Howling Frog Books

 I'm going to give in and admit that I have more books to post about than time to post in.  Besides, it's a beautiful spring outside!  So here we go: I continued my March Magics reading with Pyramids by Terry Pratchett , which I haven't read in many years.  It's an early one, about #7, and comes after Wyrd Sisters .  Pteppic, only son of the king of the narrow desert/river land Djelibeybi*, spends his youth in Ankh-Morpork, training as an assassin, but right after he survives his final exam, his father dies and he becomes king himself.  His ideas about bringing Djelibeybi into modern times are not welcomed; here, everything is done exactly as it has always been done, and head priest Dios is present to make sure of that. This is such a fun story, absolutely packed with mayhem, humor, and satirical insight.  I really enjoyed revisiting it. *A pun Americans may not get, since we don't have the British candy jelly babies -- which are basically gummy bears...

 Unexpected Magic, by Diana Wynne Jones I chose this volume for March because I wanted to revisit that weird and nightmarish short story, "The Master."  I did that first, and ....it's really weird and nightmarish.  I'm not sure what else to say about it.   Some of the other stories in this volume are for younger readers: "Plague of Peacocks, Fluffy Pink Toadstools, Auntie Bea's Day Out."  They each feature an upsetting, irritating older person who must be got rid of in various ingenious ways.  "Enna Hittims" is a twist on this, and must have been inspired by the final pun of Magic Markers really being magic, and bringing Anne's story people to life.  I really like that one.  (Funny how both DWJ stories featuring girls recovering from long illnesses have them named Ann/e!) I have to say, I'm not a fan of "Nad and Dan adn Quaffy."  Maybe because I don't like coffee?  That story just really doesn't speak to me, though it...

  Conrad's Fate, by Diana Wynne Jones I was just in the mood to read about a couple of kids getting into massive trouble!  I think I'll count this as a 'new' friend; it was published in 2005 so I've only read it maybe 5 times. Conrad is only about 12, and his manipulative uncle sends him off to Stallery castle to get a job as a servant, telling him that the awful Fate hanging over him will kill him soon unless he does the task he's meant to do -- which is to kill an unknown villain that he failed to kill in his last life.  On his way to be hired, Christopher joins the group and both boys are hired as apprentice valets.  In between the hours they spend learning to be perfect servants, Christopher searches for his missing friend, Millie, and Conrad tries to understand what's going on.  They team up to find out who is pulling the possibilities -- changing reality for profit. This is such a fun story, with lots of running around and comedy.  DWJ shows us her ow...

 Witch's Business (Wilkins' Tooth), by Diana Wynne Jones Our theme being "Old Friends and New," I started March with the first DWJ book I ever read (in 6th grade, about 1983).  DWJ commented that when she started trying to get published in children's books in the early 1970s, fantasy was unfashionable.  Publishers were only interested in what we used to call 'problem novels' -- realistic stories in which kids dealt with problems like child abuse, alcoholism, divorce, racism, and so on.  So she wrote a story that started off as a problem novel featuring poverty and bullying, but turned out to be a fantasy.  It was published in 1973. Jess and Frank have had their pocket money stopped, and in desperation they start a business: Own Back, Ltd., will undertake revenge jobs and treasure hunting.  They hope to be able to think up ways of tormenting the local bully, Buster Knell.  Instead Buster hires them; he wants a tooth from Vernon Wilkins.  And then t...

 The Leaky Establishment, by David Langford This is such a great comedic novel, and it is (as far as I know) undeservedly little-known.  It's a quintessential British workplace comedy; probably 'The Office' got a lot of tips from it, though I have never seen either of the Office shows so I wouldn't know.  Anyway, it was published in 1984 and reissued in 2003, with an introduction by Terry Pratchett in which he starts:  I hate Dave Langford for writing this book.  This was the book I meant to write.  God wanted me to write this book. And indeed in a parallel universe maybe he did, but here, David Langford did it, and a bang-up job he did too. Roy Tappen, nuclear physicist, works at NUTC, a high-level nuclear research facility -- the UK's equivalent of Los Alamos, where he is supposed to work on fascinating scientific problems and help to preserve the free peoples of the earth from the clutches of evil.  In reality, he mostly fights a losing battle with ...

 Guards!  Guards! by Terry Pratchett This was a great re-read.  It's been so long since I read the early Watch novels, and I think I should revisit them.  I ran into many moments that I remembered well, but that I did not remember as being in this particular book -- the introduction of L-space, for example, always a favorite among librarians. Sam Vimes is an officer of the Watch, but nobody takes the Watch seriously any more.  There are only a few of them left, and Vimes is best known for being drunk at all times.  Lord Vetinari has deliberately arranged the city to be full of rival Guilds that he can control, and for the Watch to be utterly irrelevant.  And then, young Carrot Ironfoundersson, a surprisingly tall dwarf with a very pure heart and a lot of energy, signs on.  And a dragon appears in Ankh-Morpork -- not your small swamp-type dragon, but the real, huge, people-eating kind.   There's plenty of Pterry's trademark observations a...

