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1. I have been on a bit of a Diana Wynne Jones kick recently -- her death reminded me that there are too many of her books that, for one reason or another (limited library stocks and/or lack of time, mostly), I had not yet read. So.
Last week I read Conrad's Fate and Mixed Magics, which are, respectively, a story about one thing Christopher Chant did between the end of The Lives of Christopher Chant and becoming Chrestomanci, and a collection of four stories in the Chrestomanci series. Three of the stories weren't especially memorable, though amusing, but I did quite like the one where Cat Chant meets Tonino from The Magicians of Caprona and they wind up in a pickle.
As for Conrad's Fate, while I enjoyed it exceedingly, I think I might have liked it even more if it had been more Christopher's story with Conrad's part told as the B plot instead of the other way around, because while Christopher Chant is kind of a jerk, he is my jerk -- his story being one of the first DWJ books I read back in middle school, when I hadn't yet developed a critical sense -- and in fact one of my main issues with the rest of the Chrestomanci series is that I don't care half as much about Cat as I do about Christopher. :-/
This week I am working through the Dalemark quartet. Thus far, I have read Cart and Cwidder and Drowned Ammet, and am about fifty pages in to The Spellcoats -- like most DWJ books, they read fast and easily. Mostly the first two make me think of Lloyd Alexander's Westmark trilogy, only with actual magic mixed into the political oppression and people traveling about in hiding, and rather less horribly realistic portrayal of battles, though the portrayal of the oppression, and the randomness of the occasional deaths, are still suitably horrific. And now that I write the preceding sentence, I suppose the effect is actually rather different, overall, but still. I love Westmark passionately, so the comparison is mostly by way of explaining that I think Jones did a bang up job with the first two books in this series. I will reserve full judgment until I finish the last two, however.
(For the record, I found Diana Wynne Jones via my middle school library, and then made the happy discovery that while my local library didn't have her books -- and I cannot think why, since they had an excellent collection of Andre Norton, plus lots of Patricia McKillip and Meredith Pierce, who I think are normally more obscure -- the county library had several. The first DWJ books I read are, IIRC, A Tale of Time City, The Lives of Christopher Chant, Dogsbody, The Homeward Bounders, Archer's Goon, Witch Week, The Magicians of Caprona, and Howl's Moving Castle. Possibly also The Power of Three, though I remember very little of it. Everything else waited until at least high school.)
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2. My parents and I have set a firm date for when I return their car, which I have had since returning from Spain just before New Year's. I will be driving down to New Jersey on Thursday the 28th, whereupon I will have dinner with my parents that night, attend a dinner party with some family friends on Friday, and drive back early Saturday morning with my parents and their dog, probably visit a couple wineries or do some other touristy thing, and wave goodbye as they drive south alone that afternoon, leaving me carless once again.
Theoretically, at some point in there Susan and I will do brunch or otherwise hang out. We will see each other at the Friday dinner party, but that's more of a group thing, so it doesn't precisely count.
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3. I taught Moral Tales again today -- I hadn't for over a month, both because of rearranging schedules so I could visit Cat, and getting sick one week. Today's lesson was about balance in the environment, illustrated by way of a story about how spraying DDT to kill mosquitoes in Borneo led, through a chain of knock-on effects, to the British Royal Air Force helicoptering over the island in 1959, dropping cats in parachutes as they went. (This is apparently a true story, though the number of parachuting cats varies with the teller.)
Then we went outside and looked at trees, as one does. *shrug* I really do think our lesson plans have gotten sillier over the course of the year, but maybe that's just sample bias, given how many lessons I haven't been there for.
Last week I read Conrad's Fate and Mixed Magics, which are, respectively, a story about one thing Christopher Chant did between the end of The Lives of Christopher Chant and becoming Chrestomanci, and a collection of four stories in the Chrestomanci series. Three of the stories weren't especially memorable, though amusing, but I did quite like the one where Cat Chant meets Tonino from The Magicians of Caprona and they wind up in a pickle.
As for Conrad's Fate, while I enjoyed it exceedingly, I think I might have liked it even more if it had been more Christopher's story with Conrad's part told as the B plot instead of the other way around, because while Christopher Chant is kind of a jerk, he is my jerk -- his story being one of the first DWJ books I read back in middle school, when I hadn't yet developed a critical sense -- and in fact one of my main issues with the rest of the Chrestomanci series is that I don't care half as much about Cat as I do about Christopher. :-/
This week I am working through the Dalemark quartet. Thus far, I have read Cart and Cwidder and Drowned Ammet, and am about fifty pages in to The Spellcoats -- like most DWJ books, they read fast and easily. Mostly the first two make me think of Lloyd Alexander's Westmark trilogy, only with actual magic mixed into the political oppression and people traveling about in hiding, and rather less horribly realistic portrayal of battles, though the portrayal of the oppression, and the randomness of the occasional deaths, are still suitably horrific. And now that I write the preceding sentence, I suppose the effect is actually rather different, overall, but still. I love Westmark passionately, so the comparison is mostly by way of explaining that I think Jones did a bang up job with the first two books in this series. I will reserve full judgment until I finish the last two, however.
(For the record, I found Diana Wynne Jones via my middle school library, and then made the happy discovery that while my local library didn't have her books -- and I cannot think why, since they had an excellent collection of Andre Norton, plus lots of Patricia McKillip and Meredith Pierce, who I think are normally more obscure -- the county library had several. The first DWJ books I read are, IIRC, A Tale of Time City, The Lives of Christopher Chant, Dogsbody, The Homeward Bounders, Archer's Goon, Witch Week, The Magicians of Caprona, and Howl's Moving Castle. Possibly also The Power of Three, though I remember very little of it. Everything else waited until at least high school.)
---------------
2. My parents and I have set a firm date for when I return their car, which I have had since returning from Spain just before New Year's. I will be driving down to New Jersey on Thursday the 28th, whereupon I will have dinner with my parents that night, attend a dinner party with some family friends on Friday, and drive back early Saturday morning with my parents and their dog, probably visit a couple wineries or do some other touristy thing, and wave goodbye as they drive south alone that afternoon, leaving me carless once again.
Theoretically, at some point in there Susan and I will do brunch or otherwise hang out. We will see each other at the Friday dinner party, but that's more of a group thing, so it doesn't precisely count.
---------------
3. I taught Moral Tales again today -- I hadn't for over a month, both because of rearranging schedules so I could visit Cat, and getting sick one week. Today's lesson was about balance in the environment, illustrated by way of a story about how spraying DDT to kill mosquitoes in Borneo led, through a chain of knock-on effects, to the British Royal Air Force helicoptering over the island in 1959, dropping cats in parachutes as they went. (This is apparently a true story, though the number of parachuting cats varies with the teller.)
Then we went outside and looked at trees, as one does. *shrug* I really do think our lesson plans have gotten sillier over the course of the year, but maybe that's just sample bias, given how many lessons I haven't been there for.
