April 2012
110 posts
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Surprise stop on the DWJ blog tour -- Sarah Rees... →
A marvelous, heartfelt tribute from the terrific Sarah Rees Brennan.
“Books can be like a light in a hearth or a beacon welcoming you, something to rush toward. Books like Diana Wynne Jones’s taught me that.”
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Thirteenth stop on the DWJ blog tour -- Chronicles... →
Michelle Raborn meditates on the impact of Diana’s work across time and generations.
“I used to think my experience with Diana Wynne Jones was incredibly personal, unique to me, something I could never publicly share. But as this blog tour has progressed it has become increasingly clear that Diana Wynne Jones transformed many lives.”
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Remembering the Master: A Letter to Diana Wynne... →
I was inspired by Maggie Stiefvater’s post the other day to write the letter I always meant to send while Ms. Jones was still here to read it. She is dearly loved and greatly missed <3
— Kaye
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Tribute: One Incredible Author
The way I discovered Diana Wynne Jones’s work is perhaps a bit unusual. When I was in elementary school, my older brother had a friend who was into anime and Japan and such. She eventually got me hooked on anime, especially the works of Hayao Miyazaki (still one of my favorite directors). It might have been 2004 or maybe 2005 when my mom brought home one of his movies for me,...
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Tribute: Kelly Wood
“Oh, bother.”
My sister and I listened to the Charmed Life book on tape on a trip to Maine, many years ago. I’d already read the book—okay, I’d already read the book about twenty times—but I wanted to share my love with her. Something went wrong in the middle of the trip (I can’t remember now what it was) and we just looked at each other and said...
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Tribute: Mercy Morris
I have loved DWJ books since I was an unhappy and lonely school child, I am now approaching 46, and still have them and read them regularly. My favourites are Dogsbody, Fire & Hemlock, Howl’s Moving Castle & The Time of the Ghost; but it feels bad to pick favourites. They are all fantastic. What marked them out as different for me was the fairness and the balance, the fun and the...
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Twelfth stop on the DWJ blog tour -- Bookshelves... →
Leila Roy finds the common thread in The Ogre Downstairs, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Dark Lord of Derkholm.
“All of them highlight DWJ’s ability to give anything—and I do mean *anything*, whether it be a toffee bar, an intelligent goose, or a broom—life and personality. Each of the three is very, very funny at times, but never, ever slight; each also has moments of real...
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Another animated Moving Castle! →
Look out, Miyazaki — here comes Heather Dixon!
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Tribute: The Wizard Howl
Oh, the Wizard Howl! Where to begin? Where to begin to describe how this one character was so unlike any other I’d ever read? I liked other fictional boys before The Wizard Howl (Encyclopedia Brown, of course) but Howl was the first I crushed on. At 12 years old, I was instantly taken with him - his arrogance, his pride, his vanity - they were as frustrating and puzzling to me as they...
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Eleventh stop on the DWJ blog tour -- Amy's... →
Amy tells how Diana Wynne Jones’s lively brain wakens her own.
“Each book of hers was so unique— unique from each other, unique from everything else, and all so ALIVE. I developed a new theory. So many of her books involve people who can travel between alternate universes and parallel dimensions, I decided, THAT’S HOW SHE DOES IT. Every one of these worlds and...
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Tenth stop on the DWJ blog tour -- Charlotte's... →
Charlotte writes about the inestimable pleasure of rereading, and touches upon a few books that haven’t previously been mentioned.
“I have the sense that the stories were so complicatedly vivid in Diana’s imagination that words are barely enough to hold them. The reader is challenged to surrender herself to the flow, trusting that what is completely baffling will someday make...
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Tribute: Deep Secret and the beginning of a...
I discovered the worlds of Pratchett, Gaiman, and Wynne Jones at much the same time, after a lifetime of reading fantasy.
I read “Deep Secret” as an adult before reading any of Diana Wynne Jones’ other books. Obviously someone in our small-town library had liked her writing, as there were quite a few in the catalogue. I was mesmerized by the sense of the worlds, the...
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Robin McKinley on Diana Wynne Jones →
Robin’s thoughts on attending last Sunday’s celebration — and the speech she made, about Diana as a writer and a friend.
“Diana wouldn’t have had to be half the charming and fascinating human being she was to knock me over. But she *was* that charming and fascinating — even goofy with jet lag and culture shock. She was manifestly a wizard of enormous powers.”
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Alena's tribute →
I discovered Diana Wynne Jones with Year of the Griffin. It’s a sequel, so it seems an odd starting place, but it worked well for me. When you’re a kid, adults assume that you aren’t as smart as they are just because you’re younger. They look down on you, they use smaller words when they’re talking to you, they pat you on the head—physically or metaphorically....
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A quote from THE GAME
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Ninth stop on the DWJ blog tour -- A Chair, a... →
Liz Burns on rereading Fire and Hemlock:
“Writing this review is hard for two reasons: first, because I kept getting swept into the story and forgetting to take notes to write up a review; and second, because how can anyone else’s words do justice for Diana Wynne Jones?”
Diana on HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE (the book and the... →
Right from the source — selected interview questions and answers taken from the “Extras” section of the paperback edition of Howl’s Moving Castle, reissued in 2008.
