It wasn’t even a bad book, although perhaps my younger self thought it was – I think I read it at that point I decided I was too grown-up for a lot of what the author did.

Since I remembered nothing about it, I had forgotten how violent (with an enemy being disemboweled by the protagonist) and how frankly sexual the relationship between the protagonist and her love interest/mentor was. I mean, I remember they became an item, but that was seriously it. There’s a lot of genuine sexual tension, not just pre-teen fluffy I wuv yous.

I suppose the standards in what was considered acceptable changed dramatically from the ’80s to the ’90s. And that my memory is very fallible.

Reading, therefore, is equally difficult, but God, was I desperate to read something, anything this week. So I started pulling books I’d already read, novellas and YA titles from my youth, slim little volumes that can be read in a few hours even by the foggy brained, off the shelf at random.

One of these books was by a former favourite author who I hadn’t read in a good ten years.

At eleven, I adored her and her books, although at the time they were impossible to find outside of my library. I continued to reread them regularly and anything new the author put out into junior high.

And then I hit that point where I was simultaneously exploring adult novels, post-modern novels, classic novels, all sorts of things, gradually broadening my horizons. I dropped authors whose books I owned in the dozens, trading them in at the used bookstore or moving them up to the attic library in our house, where all old things no one could bear to part with went, to gather dust and act as effective camouflage during candy hunts at birthdays and Easter. These books were suddenly childish, shallow, poorly written, repetitive, any number of criticisms a grumpy teenager could throw at something they suddenly found they had grown out of.

Most of these books I was well-rid of, and can hardly claim to miss them. But these books I didn’t quite have the heart to drag off to a used bookstore, even when I was moving more of the dusty stacks from the library on a recent visit to my parents’ house. Nostalgia, maybe, or the fact that my younger self had put her name and address, complete with postal code, on the inside of the front cover.

So I was quite surprised when I pulled one of these books off the shelf yesterday and was reading it on the bus, and not experiencing the usual writhing shame and embarrassment that ensues when you revisit something from your childhood. It was like my adolescent self’s arrogant discarding of the books all those years ago wiped away the nostalgia and lead me to expect the books to be terrible. Instead, it was almost like starting with a clean slate.

I can remember so much with such clarity – there are no surprises here – and I can see all the flaws. But I can also see what was done well, what was interesting or different considering the time the books were written, even when compared to the bulk of what’s published today. I can see why my younger self loved these books, why they still have strong merit as reading materials for similarly aged children.

It’s an amazingly pleasant experience and one I never expected.

I am not sure I approve of a novel written in the present tense. It seems wrong.

I also can’t help but feel that by the end of the novel, there had better ba damn good reason to excuse something being written in the present tense (with this author, I am sure there will be).

There’s just something about the present tense that makes it difficult for me to feel engaged with the text and I don’t understand why that is.

So, for that matter, does the interwoven (I’m not sure, I’m not actually far enough to see how this is going to tie together and play out) story of the confused, suicidally depressed writing student fascinated by the tawdry Golden Age of Hollywood who the protagonist recognizes as talented but can’t find anyone, in or out of class, who actually likes and wants to read what he writes.

At least they’re productive.

I gave his first novel a try one weekend and tried not to dwell too much on the fact that it was written when he was younger than I am now (this was not very successful).

Can you call something a coming of age tale when the character is already an adult and, in the end, seems to have come to an understanding about life but may not be a bigger or better man for it? Or when his decisions, even his better ones, result in the loss of things which have always been, and clearly are, important? And were there hipsters in the ’80s? I can answer none of these questions, although I’m assured that the answer to the last one is ‘no’.

This first novel is worlds different, in tone and quality, from the later masterpiece that I’d already read, but it’s also worlds better than most first novels I’ve read, and indeed avoids the pitfalls I associate with first novel syndrome. It touches on themes that I suspect are important to the author – sexuality, self-discovery (for good and for ill), and Jewishness (this last may not be a theme, but Jewish protagonists and Jewish characters in general seem important).

Apparently it was made into a terrible movie; just reading the Wikipedia article made me angry, made me baffled as to why you would bother adapting a novel if you were going to completely remove and reconfigure one of the central conflicts (the protagonist torn between his love for a beautifully quirky girl and his attraction to a fabulous, witty gay friend somehow becomes two men in a love triangle for one amazing woman) and God I hate Hollywood and modern filmmaking sometimes.

On the plus side, the worst part about the novel was learning about the awful film adaptation, and the novel itself contained zero Nazis or World Wars, which I have found my reading over saturated with as of late.

After some difficulty I located Enchanter Glass, the most recent novel by Diana Wynne Jones.

Diana Wynne Jones is one of my favourite authors, despite the fact that I think her last great novel was the adult-oriented Deep Secret. Her novels since have been decent, more imaginative and lively than others in her field, but far from the instant classics of some of her earlier works. Enchanted Glass is not a return to form — expecting this of an author recently diagnosed and operated on for lung cancer is beyond absurd. But the book is delightful, a breath of fresh, imaginative air after a near decade of sequels (except for the novella The Game, with which I had problems that I don’t think I should go into at this juncture). I read it in two nights.

