In Memoriam

Our place for remembering those whose lives have touched us, especially those whose writing has impacted us.

The wonderful Sister Wendy Beckett, hermit and art lover passed on today.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/dec/26/sister-wendy-beckett-an-unl...

RIP Amos Oz

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-46700471

>3 Caroline_McElwee: I am so sorry to hear this news- a wonderful and insightful author.

>3 Caroline_McElwee: - I just heard this on the news. Very sad.

Francine du Plessix Gray died on Sunday in New York at the age of 88. She was a biographer, memoirist, critic and novelist.

I particularly enjoyed her biographies of figures from the French literary world, such as Louise Colet (Flaubert's friend/muse), and Mme de Staēl; she also wrote an OK novel about Marie Antoinette. The NYT obit draws attention to a memoir about her parents that got a lot of attention when it was published.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/books/francine-du-plessix-gray-dead.html?emc=...

Mary Oliver passed away today

https://www.npr.org/2019/01/17/577380646/beloved-poet-mary-oliver-who-believed-p...

Much-loved poet Mary Oliver died Thursday of lymphoma, at her home in Florida. She was 83. Oliver won many awards for her poems, which often explore the link between nature and the spiritual world; she also won a legion of loyal readers who found both solace and joy in her work.

>7 SuziQoregon: Sadness.

>7 SuziQoregon: Oh, no. This makes me very sad indeed.

Australian writer Andrew McGahan has died of pancreatic cancer aged 52.
'In 1991 his first, Praise, won the Vogel Award, the launching pad for so many great Australian novelists, and his fourth, The White Earth, won the Miles Franklin. He also wrote four young-adult novels in his Ship Kings series – "the most fun I ever had writing".' His last novel will be published later this year, The Rich Man's House.
https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/award-winning-author-andrew-mcgahan-d...

>10 avatiakh: way too young. I doubt I'll ever read any of his books but still I am especially saddened by a life lost too soon.

Yes, so young. I have his The White Earth, so will try to read it this year.

The author of The Flower Drum Song, C. Y. Lee has died at 102 and has a substantial obit in the Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/cy-lee-author-of-the-best-sellin...

Rosamunde Pilcher, a bestselling romance novelist, has died at the age of 94. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/rosamunde-pilcher-de...

Patricia Nell Warren died at 82. Her gay-male novels of the 1970s (eg The Front Runner, The Fancy Dancer) were eye-openers for young queer me. RIP, and thanks.

Andrea Levy, who explored the experience of Jamaican British people in a series of novels over 20 years has died, aged 62, from cancer.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/15/andrea-levy-chronicler-of-the-wind...

Wow, it seems like we are losing so many good and great authors these days! Very sad.

One of our family's favourite authors passed away on February 8: Tomi Ungerer.
We especially admired his great graphic designs. His chidren's books were a part of my kids growing up years. Crictor has to be just the greatest. And how seminal was that illustration from The Three Robbers?!
https://www.librarything.com/pic/6784029 (I couldn't get an image to upload here, so the link is in my gallery).

>18 SandyAMcPherson: Yes, I read about his passing. Very sad. I'm posting the image for you.

>19 avatiakh: Thank you so much!

Peter Tork of the Monkees has passed on at age 77: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/peter-tork-monkees-bass-player-dead-age-77-cause-of...

And now, we've lost Andre Previn, who died this morning.

Janet Asimov, widow of Isaac Asimov and an author in her own right, passed away February 25 at age 92. https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/NYTimes/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=1...

>22 laytonwoman3rd: sadz. He was a great conductor and marvelous musician (and a composer in his own right).

>24 Chatterbox: Yes. And where was I that all this time I thought he was a French transplant to the U.S. Never realized he was born in Berlin, and was kicked out of the Berlin Conservatory when he was 8 or 9 years old, because he was Jewish. His family did flee to Paris, but only while waiting for their visa to the U.S. to be processed.