 I started March off right, with Power of Three , as I planned.  I love this story, which is probably familiar to most DWJ fans.   At first, it seems like a fairy tale set in a different place.  Adara and her people live in mounds, have swords, and use magic words, and they have two enemies: Dorig (who live in water) and Giants.  Only gradually do we realize that this story is in our own world, and we are the Giants; there are three races of people.  There are also three siblings at the center of the story, and it's up to them and their new friends to try to make peace between the three races, who at the moment can only see each other as aliens and enemies, even though the consequences of that enmity will be terrible for all of them. Two of the human races can work "green gold" and wear it as collars -- what we call torcs.  The gold has to be worn and exposed to sunlight, or it turns back into crumbly black ore. DWJ's unfortunate dislike (ingraine...

 Holy moley, I've been a bit lazy about blogging, and now March is upon me!  So I'll publish this right away, in case you didn't know that March Magics is coming!  It's almost here! Once more, Kristen is graciously hosting, and the theme this year is... She writes: Many (most? all?) of us are obviously feeling lonely and isolated after this long ordeal and some of us need to be reminded that we can still come together past physical boundaries. Second, both of these authors do marvelous things with ensemble casts, whether it's the Chrestomanci clan at the castle or the Nac Mac Feegles under the chalk. Celebrating teamwork and shared responsibility in literature may even inspire us in our real lives. Finally, I have been seeking out music recently that brings me joy and The Beatles' All Together Now never fails to get me smiling and it immediately popped into my head when I was thinking about togetherness and the joy of this event so here we are!  Wel...

By far the best cover ever done The Homeward Bounders, by Diana Wynne Jones Kind of funny to have a wrapup two weeks after the event ends, but such is life.  I spend too much time at my desk for work, and then fail to fit the blogging in.  I actually have several books to share, but getting to it is a different thing! My final read for March Magics was The Homeward Bounders , a long-time favorite.  I love how DWJ took the idea of role-playing games, mixed it up with a multi-verse and threw in Prometheus, and bam: amazing story.  Jamie, Helen, and Joris are all wonderful characters, and Jamie is so understatedly tragic.* I don't have a lot new to say about this story this time, but I wanted to give it its due, and thank Kristen for hosting March Magics even though this is a difficult time.  The choice of DIY turned out to be far more appropriate than anyone imagined!  I was grateful to have some DWJ to read in the middle of all this muddle. ...

The Spellcoats, and The Crown of Dalemark, by Diana Wynne Jones Last Witch Week, I read Drowned Ammet and Cart and Cwidder ( which I then did not post about, since I went on a hiatus instead), so it seemed only fair to read these two for March Magics.  And of course, they were lovely.  Although I think that DWJ's refusal to spend a tremendous amount of time in any one world was a strength and a good thing, I sure would love a couple more Dalemark stories.  Maybe the story of Manaliabrid, or where Ammet and Libby Beer fit in with the others.  I would very much like to have about 300% more information about Dalemark history, especially about my favorite character, Tanaqui. Spellcoats is such a fascinating novel, to my mind.  It's a 'found documents' story, in which the novel is translated from artifacts found in an archaeological dig -- but the artifacts are "rugcoats," woven robes in which the weaving actually forms words fo...

Archer's Goon, by Diana Wynne Jones What with everything going on this month, I've pretty much fallen back on old favorite DWJ titles, of which Archer's Goon is a prominent member.  I love the humor in this book, the family -- this must be one of the very few DWJ titles that features a family that isn't completely, totally dysfunctional, though it is certainly eccentric! -- and the sheer chaos of this really pretty strange story. Howard, age 13, has an ordinary boring life until a Goon shows up in the family kitchen, demanding "two thousand" from Howard's dad Quentin.  Howard finds out about who really runs his town -- seven powerful siblings who have been stuck there for years, and aren't very happy about it.  The siblings figure that Quentin's words must be what's keeping them trapped, and they're determined to force him to write more words for them. This is one of those stories where everything gets turned upside-down, and it...

