#Diane Wynne Jones

[awoodenpen]

I know it is a Heresy to say it, but these are of the many reasons why the book was better.

ghibli failed to adapt this

[mendedrum]

oooh the cook andthe dog in House of Many Ways is sakdflkdaghag Jamal's!!!! what?!!?

THIS IS WHY WE READ BOOKS IN ORDER, FOLKS

(CYING)

[ibrithir-was-here]

How the heck is there not more talk about Tanith Lee??

Like my gosh, the woman wrote, according to her wiki, 90 books, over 300 short stories, two World Fantasy Awards, and was the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award/Augus Derleth Award and wrote for tv shows.

Like, it's not like she just wrote a heck ton but wasn't very good! She was clearly very good she won awards, and i've read a swath of her stuff across different genres and really enjoyed most of it. I mean that even if not each one has been my cup of tea I can at least appreciate the skill and quite a lot I have truly enjoyed. She's got great prose and style and imagination. Not everything obviously was a banger, but they've all been at least well written, which is harder to come by in writing than you might think.

But nobody ever seems to talk about her?? And I feel like the fantasy crowd on here would really enjoy her stuff. The woman has done stuff in pretty much every genre from what I can see, but I never see her listed on fantasy authors like Clive Barker or Diana Wynne Jones or Neil Gaiman or Terry Pratchett or Diane Duane even though she was writing at the same time and has a similar sort of '80s Doing Cool Stuff with Fantasy vibe' I feel like people who like those authors would enjoy though she's very much her own style of author.

Anyway this was really just me putting out a rant that such a prolific and talented author seems to have fallen by the wayside and I think it's really a shame

Heck she even did a witch-queen fighting againt vampire Snow White a whole decade before Neil Gaiman did his phenomenal Snow Glass Apples and it's also excellent, give a look here:

[book--brackets]

Fantasy Book Exploration Post (Part 2)

Here are the rest of the titles from Best Fantasy Book with links to info about them!

The Chronicles of Chrestomanci by Diana Wynne Jones

Goodreads

Storygraph

Thriftbooks

SecondSale

Dragon Slippers by Jessica Day George

Goodreads

Storygraph

Thriftbooks

SecondSale

Young Wizards by Diane Duane

Goodreads

Storygraph

Thriftbooks

SecondSale

The Unicorn Chronicles by Bruce Coville

Goodreads

Storygraph

Thriftbooks

SecondSale

Deltora Quest by Emily Rodda

Goodreads

Storygraph

Thriftbooks

SecondSale :(

Valdemar: Vows and Honor by Mercedes Lackey

Goodreads

Storygraph

Thriftbooks

SecondSale

In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan

Goodreads

Storygraph

Thriftbooks

SecondSale

The Tarot Sequence by K. D. Edwards

Goodreads

Storygraph

Thriftbooks

SecondSale

The Cemeteries of Amalo by Katherine Addison

Goodreads

Storygraph

Thriftbooks

SecondSale

The Edge Chronicles by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell

Goodreads

Storygraph

Thriftbooks

SecondSale

Hexwood by Diana Wynne Jones

Goodreads

Storygraph

Thriftbooks

SecondSale

Zachary Ying by Xiran Jay Zhao

Goodreads

Storygraph

Thriftbooks

SecondSale

The Fairy Realm by Emily Rodda

Goodreads

Storygraph

Thriftbooks

SecondSale

Star Wars: Jedi Quest by Jude Watson

Goodreads

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Thriftbooks

SecondSale

The Merlin Spiral by Robert Treskillard

Goodreads

Storygraph

Thriftbooks

SecondSale :(

Spellbound by Vivian Vande Velde

Goodreads

Storygraph

Thriftbooks

SecondSale

[thejugheadparadox]

U should get ur little cousin Anne of Green Gables or The Golden Compass

both very good suggestions that have been considered.. basically i think she might feel patronised by anne of green gables bc she Might be like 13 god i sound awful i just have a lot of cousins we cant keep track. and my dad thinks she already has his dark materials. thank u thooo

[kuh-boose]

gotta say, i fuckin love that diane wynne jones, mad genius author that she was, when presented with people that obsessed over and wanted to marry her romantic interest character, basically said "ew why, he's trash"

[suffering-and-happy-about-it]

Yo listen. Most of y’all don’t realize how fucking wild the difference between Howl’s Moving Castle (Diane Wynne Jones, 1986) and Howl’s Moving Castle (2004, Studio Ghibli) is.

