Author Appreciation Week Thursday : Diana Wynne Jones
Author Appreciation Week is hosted by seaheidi
I think the only reason I discovered Diana Wynne Jones was because I had a really sucky library.
I grew up in a small coastal town so our library was just this tiny closet where my classmates would go to to hook up with boys. We didn’t have a Young Adult section - I didn’t even know young adult books existed until I came to Singapore some ten years ago - so most of the time I either had to go to the Children’s Section and read the Ramona books (and endure dirty looks from this librarian with a God-complex) or I had to hang out at the Adult Section which carried some really hair-raising Anne Rice titles.
Which was depressing as hell when you’re 17.
So when I came across a title like CASTLE IN THE AIR by Diana Wynne Jones tucked away inconspicuously in the Adult Section, the book practically begged to be borrowed.
And it was like no book I had ever read. It had the most amazing imagination. From the moment I opened the book, I was sucked into Abdullah’s world, lapping up adventure after adventure aided and abetted by a wickedly perverse djinn and a kick-ass princess. I mean I was living in a muslim country and I had no idea that the culture could be so exciting.
So the next week, I went back to the library and carefully combed every book in the J section and just in case we had some shelving discrepancies, the W section as well. And when I found BLACK MARIA and CHARMED LIFE and WITCH WEEK, I felt like I had won the lottery!
Diana Wynne Jones is a prime example of what you can do when you throw out all the rules people tell you about writing and let your imagination run rampant. Coupled with a delightfully wicked sense of humor and razor sharp wit her work can only be all shades of awesome. She writes such ambitiously brilliant stories and treats the readers like the intelligent people that they are, never over-explaining things, but giving just enough details so that you can draw your own conclusion. It is no wonder that she is revered by such well-loved authors as Neil Gaiman and Maggie Stiefvater.
I think the thing I love most about Diana Wynne Jones is that she can cobble any situation together like mixing science fiction with magic and make it work. Whether it's enchanters with nine lives, a family of megalomaniac wizards or a house with many ways, you can be assured that it's going to be thrill ride. She’s the first author whose book I started collecting and there was one point when her books were dangerously rare and hard to find. But thanks to Harry Potter, there is a revival in all things magic so her books seem to be here to stay.
For good I hope.
You can find out more about Diana Wynne Jones at http://www.dianawynnejones.com/