#reading everything

But also, on another detail of it that's fascinating, are you caught up on at least arc 7's end?

Ohhh, I forgot about that feature! It makes sense if that's why Emilia couldn't recognize Subaru, though I do believe that Julius recognized them before Emilia properly noticed him (opening the door in her face/being out of her sight that she turned around)

As for being caught up... nope. I haven't read any of the arcs fully, though I have read and know enough to know general events up to the start of arc 8

As I said here, my 2021 2023 resolution is gonna be READING EVERY DIANA WYNNE JONES BOOK I CAN FIND, and due to my love of making lists and taking notes, I’ve decided keeping track of this reading project here in this post, which I’ll keep updated as I make progress. It’s mostly for my own pleasure, but maybe it helps someone who wants to give it a try to this amazing writer and doesn’t know where to start.

Part I (1970 - 1976 & The Dalemark Quartet)

Part II (1977 - 1981 & The Chrestomanci Series )

Part IV (1993 - 2014)

- Archer’s Goon (1984): At this point it’s just ridiculous how these books keep being surprising and leaving me all wtf (in a good sense). This one is, again, about a family with very realistic dynamics who have to deal with some surreal fuckery. In this case, they live in a town ruled from the shadows by seven brothers and sisters, each of one farming a different aspect of the town (energy, police, crime, education, sewage... etc). I couldn’t explain the plot if my life depended on it, but I enjoyed every single page. ALSO, there’s a TV adaptation, althought it doesn’t seem very faithful***

***Edit: I’ve watched the whole thing now and I stand corrected: It’s actually quite faithful. Some characters are not how I imagined them, but they did mostly a good job, and I’m obsessed with Dillian’s dress

- Fire and Hemlock (1985): Well, I finished it yesterday and I’m still processing it. What a ride. I felt I missed a lot of subtext by not knowing the stories it’s inspired by, so I’m totally re-reading it in the future, after I’ve checked those up. About the parts I did get, it’s just WOW. Polly in all her complexity is just amazing. I love that the premise seems to be a feminist revision of a tale of clingy love, and I love how all along the book you can see different examples of shitty stuff women have to put up with (grown ups sexualizing underage girls, boys mansplaining shit and being a pain in the ass until the girl they’re after gets so tired she gives up, slut shaming between girls, whatever is going on with Ivy’s mental health, THE FUCKING GROOMING –really, this made me so unconfortable from the very beginning). Of course I don’t think this is the main theme of the book, but I do believe DWJ wasn’t random about anything. There’s so much going on in my mind I don’t really know what else to say.

- Land of Ingary Series: · Howl’s Moving Castle (1986): This is 8th time I read this book (the 4th in English. It was actually my first book in English). It's my favourite book in the world and I could write a whole essay about how much I love it and how good it is for my mental and emotional balance, so I’ll just mention a few thoughts to keep this short: 1) I relate to Howl much more than I’d like to admit. 2) Sophie taught me to use aggresive cleaning to cope with anxiety. 3) Also, I would kill for powers like hers. 4) I actually relate to all of them, bunch of human messes. Diana predicted the millennials. 5) I can’t believe it took me this long to really understand [Calcifer spoilery stuff]. 6) Now that I’m more familiar with DJW usual tone and themes, I have to asume she wrote this lighthearted (pun intended) and fun story to relax a little bit after the previous 3-4 books, and that makes me love it even more. 7) I should read Stardust.

· Castle in the Air (1990): I’ve also read this one several times, and there’s a lot to love in it. Most of the new characters are amazing and the plot is quite a ride (and if you’re into The Arabian Nights, you’ll probably love this). I even stole some traits from Abdullah for one of my OC. But I must admit it didn’t age well, or at least there are some aspects I like less every time I read it, mostly regarding the female characters and what is said about their looks and beauty. I also felt Sophie was a little bit out of character, but obviously she’s going through STUFF so I’d rather not to judge. In any case, it’s a nice story and it’s not its fault not being as perfect as the absolute masterpiece that was HMC

· House of Many Ways (2008): The first time I read this one it was months before DWJ died, and since I hadn’t like that much and it made me really sad to know it would be the last book of this series, I used to feel a weird resentment against it all these years. This new re-read helped me to reconcile with it and actually enjoy it a lot. Maybe back then I was too similar to Charmain and I felt attacked or something, idk, but I’ve definitely learnt to love useless idiots who have no clue about anything going on in their lifes and it’s almost a miracle they’re still alive. And the fact that a huge % of the book it’s just her and Peter doing house chores? Hilarious. Also, I have the impression that DWJ was so tired of people fancying Howl that this time she did her best to show us how fucking annoying he can be.

- A Tale of Time City (1987): This was the first DWJ book I read after a long hiatus and I must confess it took me several months to finish it, which was surprising because I had missed Diana a lot and time travel is one of my favourite things in literature. Maybe the hype was too high, but it just didn’t hook me at first. It gets better once the worldbuilding is settled and the plot can fly free, and I did enjoy a lot of silly scenes that only provide vibe, like the main character laughing her ass off during the chaotic morning routine in the house. I also appreciate the racial diversity, and the comeback of the Surprise Evil Uncle (tm), a DWJ classic. And I do want one of those butter-pies now. - Wild Robert (1989): Heather is a girl who lives in a castle-museum because her parents are the curators there. She hates tourists so I could relate to her from the very beginning. She hates them so much she accidentally wakes up a 350 yo wizard from his grave so he gets rid of them. The story is so short that it almost feels as pilot for a show, like, you want to keep seeing Heather and Robert getting into trouble and stuff.  It would have made a nice series of children’s books.

