview: Fire and Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones
46 Comments

Writing swear words in the margins (Review: Deep Secret, Diana Wynne Jones)

Published 5 Feb 2010 by Gin Jenny

I was trying to figure out, earlier today, what year it would have been that I started reading to my little sister.  I have read her scads of books over the years, but I’m pretty sure the first one was Half Magic, and I’m pretty sure that after finishing it, we went straight on to Magic by the Lake, which means I must have had them both at the time.  I have definite proof that I got Magic by the Lake for Christmas of 1995. Let’s say I started reading to Social Sister early in 1996.  That was fourteen years…

Continue readingWriting swear words in the margins (Review: Deep Secret, Diana Wynne Jones)
59 Comments

Chrestomanci Chrestomanci Chrestomanci

Published 28 Jan 2010 by Gin Jenny

I can’t get any posting done for heaven’s sake!  I have finished and not reviewed five books I was planning to review.  There are two more books sitting atop the bookshelf by my bed, nearly finished but I don’t want to actually finish them because then I’d have seven books that I was planning to review that I haven’t reviewed yet.  Peter and Max and The Book of Secrets will just have to wait.  I AM ONLY HUMAN. In a frenzy of love for Diana Wynne Jones, I fetched out Charmed Life, The Lives of Christopher Chant, and Conrad’s Fate…

Continue readingChrestomanci Chrestomanci Chrestomanci
21 Comments

Review: Witch Week, Diana Wynne Jones

Published 22 Jan 2010 by Gin Jenny

I am selectively craving Diana Wynne Jones right now.  Diana Wynne Jones is so great that I’ve devoted nearly half of the spinning bookshelf my father made me to her books alone.  (The spinning bookshelf denotes great favoritism and also contains Martin Millar, J.K. Rowling, and Rumer Godden.)  (Er, just so we’re clear, it doesn’t spin perpetually, like those spinny restaurants.  It’s more like spinning earring racks at gift shops, except bigger and wooden and it has books on it rather than accessories.) Does anyone else take great notice of words whose letters are all standards, which is to say,…

Continue readingReview: Witch Week, Diana Wynne Jones
41 Comments

Two more short reviews

Published 17 Jan 2010 by Gin Jenny

Sheesh, I just can’t get it together to write proper reviews this month.  So here are two unproper ones. One Perfect Day, Rebecca Mead I love the title of this book, but it wasn’t as SHOCKING as I had hoped.  I was anticipating lots of SHOCKING anecdotes about the SHOCKING American tendency towards excess in weddings.  And there was a bit of that, sure, but the book is properly called One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding, and it is indeed mainly focused on the selling and marketing of weddings.  Mead talks about many aspects of the marketing…

Continue readingTwo more short reviews
10 Comments

Review: Dogsbody, Diana Wynne Jones

Published 16 Nov 2009 by Gin Jenny

There are only a very few books by Diana Wynne Jones that I don’t own, and here they are and this is why: 1. The Time of the Ghost.  Written in 1981, right before Diana Wynne Jones went on her crazy winning streak made out of amazing brilliance and win, between 1981 and 1986, this is my very least by a lot favorite of Diana Wynne Jones’s books.  I have read it over and over, and I have never managed to like it. 2. A Tale of Time City.  Because I have only started liking it recently, and I have…

Continue readingReview: Dogsbody, Diana Wynne Jones
17 Comments

The Child that Books Built, Francis Spufford

Published 13 Mar 2009 by Gin Jenny

I read about this on Nick Hornby’s Waterstone’s “Writer’s Table” – authors pick out books that are supposed to have “shaped their writing”, and they write little reviews in a few words.  I can’t remember why I was looking at Nick Hornby’s Waterstone’s Writer’s Table – although Nick Hornby is absolutely inextricably linked in my mind to the month I spent in London in 2005.  There was a heat stroke in the second week of July, and the dorm where we were staying didn’t have air conditioning of course, and my room was on the third (American fourth) floor, so…

Continue readingThe Child that Books Built, Francis Spufford
4 Comments

Year of the Griffin, Diana Wynne Jones

Published 13 Jan 2009 by Gin Jenny

I didn’t exactly mean to read this.  I am still intending to read all of Shakespeare’s plays, which I had forgotten about until just now.  I am in the middle of rereading the entire Sandman.  I have a whole bunch of books out of the library about sexual ethics and other interesting things – art controversies, STDs, Bohemians – and instead of reading any of those things, I’ve been reading Diana Wynne Jones.  Once I read The Dark Lord of Derkholm I yearned and yearned for Year of the Griffin and couldn’t concentrate on anything else. In Year of the…

Continue readingYear of the Griffin, Diana Wynne Jones
1 Comment