Charmed Lives 4
Charmed Lives 2
Charmed Lives 1
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Thank you enormously for the
fanzine. It is so good. I particularly liked the drawings the kids
did (including the invisible cake), but it was also rather
extraordinary to find that interview down word for word - sort of
double image, reading it and remembering saying it. And I did think
Maureen's review of Fire and Hemlock was one of the best
that book has ever had - she really understood it.
Best wishes for the second issue.
Diana Wynne Jones
I think it's interesting that Diana is becoming an "adult"
writer - I wonder if this is partly because people who grew up on
her children's books are unwilling to give them up when they are so
superior to most adult fantasy. I discovered them through working as
a children's librarian and did my best to plug them to adult readers
of f&sf that I knew. Homeward Bounders, for example,
really was among the first (and few really good) books with a "gaming"
theme.
For a long time I never knew Diana was involved in fandom and it
took some struggle to overcome the "Hey, this is DIANA WYNNE
JONES!" feeling. Last Eastercon I remember sitting in a group
with her while she was talking about being guest of honour at a
convention where one of the other guests was a writer she much
admired, and saying how "fannish" she felt when she forced
herself to go up and talk to her. "That's how I felt about you,"
I found myself saying . .
Mind you, this was the time of the Illustrated Neck Brace - of
which part 2 was October's World fantasy Con. I still think that one
of the great missing set-pieces of the latest novel is the writer
with drawings of nude Greek dancing girls around her neck-brace . .
.
Andy Sawyer
Science Fiction Foundation Collection, University of Liverpool
I have been meaning to write to let you know how much I enjoyed
Charmed Lives. It was very entertaining and informative - I
discovered to my horror that my collection of Diana Wynne Jones
books was not as complete as I thought!
I particularly enjoyed the interview with DWJ (alarming thought
that things in her books keep coming true) and Maureen Speller's
analysis of Fire and Hemlock. Penny Hill's look through her "children's
bookshelf" was very interesting - I was thrilled that she
mentioned Nicholas Stuart Grey, a personal favourite of mine. I was
beginning to wonder if anybody else had ever read his enchanting
books.
Many thanks for such an entertaining read about one of my favourite
authors.
Kathy Hunter
Croydon
Great
fanzine. Lots of fun. Note that the only good edition of Langley's
The Land of Green Ginger is the 60's one with 12 1/2
chapters. The 30's one ends wrong, while the 70's one was severely
truncated and lost the Capitalised Nouns, to its detriment.
Neil Gaiman
USA
Congratulations on your first issue of Charmed Lives.
I see that I have only read 10 of the novels. I enjoyed all the
Dalemark series, especially Drowned Ammet, but my favourite
is still Howl's Moving Castle. Returning to the Dalemark
theme, these seem to me to have a sort of "alternative history"
feel, and perhaps that's where DWJ might consider her adult appeal
in future, as this has worked well for Guy Gavriel Kay?
My earliest recollection of ‘Fantasy' was in something called ‘Arthur
Mee's Treasury', or something similar, way back in the mid 1940's,
whereby a child wakes to see someone in a mask bending over him,
first laughing at thinking it was his father, finds that each mask
removed reveals another. I haven't managed to pass on my F&SF
reading tastes to my daughter, probably because her bedtime stories
were all three volumes of Lord of the Rings. I even
considered naming her Eowyn!
For a future item in "Further Along the Bookshelf", I can
recommend Phillip Pullman's Northern Lights and The
Subtle Knife.
Mike Brain, Flintshire,
who in a previous letter described himself as having "a
number of DWJ's books, despite being an ancient 60-year old
retired grandfather."
edited and unless
otherwise indicated, written by
Meredith
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