DWJ March is coming up!

By -
Kristen at We Be Reading has posted the information for DWJ March, woohoo!


This is going to be the fourth DWJ March and Kristen is thinking we ought to have a focus to talk about, which I think is a good idea.  So, there's a theme: The Ladies and Lasses of DWJ.  I think this is a great topic to focus on, because DWJ did in fact have some issues in writing about girls and women.  Early in her writing career, she tended to avoid writing female protagonists and always made them boys.  I remember she said that in some interview, and why she did it, but now I'm not sure where the quotation is.  It was a while before she really was able to write girl protagonists.  And then there are DWJ's mothers and older women characters, an awful lot of whom are....hungry.  Controlling, yet neglectful.  Malevolent in some way.  And did I mention hungry?  Yes, we can write a lot of posts about the ladies and lasses of DWJ.  I have no doubt that somebody could write a book.

Cool image, don't you think?

But that's not all!  Kristen has already got giveaways of three books going, which she hopes to be able to send out before DWJ March begins.  Head on over and enter.

There will be three readalongs! And one will be a co-op read with another group!  Kristen lists:
Aunt Maria (a.k.a. Black Maria), discussion post up here on 3/9, Twitter chat on 3/13 The Islands of Chaldea, discussion post up here on 3/17, Twitter chat on 3/21 The Spellcoats, discussion post up at Here There Be Books on 3/25, Twitter chat on 3/29
I've been saving Islands of Chaldea (my second read) for this event, and I've been wanting to re-read Black Maria too.  The Spellcoats has long been a favorite of mine, so I'm all set to participate in all three.

Well I don't know about you, but I can't wait!

Comments

  1. LoryFebruary 20, 2015 at 3:05 PM

    Well, of course I'm so excited for this, especially since I missed it last year. Not sure what I will reread, but it will be great.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Christine HardingFebruary 21, 2015 at 12:42 AM

    DWJ, I thought, what on earth is that... Then the penny dropped! Diana Wynne Jones. A whole month devoted to her books. How wonderful is that!

    ReplyDelete
  3. JeanFebruary 21, 2015 at 1:08 PM

    I hope you both participate!!

    I hadn't realized till you pointed it out that not once in this post did I spell out Diana Wynne Jones. Oops. Sorry!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Kristen M.February 22, 2015 at 1:22 AM

    Haha! I have to consciously throw in a full name every once in a while for those non-DWJ fans. ;) I'm so happy that you are excited about the theme! I was quite happy with it when I finally came up with it. I should go through Reflections again and see if there's anything in there I would like to write about too! Seven days ...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of...
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the s...
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he ...
Read more