The author of Howl’s Moving Castle, the Chrestomaci series, and many other books died on March 26. MuseBlog mourns the passing of one who brought so much magic to the world.
Patience, Please
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An enchantress like that deserves eight more lives than she got. Requiescat in pace.
Rest in Peace. She’s been one of my favorite authors for ages now. I’ll miss her.
It’s horrible that she died; she was an amazing writer. I’ve read the majority of her books, and they’re all wonderful.
*cries* She was one of my favorite authors, I’ll miss her writing a lot…
*is sad*
(By the way, Howl’s Moving Castle has a sequel.)
Two sequels, actually. Castle in the Air and House of Many Ways.
Howl’s Moving Castle is one one my favorite books. What a great imagination. Rest in peace Diana.
I do not know when I first read something by Diana Wynne Jones. I might have been 9 or so when I first read Witch Week, in a edition that was not a part of an omnibus. I think I thought of it as its own thing. I think I also may have mixed it up with Eva Ibbotson’s books.
I know that I read In the Time of the Ghost young as well and, when I came back to it later, I was surprised that a) I’d read it already and b) that it was by Diana Wynne Jones.
Fire and Hemlock was always my favorite. I first read it when I was young, probably still in elementary school but older than my first read of Witch Week. I remember being very puzzled as to how the ending worked. I remember not owning it for years and checking it out of the library multiple times until I finally bought a paper back in junior high. I loved how every time I re-read it something would shift and I would see yet another layer, further and deeper into the book than all the ones before.
I’d read the rest of the Chrestomanci books by then (the ones in the first two omnibus volumes as neither Conrad’s Fate nor the Pinhoe Egg were released yet). My favorites were Charmed Life and The Lives of Christopher Chant. I quite like Christopher Chant.
I realized in spring 2007 that I hadn’t read quite a few Diana Wynne Jones books. That was the spring break of reading all of the ones I hadn’t read yet. I remember deeply enjoying Cart and Cwidder and Drowned Ammet. I don’t think I was as fond of Spellcoats and Crown of Dalemark confused me in the same twisted way as Fire and Hemlock though now it is falling into place.
I remember eagerly awaiting the release of The Pinhoe Egg, The Game, and Conrad’s Fate. I remember being extraordinarily pleased when I was able to receive an ARC of House of Many Ways when my mom went to a library conference that year.
This summer I worked as a counselor at a summer camp. It was in the middle of the rural area of another state and at the beginning of camp I was feeling rather lonely and homesick. Reading Hexwood for the first time helped me to start enjoying those first few days. Having a Diana Wynne Jones book around was having something familiar in that strange place. I re-read Conrad’s Fate that summer too.
I’ve been re-reading Crown of Dalemark on and off since winter break this year and it is shifting, too. So many details jump out at me now.
These books have remained with me for so long and now I lend them out to my cousin, in hopes that he enjoys them just as much. I will keep these stories with me for the rest of my life. I wish I could have met the person who wrote them.
RIP, Diana Wynne Jones.
When I was ten years old I went out of the house by myself, down the block and across the street to the library. I had my own card. I wandered the shelves, alone, trailing my hand over the books, until I found one that looked nice. It was the first book I ever got from the library by myself. It was Charmed Life, and it was the first book I read over five times in a month, and it was the first book that I ever wrote fanfiction for, even if it was terrible ten-year-old fanfiction, and it was the first fantasy book that I ever, quietly, unnoticeably, completely fell in love with. A year or two later I bought it from a bookstore. It was the first book I ever bought with my own money.
A few years later, I spotted a book sitting on a table in the library that someone had abandoned. It was The Tough Guide to Fantasyland. I picked it up, laughed, and checked it out and took it home. I spent a whole week trying to copy down every single entry in the book into my notebook so I wouldn’t have to let it go. Once I finally had to return it, I despaired of ever finding it again. I looked and looked through the children’s section, to no avail. And then, walking past the Young Adult section on my way to the computers, I spotted it. I walked into the Young Adult section for the very first time and checked out every book she had written that was there.
I didn’t have friends after I left my old elementary school when I was nine. I had acquaintances, yes. I had people I played wallball with, and people I ate lunch with, but no one I talked to. No friends. So every weekend, instead of going and hanging out with people, I sat at home and carefully read Howl’s Moving Castle and The Lives of Christopher Chant and Dark Lord of Derkholm and Witch Week and Aunt Maria and Dogsbody over and over and over again. I didn’t know how to talk to people, so I talked to books instead, and I surrounded myself with them, and I kept them close to my heart. And that lasted until I was thirteen years old, when I finally put down my copy of Cart and Cwidder and went and talked to someone, Hippolyta, who would be my best friend for the next year and a half.
It was the end of something, and the beginning of something else. It was the line I drew between childhood and adolescence, between the books I had loved and the people I had to love now. It was the moment when I left Millie and Calcifer and Derk and Sirius and Polly and Dan and Adny, the moment when I stopped believing in fairies, the moment when I said goodbye to the warm sunlit corners of the library and stepped tremulously into the real world.
But nothing, not adolescence nor reality nor even death, can stop someone who loves and has loved books from going outside and saying very quietly, “Chrestomanci, Chrestomanci, Chrestomanci,” and knowing he will come.
I’ve heard this name a thousand times. Watched the movie of Howl’s Moving Castle. She’s always been one of those constants that you never really think about for me.
Until now, in more ways than more. For one thing, this terrible event has grabbed my attention. For another, my purchase of three of her books will hold it. We went to the bookstore today, and I bought Howl’s Moving Castle, Chronicles of Chrestomanci Volume I, and The Dalemark Quartet.
I’ll read these in the next few days. At the end, I’m sure I’ll feel this great loss ten times as much.
It is really weird to me that people have seen the movie but not heard of the books. I remember when I found out they were making a movie of the book.
I didn’t find out that it was a book until the end of the movie, otherwise I would have read the book beforehand. Since then, I’ve been meaning to read it but haven’t for various reasons.
I could say more, but I think that part would belong in Rants and ‘Plaints.
Mm, yeah. I don’t expect everyone to have heard of her and I’m pleased that more people are being introduced to her books through the movie it is just odd because I’ve known her books for so long to imagine that they were new. You have a treat ahead of you!
It’s sad to think that Hayao Miyazaki is the only reason I’ve even heard of DWJ. I have to get around to reading her books.
I’m reading Howl’s Moving Castle in memory of her. ‘Tis flamablamabulous.