Friday Wish-List

Diana Wynne Jones is one of my favorite writers, so when my girls were old enough to watch Howl's Moving Castle, I was pretty excited. When they enjoyed the movie, I was even more excited. When I tried to read them the book, and they wandered off, bored, I lost a great deal of my excitement.

Obviously I am going to have to wait a few years for them to mature enough to appreciate her writing style. Not to mention the subtle humor in the book version of Howl's Moving Castle (a great deal of which was lost in the movie, in my opinion. The movie was good in its own way - it was just rather disappointing to see some of my favorite aspects of the book cut out. But then, that's a topic for another blog.)


The girls' disinterest, however, does not dismay me! I have detailed plans to lure my children over to my side of the fence. To begin, I'll buy my favorite copies of her books, and leave them lying around on the bookshelves to entice their interest. All I have to do is be patient. I'll snare them eventually.

The first book on my list is Dogsbody. Sirius, the Dog Star, is convicted of the murder of another luminary. He is exiled to the body of a dog here on Earth, and adopted by Kathleen. Kathleen is an orphan, in the custody of a neglectful uncle and cruel aunt. Sirius is the only one who loves her, and she loves him back. Unfortunately, someone is trying to kill Sirius and the only way to save himself is to find a missing weapon. Finding the missing weapon, though, will restore him to his rightful form and separate him from Kathleen forever.

Next would be Charmed Life, followed by the rest of her Chrestomanci books. Charmed Life is about Cat and his sister Gwendolyn, two orphans who are taken in by the great Chrestomanci, who is not quite what he seems. But then, neither are Cat and Gwendolyn.

Oh, decisions, decisions. What next? I think Archer's Goon, followed by The Eight Days of Luke. In Archer's goon, Howard comes home from school one day to find a very large, thuggish-looking man sitting in his family's kitchen. He says he's from Archer, and he's come to collect the 2,000 words Howard's father owes Archer.

The Eight Days of Luke is one I've written about before. David is astonished, after shouting a bunch of nonsense words, to find he has apparently freed another boy, Luke, from where he was imprisoned. Luke is nice enough, but he turns out to be a rather dangerous friend.

That should be enough to start with. I can add as they go along. Unfortunately, a lot of her books are out of print, so it will take me a while to find copies of everything I want at a price I can afford.

Y'know, since the out of print books are so hard to find, maybe I'll just keep those books to myself and let the girls read them after they've proven their book handling skills. Yeah? Maybe? Hey, plans were made to be changed!


Books: Diana Wynne Jones

Loki

When I was little, reading the (considerably cleaned-up) children's version of various mythologies, my favorite of the old gods was Loki, the Norse trickster god. The story of how Loki's cleverness (hey, that's how I remember it!) helped Thor recover Mjollnir especially impressed me, and sealed my crush. As an adult, though, no longer confined to child-safe versions, I am far more aware of just how elusive and dangerous this fire god could be. Which, actually, hasn't done a thing to stop me from being fascinated with him!

"Set out to mislead
Sets out to murder
False appearance is everything to him
Is he good today, or is he evil
In a violent crazy spewing words of madness
It can go either way you never know
Conditioned to deceived and that's how he likes it"
Loki, Rancid

One of my favorite treatments of Loki is L.E. Modesitt's The Timegod, the second book in his Timegod's World duology. In this book he takes a look at Loki as a member of an alien species of timedivers who have the ability to think themselves through space and time. He follows Loki's maturation, and eventual disillusionment with his people's parasitic society. True to form, Loki is a troublemaker here, although not primarily out of any malicious or mischievous impulses. Rather, he seeks to be a reformer.

"Lord of Chaos

Brother of wisdom

The other side of good

Lurking in your mind

Lord of Chaos

By evil kissed and

Your other side

The evil I will find"

Loki, Rebellion

Diana Wynne Jones, in Eight Days of Luke, hews closer to the traditional Loki. David, angry with his relatives, makes up a chant to try to curse them. Instead a nearby wall falls apart, spilling out a red-haired boy named Luke. Luke is fun, but dangerously impulsive. He is always repentant after the fact, but more, it seems, out of a fear of getting in trouble than a true understanding of why his actions were offensive.

"...Luke did not operate by the same rules as other people...He was great fun, but David was going to have to be careful what he said to him in future."

I currently have Odd and The Frost Giants, by Neil Gaiman, on my list of books to read. This children's book also features a child who is pulled into the world of the Norse gods, this time to help Loki, Odin, and Thor, who have been forcibly transformed into animal shape by the Frost Giant. Gaiman wrote it for World Book Day. (Interesting tidbit - did you know that Neil Gaiman is a fan of Diana Wynne Jones? Which makes me all the more interested in reading this book. Evidently he once worked out a story structured around the gods and the days of the week - and then realized he had something very similar to Eight Days of Luke. He talks about that experience in his blog.)

"He lives between the worlds
The world of gods and men
He is the god of fire
Burning higher"
Loki God of Fire, Manowar



Books: The Timegod, Timegod's World, L.E. Modesitt
            Eight Days of Luke, Diana Wynne Jones
            Odd and The Frost Giants, Neil Gaiman
Music: Loki God of Fire, Manowar
           Loki, Rebellion
           Loki, Rancid