Stopping for a Spell: Three Magical Fantasies

A collection of three short stories: "Chair Person" (an old armchair comes to life with "a sofa opinion of himself"), "The Four Grannies" (four grandmothers converge on a boy who has invented a wish-granting machine), and "Who Got Rid of Angus Flint" (an obnoxious houseguest avoids all attempts to dislodge him).

All of the stories are short and sweet, which (unfortunately) means that they never achieve the convoluted greatness of Jones' novels. The stories here are just surreal snapshots with simple resolutions. However, Jones does a superb job of characterizing the central antagonists in each story. In particular, Chair Person is the most amiably malicious innocent that I've encountered since Charles Dickens' Harold Skimpole.

This was frustrating. She's among my top-10 favourite authors, but these stories were so similar to each other that, when read together, they just felt repetitive and irritating. Still three stars, because it's Diana Wynne-Jones and she's a wonderful writer, but this would be my least favourite work of hers so far.

Read if you're a completist, otherwise skip--you can do better.

(Note: 5 stars = rare and amazing, 4 = quite good book, 3 = a decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. There are a lot of 4s and 3s in the world!)

This is a collection of three delightful, magical tales. I adored each one and found myself laughing all the way through.

In the first story, "Chair Person", an old armchair gets turned into a human when liquid from a magic crystal ball is spilt on it. Unfortunately, this armchair has the ego of a sofa and it starts to rudely take over the lives of Simon and Marcia. The secret to getting rid of the chair must be in the conjurer's kit where they found the crystal ball, but can they figure it out in time?

The second story, "Four Grannies", was simply hilarious. Emily and Erg have four grannies because each of their parents were married once before they married each other. Now, their parents want to go away for a weekend and they need show more someone to watch the children. When all four grannies, all with distinct personalities, show up on the doorstop and Emily seems to have been turned into a large, yellow teddy bear, Erg knows he has his work cut out for him.

"Who Got Rid of Argus Flint?" was probably my favorite story of the bunch. Candida is dismayed when her father's old college friend decides to move in after his wife leaves him. Argus Flint is rude and has a nasty habit of picking up children by their hair. Plus, he insults the furniture. Will Candida, and her furniture, be able to get rid of Argus Flint or will they all be driven insane first?

This was a quick, but very fun read! I enjoyed every story in this book and as mentioned early, I found myself laughing out loud quite a bit. A very enjoyable book! show less

It's not often that I come across a Diana Wynne Jones book I haven't read, so I was pleased to see this one (as an audio book) among the three digital titles now available through the library's ebook system (hope they add more!).

It holds three short stories, all aimed at a young audience and all on the theme of unwelcome guests. Not something I'd read/listen to again, but enjoyable enough.

Funny and easy to read set of stories. Particularly enjoyed the furniture revolt.

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2463012.html

Three short stories by the late great DWJ, all about children being menaced by the supernatural. Animated items of furniture feature strongly. Two of the stories have evil (or at least very unhelpful) old ladies. They are good short pieces; the entire book is only 150 pages.