So. Howl's Moving Castle. Not the most well known book. I only watched it because I watched the movie first. I know!! That NEVER happens. But note that the movie is practically a different plot than the book. Now, on to how this post came to be.
So about two weeks after this blog was created, I went over to my friend Isha's house. A little while back, she had received the movie Howl's Moving Castle as a gift, a movie she had watched before and loved. She forced me to watch it, and reluctantly I sat down to her promise of "We'll stop after the first 30 minutes and if you don't like it, we'll stop watching". A minute less than two hours later, we finished the movie. I loved it. Now, neither of us had read the book, so Isha read it and then I did. We then realized that, OH, we just read a book and watched a movie, and OH, we had a book and movie blog between us. So here we are, doing a dual blog about Howls Moving Castle. So lets get started.
Basic plot: Girl plus wizard and moving castle equals adventure. Toss in a little bit of evil witch and missing princes and you get interesting. Sprinkle in a bit of love story and talking fires and you have pure awesome. (FYI my brother just called this "Howl's Moving House." That decreases the awesomeness by about 50 percent.) So basically you have Sophie, a shy 18 year old who is working as an apprentice in her stepmother's hat shop. Sophie meets Howl, a powerful wizard on her way to visit her sister Lettie. But once she goes back to the hat shop, she is mistaken by the evil Witch of the Waste for Lettie. (You'll learn why later). The Witch curses Sophie, turning her into a ninety year old woman. Sophie thus sets off to find her fortune, hitches a ride on Howl's moving castle, and they set off on a wild adventure (with Sophie as Howl's much needed cleaning lady). There's also a couple talking fires, wizard apprentices, wild scarecrows, and missing princes in there. In the movie, Howl is really noble and quite princely, but in the book he's a jerk about 75 percent of the the time. And he's regular 10 percent of the time, and really sweet 5 percent of the time. So not exactly noble.
Sophie, on the other hand, is lot more bold in the book. She sasses the customers and gets into bad moods. A lot. She really IS scary when she cleans. Between the book and the movie, I like her better in the book because she's more assertive. In the movie she's really meek and doesn't DO much.
The book CAN be a bit dull at times. Several times, I actually PUT THE BOOK DOWN and went to do something else. That's pretty unusual, considering usually I won't stop reading unless I have to. So, yes. The book is a bit boring. BUT. Don't count it out yet. There are countless funny, sad, sweet, and *insert all other emotions, most indescribable* moments in this book. LIke when Howl's drunk. And when he has a temper tantrum over his hair. Or when...ok you get the point. This is a really great book. I give it a 7 out of 10 stars.
Now. This will be probably the only time you will hear me say this. Close your ears if you have to. The. Movie. Was. Better. AUGGHHHH I KNOW!! What a horrible thing to say. And I wouldn't say it unless it was very, very, true. Which it was. Now go and read Isha's movie review NOW and watch the trailer right here. The trailer doesn't do it justice, and no, I didn't forget to mention the Howl's a bird part. That's just in the movie. Actually, a lot of stuff is just in the movie. But you'll just have to read Isha's review for that! (Oh, and I give the movie a 9.5 out of 10. Go see what Isha gives it).
Again, heres your checklist for the next few hours of your life: Read this blog post. Watch the trailer. Read Isha's blog post. Watch the movie. Read the book. Freak out.
So that's it for now! Thanks for reading all the way down, and I hope the length of this post didn't scare you off at first! Hopefully, next I'll have an Unwind post up! Now do that checklist!
-Colleen