Authors We've Lost in 2011

Here we are at the tail end of 2011 and, looking back, the world lost quite a few writers over this past year, including:

L.A. Banks

Christopher Hitchens

Russell Hoban

Brian Jacques

Diana Wynne Jones

Dick King-Smith

Paul Lindsay (aka Noah Boyd)

Anne McCaffrey

William Sleator

Who I'll Miss the Most

Because I am a total fantasy buff, I was very sad to hear about the passing of Anne McCaffrey, whose Pern series has captured the imagination of millions of people since 1967. There's just something about dragons that chicks dig, and I am no exception.

I also adore the Redwall series and Brian Jacques had such a unique way of creating unforgettably noble woodland characters. I chose to base a game on Redwall for an 8th grade English class project (got an A) and played it for years with my sisters. Not sure whatever happened to it...

And William Sleator! I remember thinking in high school that Interstellar Pig was just about the coolest book I had read in a long while. I have great memories hanging out at the library after school while I waited for my mom to pick me up and reading his books for hours (yeah, I was sort of a nerd, but a happy one).

Noah Boyd was a new author for me but I very much enjoyed the thrillers The Bricklayer (soon to be a movie) and Agent X. There's still one more in the series that I skipped somehow (Last Chance to Die) so I'm looking forward to savoring that one. Mr. Boyd lived a pretty interesting and exciting life - check him out if you'd like to know a little more about how he came to create his Steve Vail series.

The Death List

According to the Death List 2011 (a morbid gambling list that gives odds of who's going to die for the year), those that were expected to check out this year included sci-fi legend Ray Bradbury. He's currently 91 and some people that I've spoken with actually thought he had already died.

And just as a little side note on Ray Bradbury: I have a cute little customer that grew up with him in the Midwest - she said he was always a little strange, even as a kid. They used to walk home together from school.