Diana Wynne Jones was a prolific and celebrated author of British fantasy novels, writing about kids with magic powers in boarding schools before that was cool. Starting in mid-July, I am going to read all of her books. In one year. And write about them here!
Diana Wynne Jones is probably now best known for her 1986 novel Howl’s Moving Castle, since that was adapted into a beautiful animated film by Studio Ghibli in 2004. Howl’s Moving Castle is only one of her many books in many series, however. Starting in the early 1970s and working through four decades, Diana Wynne Jones wrote dozens of fantasy novels, mostly for children, some of which stand alone while others form series. I’ve read most of them, and I think a readthrough of her work in chronological order will give a clear look at how her writing style developed and and which motifs she carried from work to work.
I decided to structure this as a yearlong project because in 2023, my pal Besh ran a community called A Year On Discworld, wherein we read all of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books in publication order, in a year. It was a phenomenal way to revisit those lovely books and get a lot of insight into Pratchett’s development as a writer.
I have stolen my friend’s scheduling technique and timeline for this project, but instead of scheduling within a calendar year, I am scheduling from summer to summer.
Scheduling my “year” starting in July is entirely self-serving. I teach, and thus the academic year is more meaningful to me than the calendar year. But honestly, the main reason I arranged the schedule this way is that I reread Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones every year when I attend a specific academic conference, as I’ve written about for WWAC before! I have arranged this schedule such that the week for reading Deep Secret (in March of next year) coincides with that conference. It’s a happy coincidence that this also means we’ll be reading Witch Week over Halloween!
I think it’s also worthwhile to talk a little bit about how I selected which books to count as “all” of Diana Wynne Jones’s books. Jones wrote short stories as well as novels, and these were gathered into many different collected editions. In planning this readthrough, I prioritized the collections I already owned, and consulted tables of contents to make sure I was getting full coverage of all her published short stories. So there are some book titles that are not included in this readthrough, such as Everard’s Ride, which was both published as a standalone and in a collection. But even though not all book titles are represented, all the stories in them are included in my list.
First up for me will be a look at Changeover, her first published work (which has no fantasy elements and is extremely out of print); and then July’s got Witch’s Business, The Ogre Downstairs, and Eight Days of Luke!
