House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones
Mar. 29th, 2011 10:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne JonesMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Not much to say. I didn’t grow up on DWJ; I was too busy reading things incredibly inappropriate for my age, like Heinlein and Dune and Watership Down (people who say that book is for kids are liars, Liars!).
DWJ stuck to her roots to the end. This is an aggressively cute kid adventure in an alternate magical world, with an ever-expanding wizard’s house and a kingdom to be saved. It all ties off at the end with an improbably neat bow. Very much the old breed of young adult, a little bit cartoonish, a little bit silly, but kind and safe right through. You know what I mean.
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Date: 2011-03-31 06:56 am (UTC)I do love the kind of book you're describing though - I mean, it's a bit older but I re-read The Dark is Rising at least once a year :P The thing is, I mostly didn't read those books as a kid. I came back to them later as an adult. I found them far to simple (and short) to be interested in them for the most part. So I skipped Chronicles of Narnia because I was sucked into James Harriot's world of 1930s veterinary medicine :P I didn't get around to reading Chronicles and all the other classic fantasy YA books till I was in my 20s. I wasn't snobby about it (I was frankly oblivious to where I stood intelligence-wise), I just wanted a book long enough that I couldn't finish it in 2 hours! It's been really magical to discover all of those books as an adult, cause I can appreciate not only the story but the craftsmanship :)
Watership Down = BUNNIES ON THE COVER. BUNNIES. CUTE ADORABLE BUNNIES. And then the story is so fabulous that you're sucked right in, even if you're only mumble mumble years old. WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO? I WAS READING AT COLLEGE LEVEL BY THE TIME I WAS 9. OTHER BOOKS WERE BORING AND TOO SHORT, OKAY?
If Watership Down sucked me in with bunnies, Mary Renault's The Persian Boy = statue of Alexander the Great on the cover! Historical fiction - I love historical fiction (says the child who's been reading Irving Stone books like ice cream sundaes)! I do remember the sense of shock when our faithful narrator's father is killed in front of him, his mother throws herself to her death off a high tower right at his feet, and his sisters are hauled off and raped because they *couldn't* get to the high tower fast enough.....and then he's castrated so he can be sold into sexual slavery. All in the first couple of chapter. Left me kind of stunned, but that book is so fucking amazing, I never even considered putting it down.
I have continued the same tradition with my kids, I've gotta say. They've grown up since infancy hearing me read aloud from Ender's Game, The Lord of the Rings, most everything ever written by Ursula K. LeGuin and all the other books I love. I've become really slick at editing on the fly, I've gotta say! It's one thing to know Ender killed another kid in self defense (children understand death, cruelty or graphic violence is another thing all together) - it's another thing to hear it described in detail before you're able to read :P But why should those couple of scenes stand between a kid and a great story? I couldn't deprive them of Ender!
Okay, clearly I'm to sleepy to know when to stop typing, so I'm for bed :D I'll have to give this book a read - I'm overdue for some simple & charming.
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Date: 2011-04-02 03:01 am (UTC)Me too! I mean, that exactly. I loved those Harriot when I was a kid. And I still think I may have missed one or two Narnia books.
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Date: 2011-04-02 03:32 am (UTC)The only reason I didn't actually miss any of Narnia is because I bought a collected, illustrated hard-back to read to my kids. Of course, we read the cover right OFF the thing cause they loved to look at the pictures. There's a reason for this. I almost NEVER read them books with pictures, because they'd interrupt me all the time to ask whether there were pictures, or they'd keep hopping up and down to look over my shoulder, or they'd never fall asleep because every time they heard the page turn they'd be all IS THERE A PICTURE ON THAT PAGE??? I remember the GLEE I felt when I got books 2, 3, and 4 of Harry Potter on my Palm device, cause I could read at bed time in complete darkness and they'd fall asleep!
These boys could hear hours and hours of reading per day. When the youngest was in utero or the years he was nursing, I was sitting so many hours per day that it was not uncommon for me to do 4 hours of reading aloud. At that quantity of reading, I insisted on reading books that *I* liked :P When they got old enough to operate the CD player and we started checking out books on CD, their typical intake of read aloud went up to about 10 hours per day :P
Hmm. I'm chatty tonight! Sorry! :D
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Date: 2011-04-02 06:59 am (UTC)Paper Chase
Rematch (sequel to Paper Chase
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Date: 2011-04-06 02:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-06 04:19 am (UTC)My (very long) con-crit of Trace is that it resolves too easily, the characters aren't challenged enough, the story doesn't throw nearly enough obstacles in their way. NOT EPIC ENOUGH, was my diagnosis. In his current rewrites I know he's working on that as well as several other things I went on and on about - I have high hopes that the scale of the story structure will have grown to match the epic-ness I sense lurking in the story.