Like many of Jones’ classics, Enchanted Glass is set in a world very recognizable to our own, with aspects which are not so much differences as additions. Her trademark of magic in mundanity is represented in full force (a grumpy gardener who has a gift for growing truly enormous produce for the sole purpose of triumphing in the village exhibition, a young woman with a knack for horses who can vaguely divine the future by reading the results of races in the paper, and so on). The favourite theme of duality is here, more blatantly and strongly than in any work since A Sudden Wild Magic. It is utterly English, from the setting to the mythos Jones draws upon as the novel progresses, and very modern (to a point where it’s almost startlingly – being so used to her contemporary fantasies having been written in the ’80s, it is a bit of a shock to find computers and cell phones about the place).

What is definitely the bulk of Jones’ work is that the first character we meet, almost definitely the main character, is not just an adult, but one who is middle-aged, a university history professor. Later a pre-teen boy, who has recently lost the grandmother who raised him, appears, on the run from a combination of social services and dangerous magical forces, but the book is as much about him as it is the professor. This is so unusual, so noteworthy and against genre conventions, that I have to wonder if Jones originally intended, or hoped, for this to be an adult novel, and changed her mind, or was talked back into the safety, and possibly the greater profitability, or her traditional market. Some of the material is dark, or shades to it, and while Jones has never shied away from dark material, that coupled with the adult protagonist makes me wonder.

Here as well, more so than in some of Jones’ recent works, is a feeling of something /more/. Jones often leaves loose ends and doesn’t neatly tie up her plot into a convenient package, but here it is more noticeable than usual. It’s odd and one of the few blemishes in an otherwise outstanding little novel. I enjoyed reading it and I think it is better than Jones has written in years, but I am still left with a sense of something off, a novel that was detoured away from the author’s original intentions, or ended more abruptly than Jones may have planned.

I haven’t actually seen any responses to Enchanted Glass; I think the American market is getting it several months after those of us in the Commonwealth, and it could be, quite possibly (and sadly) that in the absence of a tie to her well-recognized Chrestomanci and Castle series, the little book will be easily overlooked.

I love them, I devour them, I have gone to great lengths to acquire them, since I have never seen one sold in a physical bookstore.

And as I am reading, I pick apart the plot, the use of foreshadowing, the motivations of all but the main characters, and damn near everything else.

I enjoy her books, without a doubt. She’s one of those authors whose sheer passion for what she writes about delights me – but I’m often left feeling that she’s bitten off more than she can chew.

But, I recently acquired a book with two of her novellas in – the first of the two being one I hadn’t read, and probably the oldest of her works I’ve read.

And damned if I didn’t find it perfect. I read it in one day, when lately I’ve been fairly languid and slow-paced in my reading, dividing my time between books and videogames and cleaning up the unending piles of books my kitten keeps knocking over (the last is a very time-consuming prospect). It’s a very simple story of growing up, of young love, of trying to find a place that is home and gives you what you need, and the focus keeps everything tight and right and wonderful.

I almost feel bad for enjoying it significantly more than her later, more ambitious novels. An author should challenge themselves, try new things, that is how growth is achieved … but I can’t help but hope whatever she writes next has more of the simple, straightforward perfection of this slim novella.

If you persist in this manner, I am going to be torn, possibly indefinitely, between a desire to bulldoze through the 200 pages that remain of your book in a single sitting, or between pecking at it a few pages at a time for the rest of my life.

Your book is beautiful. It is perfect. It achieves much while being completely accessible. It is an evident labour of love and extensive research.

But it is your ability to include throw-away details that rip apart my heart and soul that is truly remarkable, and also makes it difficult to read at times. You do your job too well in many ways and, while the larger tragedies of your characters’ lives are awful and effecting, it’s the little things that bring tears to my eyes.

Warily, I salute you.

(WordPress, what the hell do you mean by ‘complex expression’?)

I’ve been re-reading the entire main series of an author who’s been a favourite of mine since early adolescence. Since this now compromises over thirty books, it is keeping me pleasantly occupied, but with very little to say (although the fact that the fourth book – back when the back cover blurbs and critic quotations were all “LULZ FUNNY FANTASY” – makes me cry at the end /every damn time/ is mildly embarrassing, to say the least).

However, the next book to read is one I am not very fond of (followed by another I am only okay with). It (and probably fans – I blame fans for everything ) can be blamed for completely ruining the ending of the previously mentioned book that makes me cry like a baby, so I wasn’t particularly looking forward to reading it.

So I broke up the Great Reread with a comedy/horror novel of widespread internet fame that everyone told me I had to read – back when it was freely available on the internet. Thankfully, unlike the previous horror novel everyone on the internet told me I should read (which will be leaving my home as soon as I remember to prepare a package and have money for shipping) I actually really enjoyed this one. It made surprisingly effective use of the unreliable narrator and in place of post-modern pretension it was, you know, funny.

I’m actually looking forward to the author making time to write a second book someday. As long as he doesn’t start taking himself too seriously, it could be quite fun.

Because I do not undertake nostalgic re-reads lightly, I am, in fact, reading all of the books in his most prolific series which, with the release of his latest novel this month, amounts to nearly forty books.

I am only on the third book at the moment, but already I am impressed by the fact that while he didn’t reach the truly impressive satiric heights (and depth of plot, world, and character) for a number of years, his prose already flows smoothly and naturally. This is a natural writer, right here, and I can find pleasure even in his less shining works.