#diana wynne jones
Sophie Hatter
Just finished reading HMC by Diana Wynne Jones :)
Obsessed with the fact that this really happened
please help I can’t stop coming up with imaginary episodes of the imaginary sitcom about Marco Petrocchi and Rosa Montana’s double fake identity rival families timeshare marriage in Magicians of Caprona, like
episode 6: Marco and Rosa just want to have a date night to themselves, but it’s hard when both families want them to babysit – and gets even harder when an unsupervised Lucia Montana leads the Montana children in an unexpectedly powerful spell that turns half the adult Petrocchi temporarily into geese, including Marco! Can Rosa hide her goose husband from her family and will they ever make it out to dinner in time for their reservation?
episode 12: Rosa’s fake sister Jane Smith is throwing a party, and accidentally invited both Rinaldo Montana and Alberto Petrocchi! Not only do Rosa and Marco have to keep track of who knows them as which false identity, now they also have to make sure that Rinaldo and Alberto never catch sight of each other or there’s sure to be a magical duel. But as they’re frantically juggling illusion spells, Jane’s event gets increasingly out of hand – can they calm things down before the Duchess takes the opportunity to arrest some of the strongest young spellcasters in the city for partying too hard?
episode 17: Determined to win over the Petrocchi aunts, Rosa volunteers to spend a day ‘learning Italian cooking’ with them, but has increasing difficulty holding onto her British persona. Meanwhile, Marco has aunt-in-law problems of his own when an innocent comment at the Montana dinner table accidentally reignites a long-simmering recipe feud. But nothing compares to the shocking revelation that Great-Aunt Francesca Montana and Great-Aunt Giuliana Petrochi have the exact same ‘secret’ bruschetta recipe – worked out together during a secret doomed love affair forty years ago?!
Rereading The Dark Lord of Derkholm (because I love it), and it’s feeling a little… too real. The basis of the book is that multiple universes exist, and a business man from one world has managed to get such a hold on a different world that he can use it basically as a themed tour for people from his world. This is ruining the economy and even ability to self-sustain of the world being toured/exploited, but magic is also real and business man apparently has some stupid powerful demon backing him that means it’s basically impossible to properly rebel or get rid of him.
Guys, this is a book for young-to-middle-school readers that was published in 1998, and while it’s still fabulous, it’s also far less of the whimsical romp than I remember seeing it as when I was a teenager! O_O
Sophie took the suit and hobbled upstairs on tiptoe with it. Howl was asleep on his grey pillows, with his spiders busily making new webs around him.
Some ✨art✨ from the last few months
See my art first in my patreon
Or just share it around pretty please
First line in Drowned Ammet is basically this
Head empty, only Charmed Life thoughts when I sketch. Some Janet and Gwendolen sketches.
Gwendolen and Janet are such interesting characters. At first, I thought Janet was supposed to come off as “not like other girls” but it’s just that she’s so overwhelmed by trying to pass for Gwendolen and absorb the facts of an alternate universe (e.g., says she doesn’t know where Atlantis is in geography class, “How was I supposed to know it’s what people in my world call America??”). So we don’t get to see much of Janet’s personality except her problem-solving skills, because that’s chiefly what has her attention. She’s really grounded and practical! And that’s also how Gwendolen is, except Gwendolen is in her element and can come up with some pretty ambitious plans with more confidence.
I wonder what Janet and the alternate Gwendolens would have been like if they had had their own versions of Eric.
I’ll let you all decide which is Janet and which is Gwendolen. It seems more fun to make them hard to distinguish.
1. the Heroic Ideal
2. Polly Whittacker is the biggest bookworm and overall wonderful protagonist
3. Granny is THE most wonderful back-up parent for a kid with two shitty actual parents
4. multiple female friendships! close ones!
a. Polly grows out of and into her friendships. Nina was a great childhood friend, but Polly had more in common with Fiona as an older teen then college student, and both friendships were important to her life and growth!
5. Thomas Lynn
6. The way Tom:
a. heroically drives his horse-car
b. plays the cello
c. understands Polly
d. also understands Granny’s perspective
7. Polly’s emotional range! How her soft-heartedness leads her to be overly nice to undeserving people like David Bragge and Seb, and yet she can also stand up for herself to Seb and Mr. Leroy and Mr. Piper.
8. the entire Bristol scene, which went from a raw and emotional low point where Polly feels “bleached” to the lovely relief of meeting the Dumas quartet
9. who doesn’t love a good Tam Lin retelling?
10. Diana Wynne Jones actually wrote an essay called “The Heroic Ideal” about why she wrote Fire and Hemlock
11. the logic Polly and Tom learn to follow to outsmart Laurel and the Leroys
12. Tan Coul and Hero, and their friends Tan Thare, Tan Hanivar, and Tan Audel
13. how Tom sent Polly books from all around the country
14. how those books nearly always included heavy-handed hints about his situation that she never quite connected
a. how she was annoyed that he never said he was in trouble, but realized HE HAD MADE SURE SHE KNEW
15. the NOWHERE vases
16. their Tales From Nowhere
17. Mintchoc
18. “being a hero means ignoring how silly you feel”
19. the devastating effects of embarrassment
20. letters
21. overall how beautiful and clever Diana Wynne Jones’s words are
Howl’s Moving Castle
I have been in a bit of a reading slump lately, and have not been able to get through more than a few pages of a book before giving up and worrying about all the work I need to get done…
So I decided to revisit this old favourite of mine. Diana Wynne Jones Enchanted Glass. A Children’s Fantasy novel, I remember reading it in year 9 and being in love with it. It was interesting, mysterious and easy to follow, so I decided to go back to it. Reading it helped me get back in sync with the Meher who adored books and would absolutely devour them, reading multiple stories in a day. Reading them in the loo, under the tables at school, and reading them under the duvet when I was supposed to be sleeping.
It’s not a book trending on bookstgram. But it’s a book which is quite special to me. And sometimes that’s all that matters.
Michael Fisher
The boy who almost catch a falling star
I found this little Twinkle on pinterest is really cute
Book House of many ways:
Charmain was forced to pick Waif up and back away, out of Morgan’s reach, so that all she heard next of the strange conversation behind the sofa was Mrs. Pendragon saying something about sending Twinkle (or was his name Howl?) to bed without supper and Twinkle daring her to “jutht try it.” As Waif quieted down, Twinkle said wistfully, “Don’t you fink I’m pwetty at all?”
There was a strange hollow thump then, as if Mrs. Pendragon had so far forgotten good behavior as to stamp her foot. “Yes,” Charmain heard her say. “Disgustingly pretty!”
Guess the names of the four characters
and I’ll give you a cookie
Diana Wynne Jones
Fact:
Everyone loves Howl
Who remembers when Calcifer was singing the song about “saucepan” ?
Well here’s the song
I think I adore Wales
Sophie Hatter from the book “Howl’s moving castle”
Love this character
Gwendolen, Janet, and Cat Chant
Chrestomanci Christopher Chant and the Living Asheth Millie
howl’s moving castle is literally the best example of a book and movie that are so EXTREMELY different from each other and yet both fuck supremely.
How I picture Sophie and Howl’s clothes in the book:)✨
(click to see ‘em in their full glory)
Quick doodle of my favourite character of all time forever and ever and ever (and his bff in bitchiness throgmorten)