Dramatic recreation:

Movie Howl: Teehee, a new cleaning lady? Cool! I see you’re cursed but bet we can deal with that. In the meantime, wouldn’t you happen to know what in the hell happened in my bathroom? Did you try to ruin my life or smth? Ah well, I look better this way anyway.

Book Howl: BEGONE FROM MY SPIDERS YOU FAUL HAG. I don’t do crack, I am the crack, Methany. Now excuse me, while you and Michael will attempt to solve stuff I should be dealing with, Imma do my best to bang Sophie’s sister. BUT IF I COME BACK AND FIGURE YOU HAD TOUCHED MY STUFF SOPHIE I SWEAR ON THE POWER OF TEN THOUSAND CRACKHEADS-

On the other hand… Sophie is like:

Movie Sophie: Ah, so this is the infamous castle… I’ll just clean up… Wait, that Howl guy I’ve heard so many stories about… He’s actually nice and attentive in his own way… I’m in love.

Book Sophie: BICH WHAT DO YOU NEED THEM SPIDERS FOR ANYWAY!? YOU ARE TRYING TO DO WHAT TO WHOM? COME CATCH THESE HANDS I SWEAR TO GOD…. Now that he’s gone, I’ll look for the hearts he’s feasting on, I know that son of a gun has them stashed away somewhere. Whooping ass can wait a bit, I need my elderly beauty nap and I need it now.

Meanwhile Michael and Calcifer are still living thic-ass legends and I can’t appreciate them enough.

Bonus for those who read the book:

Someone: Is your man possessed by a fire demon?

Sophie: No, he’s just Welsh.

[roulettegirl]

Can't vote, but -

[zippocreed501]

AUTHOR EXTRAORDINAIRE

'Fantasy for me as a kid was real, and I had a fantasy about what life was, whether it was sort of wicked and dire, or wholly normal, or whatever. Anything really close to home is not, it seems to me, what a good book should be about.'

'If you take myth and folklore, and these things that speak in symbols, they can be interpreted in so many ways that although the actual image is clear enough, the interpretation is infinitely blurred, a sort of enormous rainbow of every possible colour you could imagine.'

'Things we are accustomed to regard as myth or fairy story are very much present in people’s lives. Nice people behave like wicked stepmothers. Every day.'

'It does seem that a fantasy, working out in its own terms, stretching you beyond the normal concerns of your own life, gains you a peculiar charge of energy which inexplicably enriches you. At least, this is my ideal of a fantasy, and I am always trying to write it.'

Author Extraordinaire Diane Wynne Jones

[peregrination-studies]

24 books in 2024

It is 2024, and I am here yet again with my bookish hopes and dreams!

I did this challenge last year (available here), and in 2022 (available here), and I'm STOKED to do it again this year! As is my way, I have been planning and revising this list for some time. My Goodreads overfloweth with ideas.

As always, if you have book recs, please send them my way! And, if you're participating in the challenge this year, I'd love to see your lists!

Without further ado, I gladly present to you my 24 in '24 book list:

Sci-Fi and Just for Fun :)

1) Randomize by Andy Weir (read April 2024)

2) Next by Michael Crichton (read May 2024)

3) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (read April 2024)

4) With a Little Luck by Marissa Meyer (read February 2024)

Environmental Science/Ecology/Books Relevant to my Studies

5) Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth by Buckminster Fuller (read April 2024)

6) Must Love Trees: An Unconventional Guide by Tobin Mitnick (read April-November 2024)

7) Scientifically Historica: How the World’s Great Science Books Chart the History of Knowledge by Brian Clegg

8) Letters to a Young Scientist by Edward O. Wilson (read November 2024)

Reading Around the World

9) The Eighth Continent: Life, Death and Discovery in the Lost World of Madagascar by Peter Tyson (Madagascar)