Kirby cover! The Dark Side of the Sun, by Terry Pratchett --I've put a short update at the bottom if you're interested. I've had this book sitting around for a while, but had never read it, so this was a perfect opportunity.  This is Pterry's first 'adult' novel (as opposed to the juvenile fiction he'd written previously), from 1976, and pre-dates the Discworld books.  It's science fiction, very short, plays with some intriguing ideas, and is a lot of fun. In the far future, humanity has spread over several worlds, sometimes in cooperation with others of the 52 known sentient species.  All of them developed within a fairly small section of the galaxy, the rest of which appears to be sterile.  And there are artifacts left from the Jokers -- a super-intelligent, utterly mysterious, vanished race. Dom is the heir to the massive corporation and planet of Widdershins, a world that is nearly all swamp but that produces two incredible materials.  Wi...

Hexwood, by Diana Wynne Jones I love Hexwood so much.  It starts off with two stories: a girl in an English village, who has been ill and is therefore bored stiff, and an administrator of a lowly bureaucratic department of a galactic corporation/empire who is dismayed to receive a report of a problem on a backwater planet.  The two stories of a village girl and a galactic empire turn out to be in fact the same tale, and this tale is being told by the Bannus, an extremely intelligent machine that can run scenarios in order to predict the consequences of decisions.  It has co-opted a whole lot of people into the story it is enacting, and all of it with the goal of bringing down the cruel Reigners who have run the galaxy for a thousand years or more. I'm not very satisfied with that description, actually, because it doesn't give the least hint of the mystery, adventure, puzzle, intrigue, and tragedy (as well as comedy) of Hexwood .  But I wanted to bring out the ...

My very old copy, from the UK Castle in the Air, by Diana Wynne Jones Happy Friday the 13th!  Somehow that seems appropriate for a story that features bad luck and black cats pretty largely. I chose to read Castle in the Air partly because it's never been one of my favorites, so it's been a while since I read it, but I still like it enough to revisit it every once in a while.  This is the second book in the moving castle trilogy with Sophie, Howl, and Calcifer, but you can't tell for quite a while. If you're unfamiliar with the story, it starts with the carpet merchant Abdullah, who escapes the nagging of his extended family members by daydreaming, until he purchases a magic carpet that takes him on some unexpected adventures involving a genie in a bottle, a legendary bandit, adorable (and scary) cats, a couple of djinns, and an actual castle in the air.  And of course a princess, who is both lovely and whip-smart.  Actually there are a lot of princesses,...

A classic Kirby cover! Interesting Times, by Terry Pratchett It has been so long since I read Interesting Times that I only remembered the curse: May you live in interesting times .  Nothing else.  So I thought it might be good to revisit it, and the title seemed quite apropos to our own interesting times, after all!  It turned out to be a Rincewind story, and it's quite a long time since I read any Rincewind story at all. Rincewind has been dodging around the Discworld, running away from various imminent deaths, for quite a long time now.  Somehow he has wound up on a desert island (with, of course, his trusty and terrifying Luggage), but he is unexpectedly transported home to Unseen University by the wizards, who want him to go to the Counterweight Continent on the other side of the Disc.  He's been summoned by...somebody. The Counterweight Continent is an Empire run by five major families, who are constantly at each other's throats in a battle for ...

So many things going on!  Around here, spring is well under way after a winter that was not nearly cold or wet enough.  Everything is in bloom, and hayfever has hit with a vengeance.  It's beautiful, but also worrying.  We need rain! Almonds in bloom  As for March in a literary sense, there is too much to do.  My favorite event of the year, March Magics, starts today and I am enjoying Interesting Times , which is a Rincewind story -- I don't think I've read a Rincewind story in ages.  I have a nice pile of Pterry and DWJ on my dresser, which makes me happy. It's also Reading Ireland Month at Cathy's 746 Books blog .  She's got a weekly theme, and giveaways!  I have no idea what Irish thing I could read this month.  Oh wait, I'm pretty sure I have a James Stephens story on my TBR shelf.  I'll see what I can do. AND it's Dewithon, the Wales Readathon at Book Jotter .  Since today is St. David's Day, it's of course...

I am so happy that Kristen is hosting March Magics again this year!  It's been tough times lately, so we're taking it easy.  Kristen says: As I am a bit scattered, stressed, demoralized, and a host of other not-fun emotions at the moment, and since I know some of you are feeling the same, I wanted to continue with last year's theme and have this event really be about the joy you find while you spend time with these two authors. Simply pick up your absolute favorites, dive into them, and lose yourself for a few hours. Afterwards, share that love with others. If you want to host a readalong or a giveaway, DO IT! If you want to write a blog post, share on social media, or even read with your kids--PERFECT! If you want to pick up that last book you have been saving with a heavy heart, this is the time. Yep, this is an event I can really get on board with.  Diving into an alternate reality (or several) and finding some joy there seems like an excellent plan....