My sister kindly met me at the public library on Saturday and lent me her library card. She also gave me a baseball cap, which she assures me I should use any time I visit the public library because it will ward off the attentions of creepy old dudes. I did not take the baseball cap, nor was I bothered by creepy old dudes, but I mostly frequented the children & YA sections, which maybe is not where the creepy old dudes hang out. I checked out loads of books, and none of the ones I have read so far…
35 CommentsTag: fantasy
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…
19 CommentsReview: The Wee Free Men, Terry Pratchett
Published 26 Apr 2010
by
Gin Jenny
You know how sometimes you really, really want to like a book? Because maybe people have suggested it to you with great enthusiasm, and you think they are lovely people, and you don’t want to hurt their feelings by disliking their book? And also it is a book by a British author full of British humo(u)r, and when you were in England maybe several different people told you that Americans have bad senses of humo(u)r and don’t understand irony, and even though you know those people were absurd and Alanis Morrisette is Canadian, there is still a tiny portion of…
33 CommentsReview: Gunnerkrigg Court, Tom Siddell
Published 20 Feb 2010
by
Gin Jenny
Can this count as part of the mini-challenge where we read graphic novels with animals in? Animals are not main characters exactly, but they are around, and rather important. And I didn’t like the other graphic novel I read for the mini-challenge, so I hereby decree Gunnerkrigg Court counts. So let it be written; so let it be done. Gunnerkrigg Court is about a girl called Antimony Carver, who goes to live at a boarding school called Gunnerkrigg Court, following the death of her mother. (Her father is off somewhere doing some sort of we don’t know what he’s doing.) …
9 CommentsReview: The Unwritten, Vol. 1, Mike Carey and Peter Goss
Published 19 Feb 2010
by
Gin Jenny
For the Graphic Novel Challenge! The Unwritten is about a guy called Tom whose father – long since disappeared without a trace – wrote an incredibly popular series of books about a character with Tom’s same name: Tommy Taylor. However, it turns out that all the paperwork proving Tom is his father’s son has been forged. At first it is theorized that he is a fraud, the son of Romanian peasants; then people begin to believe that he is, in fact, Tommy Taylor, brought into existence by the stories themselves. The word made flesh. The Unwritten is set in London,…
18 CommentsReview: 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…
46 CommentsWriting 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…
59 CommentsChrestomanci 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…
21 CommentsReview: 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,…
41 CommentsTwo 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…
10 Comments