10) Everything is Wonderful: Memories of a Collective Farm in Estonia by Sigrid Rausing (Estonia) (read April-November 2024)

11) Willoughbyland: England’s Lost Colony by Matthew Parker (Suriname)

12) A General Theory of Oblivion by José Eduardo Agualusa and Daniel Hahn (Translator) (Angola) (read November 2024)

Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge/Classics

13) The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (read April 2024)

14) The Second Sex by Simone De Beauvoir, H.M. Parables (Translator and Editor), and Deirdre Bair (Introduction)

15) Gidget by Frederick Kohner (read November 2024)

16) Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

Recommended by Friends

17) Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (recommended by @hedonism-tattoo and many, many others)

18) Howl’s Moving Castle by Diane Wynne Jones (also recommended by many people now. @permanentreverie posted about it recently tho, and that was what really made me decide to include it on this list!) (read April 2024)

19) Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson (recommended by @daydreaming-optimist ) (read April 2024)

20) The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux (recommended by @kaillakit) (read May 2024)

Eco-Psychology

21) Ecopsychology by Lester R. Brown

22) Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times by Alexis Shotwell (read April 2024)

23) Radical Ecopsychology: Psychology in the Service of Life by Andy Fisher and David Abram (foreword)

24) Sight and Sensibility: the Ecopsychology of Perception by Laura Sewall

Bonus

25) Bride by Ali Hazelwood (read February 2024)

26) Open Heart Surgery by Johanna Leo (read March 2024)

27) A Short History of the World in 50 Books by Daniel Smith

28) Candy Hearts by Tommy Siegel (read February 2024)

No pressure tagging: @daydreaming-optimist @kaillakit @permanentreverie @noa-the-physicist @silhouette-of-sarah @captaindelilahbard @senatorhotcheeto @the-bibliophiles-bookshelf @skyekg @of-the-elves @obesecamels @courageisneverforgotten @willowstea @its-me-satine @deirdrerose @notetaeker @theskittlemuffin and anyone else who wants to do this!

[fredwkong]

Who are your writing inspirations?

Good question from a good boy! Here, have a worksheet to fill out while I think about this. It'll be hot, I promise ;)

In the tf community, my entry point was finding @takeovertales years and years ago. I also really admire @aardvarkia, and the Craftsman and Mr. Cavanaugh were huge influences on my tf writing. Derek Williams and Cris Kane (links to their pages on GaySpiralStories) are huge influences on my tf writing and interests as well. Jockhole Transformations by Abra Cadabra on Nifty rewired my brain. In terms of art that inspires me, you can't go wrong with theobromic's transformation sequences.

Beyond the tf community, I really admire the writing of Diane Duane and Diana Wynne Jones. N.K. Jemisin also influences my work a lot. I wish that I could write like Ursula K. Le Guin. I actually don't read very much published erotica, but I'll be first in line if someone in the tf community gets a book deal.

Did you finish that homework I gave you? The Perfect Guy... poor handwriting, punk music, favourite colour blue, short blue hair, green eyes, pale skin, lots of hair, short beard, smokey voice, slender mesomorph, punk-ass clothes or nothing at all, big penis, no underwear, gay slut, total dummy. Hello, perfect guy, welcome to your new life.

[pepperf]

I found this photo the other day, evidence of the very first time I read a book by Tamora Pierce: Christmas 1989, very much enjoying my present. I still have that copy. :D

Tamora Pierce, Diane Duane, Diana Wynne Jones...these are the writers that I wanted to be when I grew up.

[Image ID: A photo of a white girl with long brown hair, wearing a Garfield T-shirt and grey tights. She's sat in an armchair, with a fuzzy lavender jumper draped over the arm, and a fancy-looking glass (probably containing a fizzy drink; I was 12) propped against her knee. She is smiling, and holding open a copy of Tamora Pierce's Alanna: The First Adventure. It looks like she's nearly finished reading it. The T-shirt reads, "It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am." End ID]

If people are sad about The Wizard Facism game coming from someone you used to look up to and admire, may I suggest an author whose books are filled with nuanced characters and strong, dynamic women?

