I'm not used to having favorite authors who aren't around anymore.

I've been hearing sound bytes all weekend, but someone I read finally linked to Neil Gaiman, who has a somewhat more official word: Diana Wynne Jones died on Friday night.

I didn't know any more about her than what's in her books, and possibly that's just as well; I have some trouble with fiction where I can trace the elements back to their real world inspirations, and I am just as glad not to have known that she was a smoker. (Although, it was one of her books- A Sudden Wild Magic- that poisoned me because the copy I spent all day reading was so infused with stale cigarette smoke.) Aside from the smoke, though, she sounds like a lovely person to have known.

She was one of four authors whose books I would buy merely because she had a new book out, without knowing anything about it, and the only one (to date) who has had two books on my personal list of things that at one time I would actually tell people was my "favorite book;" Archer's Goon replaced Tolkien in my affections in late elementary school, and there was a while after college where I stopped being able to read Fire and Hemlock because I knew it too well. I have a vague recollection of once being told that my mother first read me The Lives of Christopher Chant when I was two, although it must have been from the library, as the copy on my shelf has a 1990 cover copyright. The oldest inscription I can find is Christmas 1984 in The Power of Three, from my father to my mother. (I was aware that I'd stolen books of hers from my brother, but not my parents-- oops.)

In any case, her books were as much a part of my childhood mental landscape as Tolkien; the first 7-book epic I was going to write (in fourth grade... it is possible that a one page short story and some illustrations still exist) included a dragon-nemesis named Shegon (after a certain giant spider...) and a nine lived enchantress. She is the first example I bring up in those conversations where I try to convince rabid Harry Potter fans that there were other people doing children's fantasy far better a generation earlier, and whatever else I may have to say about it, I'm glad that the HP phenomenon brought her books back into print, because they definitely deserve it. I'm very sorry that there won't be any more of them.

I'm not used to having favorite authors who aren't around anymore.

I've been hearing sound bytes all weekend, but someone I read finally linked to Neil Gaiman, who has a somewhat more official word: Diana Wynne Jones died on Friday night.

I didn't know any more about her than what's in her books, and possibly that's just as well; I have some trouble with fiction where I can trace the elements back to their real world inspirations, and I am just as glad not to have known that she was a smoker. (Although, it was one of her books- A Sudden Wild Magic- that poisoned me because the copy I spent all day reading was so infused with stale cigarette smoke.) Aside from the smoke, though, she sounds like a lovely person to have known.

She was one of four authors whose books I would buy merely because she had a new book out, without knowing anything about it, and the only one (to date) who has had two books on my personal list of things that at one time I would actually tell people was my "favorite book;" Archer's Goon replaced Tolkien in my affections in late elementary school, and there was a while after college where I stopped being able to read Fire and Hemlock because I knew it too well. I have a vague recollection of once being told that my mother first read me The Lives of Christopher Chant when I was two, although it must have been from the library, as the copy on my shelf has a 1990 cover copyright. The oldest inscription I can find is Christmas 1984 in The Power of Three, from my father to my mother. (I was aware that I'd stolen books of hers from my brother, but not my parents-- oops.)

In any case, her books were as much a part of my childhood mental landscape as Tolkien; the first 7-book epic I was going to write (in fourth grade... it is possible that a one page short story and some illustrations still exist) included a dragon-nemesis named Shegon (after a certain giant spider...) and a nine lived enchantress. She is the first example I bring up in those conversations where I try to convince rabid Harry Potter fans that there were other people doing children's fantasy far better a generation earlier, and whatever else I may have to say about it, I'm glad that the HP phenomenon brought her books back into print, because they definitely deserve it. I'm very sorry that there won't be any more of them.

Experimentally cross-posty from dreamwidth. Comments encouraged in either location.