Finished reading: Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones 📚

I am reading a children’s book, why? Because I looked up Hugo winning podcasts, and there’s one called Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones, and I listened to some of it, and I like it, and it’s the next place I’m feeling out. The hosts of the podcast are, again, two nerdy people talking about stuff they like, in this case, the works of Diana Wynne Jones. I hadn’t heard of Jones before, but if some smart, nerdy people are making a whole podcast about her books, she must be someone to know about, right?

I started with Charmed Life because that’s the one I found at the bookworm.

Even though I kind of got increasingly uncomfortable with the first half of the book being mostly about Gwendolen coming up with more and more awful ways to seek attention through acting out, I was pretty much along for the ride, especially towards the end of the book when the climax started to come on. Things got strange and trippy, and what it reminded me of was Momo, another children’s book I liked.

The fact that children’s books are about children means that there’s something more immediately engaging about them. Less complicated, more gutteral. And they remind me of being a child, sort of… Like I realize, I did read books when I was a kid. I liked the phantom tollbooth. I liked Roald Dahl books. I read stuff by Robert Jordan, though I don’t remember what. Reading books is in my distant past, it’s kind of a child-like activity. I was having some glimmer of that reading this book.

Stories are so different than advice. A story has a cast of characters that create a web of relationships that expresses feelings and moods and actions that all convey ideas, somehow, but do it naturally, like a dream. I’m contrasting this with advice, because I’m realizing that’s the other major kind of book out there, at least in my world. Self-help.

And right now I’m much more attracted to stories and fantasy and scifi because I want (or need) to get some kind of critical distance from the self-help discourses I’ve been steeping myself in for so many years. Self help is about being successful in the world. Children’s stories are about being vulnerable and powerless but maybe discovering powers, but having adults around who are either evil or helpful, but… still the power is with the adults. All of that feels refreshingly emotional and imperfect and real compared to the self-help stuff that’s based on feeling like there’s something wrong with my life and I should be able to fix it.

In children’s books, the story solves the problems. In self-help books, I’m supposed to be the one who solves the problems.