Tamora Pierce has been writing since the 80’s and has two worlds of magic and fantasy and bonus!!! Isn’t a transphobic POS.

[johnbierce]

Magic school book sale

Into the Labyrinth, the first novel in my YA magic school series, Mage Errant, is a Kindle Daily Deal today! (November 15th.) Books 2&3 will be on sale as well for the next couple of days. Mage Errant follows the adventures of Hugh of Emblin, a young student mage whose magic doesn't want to work right- though his anxiety works just fine. Mage Errant features found family, a convoluted science-inspired magic system, a non-neurotypical protagonist, a queernormative setting, Machiavellian politics, lots of explosions, and more kaiju than you can shake a stick at. (Though, uh... I highly recommend against shaking sticks at kaiju in general.)

Mage Errant is heavily inspired by Diane Duane, Dianna Wynne Jones, Will Wight's Cradle, Andrew Rowe's Arcane Ascension, and a bunch of cheesy shonen anime. It's part of the new(ish) genre of progression fantasy, which is much more heavily focused on training and growing in power than average in fantasy. (I like to call the genre "books for people who like movie training montages way too much.")

The whole series is complete now, sans a short story anthology coming out in February. It's also getting a webtoon comic adaptation, which is super exciting! Oh, and whenever I got a bad review for having queer characters (of which I got MANY), I hit a mental button reading "make it gayer."

[book--brackets]

Best Fantasy Book Round 1 Results

Poll 1: Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

Poll 2: Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

Poll 3: Song of the Lioness by Tamora Pierce

Poll 4: Lockwood & Co by Jonathan Stroud

Poll 5: Circle of Magic by Tamora Pierce

Poll 6: The Queen’s Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

Poll 7: Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard by Rick Riordan

Poll 8: Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer

Poll 9: Discworld by Terry Pratchett

Poll 10: The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir

Poll 11: The Immortals Quartet by Tamora Pierce

Poll 12: Young Wizards by Diane Duane

Poll 13: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci by Diana Wynne Jones

Poll 14: Princess Academy by Shannon Hale

Poll 15: Simon Snow by Rainbow Rowell

Poll 16: Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

Apologies for the delay, and round two will be posted tomorrow!

[cutpaperbleedswater]

There’s a really good book series by Diane Wynne Jone(s) called the Chrestomanci series. I’m not gonna say what it’s about but basically Chrestomanci is a job title and the only applicants are people with 8/9 lives and they have the chance to put a life into safe keeping like the ring actually used in the books.

Every time I read Katniss rubbing Peeta’s pear across lips and thinking about how it’s Peeta’s life and no one can take that away, I think of that as a literal every single time.

[scarlet--wiccan]

Do you have any other fantasy book recommendations besides Young Wizards by Diane Duane?

I've mentioned this before, but Madeline L'Engle's Time Quintet went hand-in-hand with Young Wizards, in terms of defining my conception of fantasy and sci-fi principles. The series themselves are not that similar, in terms of story, but they are similarly effective at blending very tactile magic systems with extremely well-realized conceptions of, time, space, and the nature of material reality. I read them both around the same time (too young, perhaps) and that's what really programmed my brain-- that, and most of Diana Wynne Jones and Garth Nix, although they operate in very different realms. And Animorphs, which is not fantasy, but I'll never pass up the opportunity to evangalize about Animorphs. You might notice I'm not actually a huge fan of high fantasy-- I gravitate more towards books that take place in or around the real world.

Anyway, I am trying to get back in the habit of reading more novels. I no longer commute on public transit, which is how I used to do most of my reading, so I've fallen out of the habit for a few years, and my to-read pile is embarrassingly high. I'm afraid I'm not as well up on contemporary novels as I'd like to be-- I give all my time and attention to comics! But I did just finish Mortal Follies and Confounding Oaths by Alexis Hall and loved both! I also re-read several of Molly Knox Ostertag's graphic novels this month-- they're definitely for middle-grade readers, but I find them delightful. Her Witch Boy trilogy, in particular, is so special and healing to me. Even if it's not your cup of tea, there might be a young reader in your life who'd enjoy it!