“I was surprised by Miyazaki’s Moving Castle, because I had not thought of the castle having feet. In the book I wrote, the castle is more like a hovercraft and floats an inch or so above the ground. But I am very fond of...
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Eighth stop on the blog tour -- Sara Ryan! →
Fire and Hemlock is a multilayered book, and Sara Ryan peels away some of those layers.
“It’s exactly that space, between memory and dream, that FIRE AND HEMLOCK occupies, and why it’s so perfectly a book about stories as well as everything else it is.”
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Surprise stop on the blog tour -- Book Box Daily! →
Kristin at the Scholastic Book Club’s Book Box pays tribute.
“I learned that everyday things can be magical if you just use a little imagination. Diana’s worlds were richly complex, peopled with characters who felt so real you could almost expect to see them sitting next to you on the train.”
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Random Musings of a Bibliophile on DWJ →
Brandy on many things, including Fire and Hemlock:
“It is dark. It is complex. It is shadowed with multiple shades of gray. Nothing in it is clear. The characters are often unlikable and yet so easy to relate to. The ending requires multiple rereadings and I have yet to run across a person who can actually *explain* it.”
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Garth Nix on Diana Wynne Jones
Auras and Dragons and Single Malt: Meeting Diana Wynne Jones in Edinburgh
I only met Diana Wynne Jones in person once, at the Edinburgh Book Festival in 2003. I was fortunate enough to share several dinners with her over the course of a week or so, along with other authors and publishers, and also to drink whisky with her late one night in the hotel (I never drink whisky. I made an exception.)....
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Random Musings of a Bibliophile on DWJ →
Brandy on many things, including Fire and Hemlock:
“It is dark. It is complex. It is shadowed with multiple shades of gray. Nothing in it is clear. The characters are often unlikable and yet so easy to relate to. The ending requires multiple rereadings and I have yet to run across a person who can actually *explain* it.”
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"Her books saved my life."
I have this list of of books. It’s titled The Books That Saved My Life (this is not hyperbole, mind you, I had a rather difficult adolescence and to this day combat severe depression and anxiety). I recommend the books on this list indiscriminately to anyone and everyone. DWJ’s books comprise at least a third of this list. Even now when I’m having a hard time in the world I curl...
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Diana in her own words →
Here is the autobiography Diana originally wrote for Something About the Author. It now lives on her official site — as do a number of wonderful photographs, which you can easily find.
“I think I write the kind of books I do because the world suddenly went mad when I was five years old.”
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Thanks, Shelf Awareness! →
The terrific Jenny Brown talked to the two of us — Sharyn November and Virginia Duncan — about our respective relationships with Diana Wynne Jones.
“She was a writer’s writer and a reader’s reader … [and] to hear two of her longtime editors tell it, she could be an intimidating presence.”
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Ten Year Olds on Unexpected Magic
DWJ is, as anyone would expect, an all time favorite at our bookstore. I wanted to share two Wynne Jones related posts from my pre-blog era newspaper column. This one from 2004 canvassed a reading group of ten year olds on Unexpected Magic, and this piece from 2003 encourages area residents to get with the DWJ program. I do want to thank Virginia Duncan and Sharyn November for their much...
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Publishers Weekly celebrates Diana! →
Publishers Weekly covers our online celebration, with a few lovely extras!
Thanks, PW — and thanks, Kit Alderdice, for your thoughtful coverage.
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Mary Anne Mohanraj on Diana Wynne Jones
Diana Wynne Jones published more than fifty books, and I have read them all, I think, some of them more than once. They’re clever, and funny, and sweet, and utterly charming; they hold up to re-reading. I’m sure she’s influenced my own writing, in ways I don’t even know. She’s perhaps best known for Howl’s Moving Castle, which was adapted into a film of the same...
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A nod from the Guardian →
The Guardian’s dedicated site for (and by) children and teenagers offers a tribute and invites contributions.
“Her work does what novels do best - suck you into a world so magical and gripping that you don’t want to be returned to the everyday when you close the pages.”
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A word from behind the scenes →
Phyllis Larkin was, for many years, “the intermediary, for lack of a better word, between the copy editor and Diana on the path to a manuscript ready for setting.” (Some publishing houses refer to this person as a production editor.) You can imagine the stories she has to tell …
“I loved working with her on her books, which range from fully imagined fantasy worlds to...
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Seventh stop on the DWJ blog tour -- Stacked! →
At a crucial time in her life, Jen Petro-Roy discovered literary community through Diana’s work.
“Amidst the turbulent (or what I then considered turbulent) atmosphere of high school, of preparing for college, of change, sometimes a magical universe where anything can happen is exactly what a girl needs.”
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Sixth stop on the DWJ blog tour -- Jenny Davidson! →
Jenny Davidson — whose post was hit by the famous DWJ travel jinx! — on recurring tropes throughout Diana’s work, and why she returns to the books again and again.
“There is some core sense in which Diana Wynne Jones is my absolutely favorite novelist. Her books have an unusual quality of being both delightful and emotionally true.”
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Diana's celebration is Sunday, April 22! →
If you’re in the UK, a reminder that the celebration of Diana’s life and work takes place this Sunday in Bristol, at 2p.
Family and friends, her agent, her publishers from the UK and USA, and fellow writers, will describe what Diana meant to them. There will be a display of photographs, extracts from an interview, and from the films made of her books, and a reading from the unfinished...
