The Diana Wynne Jones Project

[swan_tower]

Okay, folks. So I mentioned a while ago that I think I'm going to re-read the complete works of Diana Wynne Jones.

How should I go about doing this?

She wrote multiple different series, and a whole lot of stand-alone books. Should I read them in chronological order of publication? That would, in some cases, break up series by rather large amounts. Read all the series first, then tackle the stand-alones, in chronological order or not? Go at it any which way, grabbing whatever tickles my fancy? I'm really not sure how best to approach it. The one thing I'm sure of is that I'll start with either Fire and Hemlock (beause it made me a writer) or The Lives of Christopher Chant (because it was the first one I read), but recommendations for what to do after that would be welcome.



For the first time, it occurs to me to wonder if my subconscious had The Lives of Christopher Chant in mind when it came up with the title for "The Deaths of Christopher Marlowe."

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I vote for "as you feel like it." Most of her series aren't all that closely connected, and don't have to be read together. I think the only real exception is the Dalemark series, and arguably Derkholm/Griffin and Howl's Moving Castle/Castle in the Air.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I like reading series together, though. It helps me think about the ways the books fit against one another.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Hmm. You might want to reserve the Chrestomanci series for later, then, since it has something like ten books in it.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Or do it first. :-) (Aside from being a bit disappointed by Conrad's Fate, I quite like that series.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am all for fancy-tickling. Possibly because this is the method I'm using for reading my grandpa's collection, which is more numerous even than Diana Wynne Jones's works, but mostly because life is too short to say, "Oh, well, I guess it's time to read Howl's Moving Castle even though I'd rather have Charmed Life."

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Part of the issue is how to handle the few books I haven't read yet -- most of them older ones, and at least one non-fantasy. It's harder for those to tickle my fancy, since I don't know what they're like. I may assign them a general place in the lineup: one new-to-me book in between each series, or whatever, just so I don't end up leaving them aside.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's useful if you incline that way. My own take on that would probably be that I would be in the mood to read something new more often than something old, so it wouldn't be a problem.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

This is driven by nostalgic love, so the old favorites feature prominently in my thoughts.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

I read them in chronological order at least once and found it interesting to see the development of a writer.

An alternative to series clusters, are
a) divide them into urban fantasies v the myths sequences
b) use the clusters in my book :-)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Option b is tempting. :-)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It'll take me a while, but I hope to get all the way through.