|
|
Post by leahclaire on Nov 29, 2013 17:22:10 GMT
I always like to talk about which one people discovered first! I discovered Witch Week first, and was pretty much sold. I was probably 12 or 13 and I immediately read everything the school library had by her, and then tracked down all the rest at the library (except for those few that weren't published in the US and were never republished!). Witch Week was my absolute favorite for a long time (because no one ever gets those school feelings quite as right, and now that I'm older I can even relate to the teachers). But it was eventually supplanted by Fire and Hemlock, because that's my favorite book of all time  |
|
|
|
Post by invisibledragon on Nov 29, 2013 22:02:02 GMT
Charmed Life for me. On a trip to a bookshop my parents added it and Witch Week to the pile of purchases, and I'd kind of assumed it was for them. It was around the time the third Harry Potter came out and I was desperate for more reading material. Charmed Life and Witch Week were amazing to me, and I sought out all the Chrestomanci books after that, followed by anything DWJ I could get my hands on.
I used to claim Fire and Hemlock as my favourite, too, but on reflection it's probably Howl's Moving Castle. It's just so clever and real!
|
|
|
|
Post by manaliabrid on Nov 30, 2013 3:36:25 GMT
Howl's Moving Castle was my first. Like many, I saw the movie, without ever having heard of the book or Diana Wynne Jones. Then, I was in a bookstore, looking for a book to take to camp and I saw it and was like, wow, that's the book that movie was based on, and then I read it and loved it. However, I wasn't at an age where I would really seek out the rest of an author's books. I did read the two companion novels to Howl's Moving Castle, but I never thought about what else she might've written until a friend visited and he was reading The Dark Lord of Derkholm. I was on a train with him and bored so I started flipping through it, and by the time his visit ended I'd finished it and was desperately begging to borrow Year of the Griffin, which he also had, which he denied me on the grounds that he was leaving that day and wanted to read it himself anyhow. After that, I pretty much went on a two-ish year long Diana Wynne Jones binge, and I've now read almost all her books.
|
|
|
|
Post by aeriel on Nov 30, 2013 17:41:41 GMT
I think my first was A Tale of Time City- I used to check out anything that even remotely resembled fantasy at the library as a kid, so it was only a matter of time before I came across Diana Wynne Jones. I remember loving it but I don't remember much else about the book- I know my favorite was Archer's Goon for a while there, though now my favorite is probably Howl's Moving Castle
|
|
|
|
Post by penigriffin on Dec 1, 2013 3:23:28 GMT
*Charmed Life.* It was the late 80s. I was in Atlanta (my first visit to Atlanta) in a used book/comic store while my husband hunted up back issues of *Thor.* I gravitated, as I always do, to the children's shelves and picked up *Charmed Life.* MG Fantasy, always of interest, looked a bit Nesbittian, and almost everything else there was impossible (somebody'd recently dumped her entire collection of Babysitter's Club, I believe), and I always need more books when traveling because I read faster than planes fly. So I added it to the Thor issues. And finished it before we got onto the plane home.
I had a soul-sucking day job at the time, but within walking distance from the library, so every couple of weeks I would visit to return the last batch of books and do a fly-through to get more. My custom on such visits is to dash through the New Books, certain specific sections of Adult Non-Fiction, and the Juvenile section (later expanded to include the YA section, when the San Antonio Library system moved to the current bigger facility and got a YA section), where I'd run up and down the fiction shelves, paying special attention to certain letters where authors I was reading through lurked, in all cases taking whatever jumped into my backpack. It is astounding how many quality books will jump into your backpack in 15 minutes using this method. I checked out one Jones book per visit till I used them up, scanning dust jacket copy to select which one I would read this time.
It took me awhile to realize exactly how good she is. She was not one of those authors who hits you in the face with her quality. I had to read a critical mass of her before it dawned on me. But dawn it did!
|
|
|
|
Post by elviella on Dec 2, 2013 9:23:26 GMT
I actually came to the DWJ party quite late?? I saw the Howl movie when I was 16 and decided I wanted to read the book but didn't get around it until much later, and it wasn't even my first DWJ book. I vaguely decided I wanted to check her books out sometime based on people on the internet always talking about how brilliant they are, but I only got the chance when my friend got SUPER INTO DALEMARK and basically...mailed me the books, which was about a year and a half ago (and then I got super into Dalemark, too). So my first book of hers would be Cart and Cwidder, but I only ever got into the series with the Spellcoats, and fell absolutely into obsessive love with Crown of Dalemark. Since then, I am trying to space out her books because I really don't want to read them all in one sitting and then have nothing else to read. ;___;
|
|
|
|
Post by kellyanne on Dec 2, 2013 10:55:45 GMT
It was either Witch Week or The Ogre Downstairs, in my class at school. And it would have been when I was around maybe 8 or 9. Possibly a tad younger. So we're talking over 28 years ago (hence I can't quite remember which I read first)! I went on to borrow whatever the local library had, and then when I moved from Primary to Secondary School, the librarian got a ton more of her books in for me, as she knew DWJ was my fave author  |
|
|
|
Post by windsroad on Dec 2, 2013 16:01:49 GMT
I started reading DWJ when I was nine... my brother got a bunch of Ghibli movies for his birthday including HMC, and then got the novel. he had to all but FORCE me to read it because I thought it was going to be lame. I was so wrong!! I read it in one day and the next day read it again, haha. it's funny, because every time I would get a new one of her books after that I thought they sounded lame but then they turned out to be completely amazing (of course.)
|
|
|
|
Post by purplenadgers on Dec 4, 2013 16:13:10 GMT
I read Witch Week first, because my elementary school library had it (I remember checking it out multiple times), but I didn't realize it was part of a series until my mom bought me Charmed Life and the Lives of Christopher Chant (I was probably in about fourth grade). Then I found out that her other stuff was awesome too when my mom lent me the Dark Lord of Derkholm (which I have now stolen from her). And since then, I have been obsessed with tracking down as many of her books as possible. So, thanks Mom. Because otherwise I might not have realised how awesome DWJ is.
|
|