RIP Moris Farhi, president of International PEN, MBE, and novelist. A Designated Man and The Last of Days were good reads indeed.

And two days ago Jean Starobinski, author of The Invention of Liberty, 1700-1799, died at 98. That was a very good PoliSci textbook I read at Southwest Texas State.

A sad day for poetry: W.S. Merwin has died. He was 91.

I, famously averse to poetry, thought his poems were well worth reading.

>28 richardderus: They certainly were Richard. It's a while since I read him, but I'll take a volume off the shelf and read a few tonight. 92 is a fine age.

>29 Caroline_McElwee: A fitting tribute.

Merwin and my FIL attended the same prep school, although they wouldn't have overlapped, unfortunately.

I like Merwin’s poetry, too. I think of him as a bit old-fashioned, but in a good way. I’ll also be revisiting his poems this weekend.

"Piano and Drums"

When at break of day at a riverside
I hear the jungle drums telegraphing
the mystic rhythm, urgent, raw
like bleeding flesh, speaking of
primal youth and the beginning
I see the panther ready to pounce
the leopard snarling about to leap
and the hunters crouch with spears poised;

And my blood ripples, turns torrent,
topples the years and at once I’m
in my mother’s laps a suckling;
at once I’m walking simple
paths with no innovations,
rugged, fashioned with the naked
warmth of hurrying feet and groping hearts
in green leaves and wild flowers pulsing.

Then I hear a wailing piano
solo speaking of complex ways in
tear-furrowed concerto;
of far away lands
and new horizons with
coaxing diminuendo, counterpoint,
crescendo. But lost in the labyrinth
of its complexities, it ends in the middle
of a phrase at a daggerpoint.

And I lost in the morning mist
of an age at a riverside keep
wandering in the mystic rhythm
of jungle drums and the concerto.

Gabriel Okara, died today a few days shy of his 98th birthday.

from tor.com

We are deeply saddened to report the passing of author Vonda N. McIntyre on April 1, 2019.

McIntyre was born in Louisville, Kentucky on August 28, 1948, but her family settled in Seattle, Washington by the 1960s. She was an author and founder of the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop in 1971, which she began after attending the Clarion Writers Workshop in 1970. McIntyre was the third woman to receive a Hugo Award, and was a long-standing champion of feminist SFF. She won her first Nebula Award for the novelette “Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand”, and her Starfarers series had an incredible genesis: She made up the conceit on the spot while sitting on a panel at a convention, out of frustration at the general negativity she found around SF television. She convinced the entire audience of the panel that they had missed out on a great science fiction series, and then decided to write it.

To many SFF fans, McIntyre was well known for her Star Trek novels, which included novelizations for films Wrath of Khan, Search For Spock, and The Voyage Home, as well as the much beloved Original Series novel, The Entropy Effect. She was responsible for giving Hikaru Sulu his first name, a detail that made its way into canon in The Undiscovered Country. She also wrote the Star Wars Expanded Universe novel, The Crystal Star. She won SFWA’s Service Award in 2010, and her novel The Moon and Sun was adapted to film under the title of The King’s Daughter.

McIntyre believed in learning to write through experimentation, and was a great proponent of writers giving themselves the freedom to try new things:

Something that worries me about some of the writers’ workshops I’ve seen recently is that people go in there with this relentlessly professional attitude, when they should be experimenting. When I think of all the different weird stuff we wrote at the Clarion Workshop in 1970, I think there’s still people who go to workshops to do that, but I also think there’s a contingent that goes there to be relentlessly professional, and I wish they wouldn’t do it.

Vonda McIntyre died at home in Seattle, Washington of pancreatic cancer. She was writing up to the end, completing a novel titled Curve of the World shortly before her passing. Her neighbor and friend Jane Hawkins noted her drive, saying, “All her docs know she has a book she wants to finish. Even the doc she hadn’t seen before!”

She will be dearly missed.