- Black Maria (also known as Aunt Maria, 1991): The timing for this one was weirdly good because: a) I had to move in with my old aunt for a few days to help her while she recovers after a surgery (which is basically the starting point for Mig, the mc of the story, and her family), b) the book has several mysteries, including a crime one (my aunt forced me to watch hours of police procedural shows), the town where Mig's aunt lives has a extreme matriarchal social structure, where women are on the top, and men are just Ken, and the main conflict surrounds this (I started reading the book around the time Barbie premiered). I don’t normally like the first-person narrative, but DWJ managed to do it, once again, in a rather clever way that fits the story quite right and made me like Mig a lot. Also, it was nice to see that the adult relative is actually helpful and good, instead of the classic neglectul piece of shit that she so often includes.

As I said here, my 2021 resolution is gonna be READING EVERY DIANA WYNNE JONES BOOK I CAN FIND, and due to my love of making lists and taking notes, I’ve decided keeping track of this reading project here in this post, which I’ll keep updated as I make progress. It’s mostly for my own pleasure, but maybe it helps someone who wants to give it a try to this amazing writer and doesn’t know where to start.

Part I (1970 - 1976 & The Dalemark Quartet)

Part III (1984 - 1992 & Land of Ingary Series) 

Part IV (1993 - 2014)

- The Chrestomanci Series (DWJ’s suggested reading order): · Charmed Life (1977): I couldn’t fully enjoy it because the main premise of the story is the codependency Cat has with his AWFUL sister, and how her abuse shapes everything on his life. He has such a low self esteem and needs so much a hug, it just breaks my heart every page. In any case, the worldbuilding, the magic system and the general vibe are just amazing. If it keeps like this, I totally understand why so many people love this series

· The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988): Ok, this is the good shit. I don’t even know how to describe it in few words. Let’s say that there’s also a kid being abused by his relatives, and there were parts where I wanted to throw the book against the wall, but Christopher is such a fascinating character to read about that you just can’t stop. And this universe, OMFG. Also, is the Asheth thing some kind of homage to The Tombs of Atuan?

· Conrad’s Fate (2005): I’ve binge-watched Downton Abbey a few months ago, so finding out this book is basically DA with magic was just a delight. Christopher and his new BFF Conrad arrive to this big ass manor to work as lackeys, while both having secret agendas of their own. There’s everything one would expect and more: Rich Family Drama, Upstairs/Downstaris antics, crime solving, forbidden loves, scifi-ish reality bugs, and of course abusive relatives (at this point, if I were DWJ’s uncle I'd think she was trying to tell me something). I read it in a day and a half. The only negative thing I can say is that I missed Christopher POV of things. 

· Witch Week (1982): This is about a bunch of pupils and teachers in a deppresing boarding school. Everyone is a little bit of an asshole at some point, but it's understandable because this world must be the worst in Series 12. Not only they keep burning witches in modern times, but witches aren’t even a minority, so you can imagine the amount of hypocrisy. It’s interesting how the witch thing can be considered a metaphor for lgtb kids: everyone is scared of being called a witch because they’ll get bullied (and maybe arrested and burnt), but every time a character find out they’re in fact a witch, they just feel confident and happy because they’ve found themselves, so they can’t even hide it. Also, there are more secret witches around than they would expect.

· The Magicians of Caprona (1980): Two families of famous spell-makers keep hating each other through generations, to the point they put Caprona, the city-state where they live, in danger. Sometimes the Italian stereotypes were too much and took me out of the story, but not gonna lie, I really loved the opera spells, the large families living all together in a big house and being loving and supportive with each other, and BENVENUTO.

· The Pinhoe Egg (2006): This one is also about confronted families of magic users, but this time they’re in the villages near to Chrestomanci Castle, and no one really knows there’s a feud because their spells are based on herbs and plants, not in singing opera on the streets. Cat comes back and shares the spotlight with Marianne Pinhoe, and as always I would love more Christopher Chant, but I can´t really complain.

·  Mixed Magics (2000): Four short stories settled in the Chrestomanci Universe, more or less linked to the main characters. My favourite is the third one, Carol Oneir’s Hundredth Dream, mostly because the idea of a kid selling her dreams as stories is brilliant, but also because I loved that little moment where Christopher reviews Carol’s dreams and everything he says is the kind of critique that Diana always received on her books.

- The Homeward Bounders (1981): There are some misterious powerful people who seem to be addicted to Age of Empires, but they play it using actual worlds and actual people. When someone from these worlds find this out, they got exiled and doomed to jump from world to world, only able to stop when they manage to get back to their original world.  The first act remind me a little of those stories from Arabian Nights where the main character keeps arriving to weird islands and getting into the most bizarre troubles but always manages to survive. Due to life circunstances I couldn't focus 100% on the reading, but I did enjoy the characters, mostly Helen, and Jamie eventually grew on me too. I must confess I got kinda lost with the final explanation about the game and the nature of this multiverse and what it's Real and how Hope acts literally as an anchor that keeps the system going (although I find the notion really interesting as an allegory, and once again a really cool message for kids: hope can be your prison)