Hello again, you loverly peoples! I recently reread Howl's Moving Castle because my mother finally purchased the book, and my sister finally read it. So now we can watch the movie! Hoorah, and all that wonderful rot. Because Studio Ghibli!! *squeals with delight*
Now would probably be an opportune time to tell you all about how I went to the Studio Ghibli store(!!!) now, wouldn't it? You all would have laughed to see me jumping and squealing all over the stupid place. IT WAS ALL SO CUTE. And I didn't take a single picture. I am so stupid. Well ... I got a picture of me and my sisters taken with Totoro (because who doesn't want to have their picture taken with Totoro??) and I'm not sure if I want my face to float around on the internet yet.
I also have a survey for you to take which is sadly lacking many things. The survey can be found here. But I am trying to whip this review into shape half an hour before a leave for gymnastics, so without further ado, I present:
The Review~
Diana Wynne Jones is a master of writing. She lets half a million little threads of plotting run riot, and then pulls them back up at the very end into a neat little bow. And then there is the matter of her characters who live and breathe. There are only two authors who I have found can make me see their characters run about. And she is one of them.
In the back of my copy of HMC, Diana Wynne Jones said that "The one big, strange fact about Howl is that almost every young woman who reads about him wants to marry him." She then proceeded to tell about a time she did a Q&A, and "a teenage girl put her hand up and said-without any embarrassment at all--that she had long wanted to marry Howl and would I [Diana Wynne Jones] mind."
I love Howl dearly, but I wouldn't want to marry him. But, at least he would not be a boring husband. Although I think he would be ... rather too exciting. I wouldn't want to have to clean up slime, nor have my husband falling in love with other women all the time. I'd get too mad at him for all that. But that's besides the point.
I probably understood Sophie best. She is the eldest, like me, and is afraid of people. When things change later on, she becomes less afraid of people. I can only hope that I can be like that at her age. But who am I kidding, I can already tell that this review is going to be a mess. And not a good one.
So I'm going to drop it and instead do a post on Favorite Books. Which is now what the title should say. But it doesn't. I swear I'm not trying to ruin your day.
Does no one realize how hard it is to write about those wonderful books that stand out in your memory? Because trying to tell everyone about is so hard. It usually ends up as rambling, or something that is a first cousin (if not a sibling) to info dumping. And nobody enjoys info dumps. They may enjoy the information given to them, bu not how it was told.
Which is why I end up not reviewing a lot of books. I am very careful in my selection of what I read. I read lots of reviews to figure out what I might like. So that way, I end up reading what I like. And I like it that way. It helps keep my TBR a manageble size, and I end up happier because of it.
But that also means I struggle to find the right words to express my love for the book. It usually means that it'll impact my writing to some degree at the least, and at the most, if it actually has a franchise, I will be dancing around whenever I see it, and barely keeping my head on. So thank you all for putting up with me. And my craziness. I am really thankful for it.
