House of Many Ways - Nom Nom Nom Nom

After reading Caroline's post about shopping for books and seeing her mention Garden Spells at the end, I decided to read it again.

So I took it to work with me this morning, and read the first chapter or so while waiting for our morning meeting to start (and then delayed the meeting slightly by raving about it when Bod asked me if it was any good (having sold one to Jo after I'd recommended it to her))... anyways, so I planned to read it again today.

Then all my plans went out the window when Donal phoned up from Goods In to tell me that House of Many Ways had just arrived. So naturally I read that instead.

Once again, Diana Wynne Jones has written a brilliant book. Now it's "A chaotically magical sequel to Howl's Moving Castle" so I was very much looking forward to reading a little more about Sophie and Howl (and Calcifer) - and I wasn't disappointed. One of the things I loved was the dog called Waif. Now in the film (that Scott Pack prefers) there is a dog called Heen that is small, scruffy and very wheezy. Heen doesn't appear in the book, the dog in the book is the combination of Wizard Suliman and Prince Justin that the Witch creates (another bit dropped/mixed up from the film, read about him here and discover the whole point of the scarecrow turning into Prince Justin (something Richie Fingers asked me about)).

Ahem.

Anyways, Waif is basically Heen, but with a new name and new purpose. I love the fact that she's taken this film character and transplanted it into a new book!

Now if none of that makes any sense, I do apologise - basically I recommend it!
(and I've now seen the American cover and may just have to buy that edition too...)

My own Moving Castle.

After my discovery of a cardboard Moving Castle earlier (now sadly unavailable unless it appears on eBay) I have got the book to read in bed tonight and put the film on to watch while I eat/play WoW.

Watching the film does make me go "Nooooo, that's so not right!" every five minutes or so although I do like the way old/young Sophie blend every now and again), a bit like LOTR really. But I do like Billy Crystal as Calcifer's voice. To honour the film I have been playing one of my alternate characters on WoW - my Blood Elf hunter Sophee and her pet lynx Calcifer.

I have also managed to find this lovely link to a downloadable model of the Moving Castle.

Now all I need is a printer...

Itchy Fingers

When I was at home over the weekend I was looking through a few of the photo albums and in one of the Christmas pictures I spotted a craft book that I remembered very well.

It was one for making gift boxes, and the book had in it all these cut-out shapes that you used to make the boxes. I can remember spending hours making those things, I loved doing it. Another year I had a dragon book and made 9-10 different dragon mobiles, and another time I had an Escher book where you could make these shapes that rotated to show off the tessalating designs.

I bought my two copies of the Unseen University Cut Out Book but I'm nervous about starting the thing when I haven't made anything for such a long while. (The Escher things are the last I can remember making and that was in early 1995).

So I thought I'd have a pootle about on t'interweb but while I've found lots of printable templates for things that I don't really like the look of anyway, I've found next to no books (barring all the Usborne ones).

But I did just find this and I'm now deeply in love with it. Despite the fact it's not the proper castle (the one from the book), I still like the film and would still like to make the thing.
(Scott Pack has just finished reading the book and is being told just how wrong his opinion of it is.)

Prepare yourself for the possibility of more paper model related posts, and if I manage to track down anything I want (and can afford) then there might have to be pictures of work in progress.