What I'm Reading 11/22/11

src="http://toyxplosion.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Dork-Diaries-3-Tales-from-a-Not-So-Talented-Pop-Star.jpg" border="0" alt="" /> I finally got my hands on the third book in this series. I love the first two books and I know I'll love this one too.

A Sudden Wild Magic by Diana Wynne Jones is actually one of her adult novels. I started it a few days ago and I like it so far. It is different than her other books though, but I'm sure I'll like it.

The World Lost One Of It's Brightest Stars

Yesterday I came online and found e-mails from the Diana Wynne Jones club I joined. I wondered why there were so many. There were at least five or more. I thought, perhaps another new book was announced. But, no . . . . It was not a new book.

I opened the first e-mail, scrolled down and laid my eyes on the first message. Maybe it shouldn't have come as a shock. Maybe I should have expected it. But, from the day she was diagnosed with lung cancer I prayed for her and only thought positive things, like that she would get better. I even sent her a letter, letting her know that I'm sending her positive thoughts and well wishes. Telling her also how much she has inspired me.
But, it did come as a shock to me. Diana passed away. She was 76 and yet, I believe she was still too young to die. I know she had probably lived a life of adventure, did many things and lived life the way she wanted to. Diana had a wonderful imagination, even after being diagnosed her imagination was still wonderful.
Diana was diagnosed in 2009 with lung cancer and in 2010 Enchanted Glass was released. The book was wonderful, the story, the characters and everything was what I had come to know and love about her writing. Even with lung cancer, Diana still had her imagination and gift for words.

Some might find it silly, but I felt her death on a personal level. It felt as if I had lost a best friend, someone who knew me inside and out. Of course, I never met her and didn't know her personally. It felt as if I did, though and I suppose in a way I did know Diana. It was through her writing I and many others knew her.
She is like a close friend that I never met, never even talked to, but I knew her and she knew me and it was all through her writing. That is what I also said on my Xanga blog, but I have been reading other fans blogs that are mourning Diana as well and I have found a better way to explain it. This blogger got it right with this quote:
“The best moments in reading are when you come across something, a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things, which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.”

The blogger had said that hand for her was Diana Wynne Jones and I feel exactly the same. However, I didn't grow up reading her books, which makes me sad now because I wish I did. I've been a fan for two years and in that two years Diana has taught and inspired me more than anyone else.

Diana was a beautiful person, inside and out. She loved her fans, even helped other writers and her books were one-of-a-kind.
I'm grateful to Diana because after reading her books I became to write again and now I'm very happy because again I am doing what I love. I thank her for that and I will continue to write and make it my career like I've always wanted. I will become an author.

Diana's passing was a great loss to her family, friends, fans and to writing. There will never be another writer like her. And I mourn her passing with great sadness.

Diana, may you rest in peace and thank you for inspiring me to write again. Thank you for writing, for sharing your words and stories with the world to read. I will miss you.

Enchanted Glass

One of my favorite authors, Diana Wynne Jones, is going to release a new book titled Enchanted Glass. I'm unsure of when it is going to be released because on her website it says that it will be released sometime this year and some other websites I have looked on says next year. Here are some of the book covers:


I don't know which is the American cover, but I think they both look really nice. Anyway, I am excited for this book. I love Diana Wynne Jones books and there is just so many of her books to pick from and read. She is really an amazing fantasy writer.
Here is the description of the book for anyone who is interested:

"As a boy, he had spent fascinated hours looking at the garden through each differently coloured pane. Depending, you got a rose pink sunset garden, hushed and windless; a stormy orange garden, where it was suddenly autumn; a tropical green garden, where there seemed likely to be parrots and monkeys any second. And so on. As an adult now, Andrew valued that glass even more. Magic apart, it was old old old. The glass had all sorts of internal wrinkles and trapped bubbles, and the long-dead maker had somehow managed to make the colours both intense and misty at once."

When the magician Jocelyn Brandon Hope died he bequeathed Melstone House to his grandson Andrew. He also left his ‘field of care’: an area of strangeness surrounding the land around the house, whose boundary Andrew must walk in order to preserve its power.

Andrew had always loved the house, but he finds owning it a lot more complicated, aside from all the magic. There is Mrs Stock, the tyrannical housekeeper who won’t let him move the furniture and punishes him with her terrible cooking. Just as bad is the obsessive gardener who will only grow giant inedible vegetables. To add to his troubles, twelve year old orphan Aidan Cain suddenly arrives on the doorstep begging protection from magical stalkers, and Andrew’s sinister rich neighbour, Mr Brown, begins to encroach on the ‘field of care’. The one compensation is the gardener’s beautiful niece, Stashe. Things become stranger and stranger until all is made clear with the help of the enchanted glass itself.

Not since HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE has Diana Wynne Jones combined romance and humour so successfully as in this delightful novel with echoes of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream."

I am really thinking about pre-ordering this book. I actually hope that it's released this year because I can't wait for it. I can't wait to have it and read it. Oh, well....It will come out soon enough I suppose. Until then at least I can see the pictures of these nice covers :)