Chapter Forty-Two: A Sudden Wild Magic

I'm so glad that my local branch of the Boston Public Library has a really solid collection of books by Diana Wynne Jones!  I really enjoy her, but I've had trouble finding a good selection of her numerous works in bookstores and at other libraries.  So now that I have access, watch out for more of her books on my blog in the near future!  Anyway, I'm glad I had the chance to check out this book of hers that I haven't read.  I quite enjoyed it, in large part because of her flair for the odd and her generous helpings of humor.  Moreover,  A Sudden Wild Magic provides a complex plot with many threads that all weave together to form into a fascinating whole.  This book is on the long side, and it's definitely worth the effort to read it in its entirety.  I heartily enjoyed it and recommend it to anyone looking for a funky, funny fantasy.

Chapter Forty-One: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Now that I've finally had time to join the Boston Public Library, I've been making good use of my local branch to check out some new books.  I was intrigued by the title of this novel by Aimee Bender--what would make lemon cake sad?--and then I was drawn in by the original premise for this story: when she eats food, the protagonist can taste in it the emotions of the person who prepared it.  This book reads quickly, and a feeling of mystery that pervades the plot makes it hard to put this book down until the very end.  The only aspect that I disliked is Bender's proclivity for peppering her otherwise pleasant prose with sentence fragments; this rubbed me the wrong way.  However, overall I enjoyed this book and I would recommend it to anyone looking for an interesting read.

Chapter Forty: Tales of the Willows Trilogy

This trilogy (The Willows in Winter, Toad Triumphant, and The Willows and Beyond) by William Horwood is a great extension of Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows.  He stays true to Grahame's Rat, Mole, Toad, Badger, and Otter, and his additional characters and expansion of Portly are delightful.  He also does a pretty good job of staying stylistically close to Grahame's prose in The Wind in the Willows, although a careful reader might notice some differences, and occasionally I detected a whiff of satire in Horwood's prose, although this was not necessarily a problem.  I absolutely love the additional adventures Horwood has created for these characters and the added emotional depth they assume over the course of this trilogy; I almost cried at points during the last book.  These are a great read for anyone who loves The Wind in the Willows and who wonders what might have happened to Ratty, Mole, Badger, Otter, and--of course--Toad after the end of Grahame's classic.