>34 ronincats: Thanks Roni, I hadn't seen that. I have 3 of her Trek novels waiting to be read and I'll make a point to read at least one soon. I had to look up the title, but the story of hers I remember really catching my interest was "Of Mist, And Grass, And Sand". It was later expanded into the novel Dreamsnake (which I never got around to reading for no good reason).

Also via Tor.com: RIP Gene Wolfe.

If you subscribe to the New Yorker, this 2015 profile is an excellent read.

^I just saw Neil Gaiman's tribute to Gene Wolfe; they apparently were good friends for more than 30 years. Thanks for the link to the New Yorker article. GW's Book of the New Sun series knocked me on my keister when I was a youngster.

Awww...Georgette.

>38 laytonwoman3rd: awww indeed. I loved her character on MTM.

Sad news: RIP Warren Adler. Last Call was a poignant, funny book; The War of the Roses was a bitter, hilarious one. Ninety-one is hardly a premature death, but it's always sad when someone whose writing gave you pleasure goes on ahead.

Oh, I loved The War of the Roses!

Both film and book were good entertainments.

The Canadian author, Wayson Choy, has died.

https://www.cbc.ca/books/wayson-choy-author-of-the-jade-peony-dead-at-80-1.51145...

One of the 20th Century's most passionate social thinkers, and vigorous denouncers of populism, has died at 95: John Lukacs

Aww...Peggy Lipton

Doris Day died. She was 97, so it wasn't an early death, but Pillow Talk's star left us. Sad.

>46 richardderus: oh, my, I didn't realize she was still living. Sad news.

This is shaping up to be a bad week. Tim Conway has left us now.

>48 laytonwoman3rd: Yuck. The elephant story on The Carol Burnett Show still makes me sob with laughter 40 years on.

>49 richardderus: I know, right? The funniest part is Harvey Korman trying not to laugh.

Waah! I loved Tim Conway.

Here, enjoy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIZA7ghxWBQ

I also loved his Dorf on Golf.

>48 laytonwoman3rd: - Oh no. He was hilarious. That whole cast was, in truth

Good lord, who knew Herman Wouk was still alive, until today.

>53 laytonwoman3rd: that is quite an age.

Yes, and he's not the only one. I. M. Pei has also died, at 102. It's getting so centenarians aren't all that rare.

>55 laytonwoman3rd: Sad...but more amazing to me was that he was still alive. Another centenarian died today: Herman Wouk was 103. I devoured Winds of War way back when. I didn't know that the film adaptation of Marjorie Morningstar starred Natalie Wood...whose house Wouk died in! He moved to Palm Springs when he was about 75. Hard to blame him, after all those years in the humid eastern seaboard megalopolises.

>56 richardderus: Yes....see >53 laytonwoman3rd:. I sneak-read Marjorie Morningstar from my mother's copy when I was home by myself, and returned it to the shelf in between readings.

>57 laytonwoman3rd: Oh my heck. Oops. It's quite amazing now to think that such an innocent book was Scandalous and Smutty back in neck-ruffs-and-scarlet-letters times.

Noooo, Grumpy Cat died!!!

https://www.npr.org/2019/05/17/724262019/grumpy-cat-dies-her-spirit-will-live-on...

Sad news: Binyavanga Wainaina, gay Kenyan memoirist (One Day I Will Write About This Place), died on the 21st of complications from AIDS. He won the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing for his short story "Discovering Home".

Judith Kerr who delighted so many children young and old with her stories and illustrations has died aged 95.

Probably her best known book is The Tiger Who Came to Tea

>61 PaulCranswick: Oh, that's sad to me. Her story is inspiring!

Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina died this week. I am not familiar with his work, but it sounds like I should become so. The selection presented on the NPR link is certainly brilliant.

>61 PaulCranswick: wow, a new-to-me author! I'm sorry it took her passing to introduce me to her works.

>61 PaulCranswick: I just read that too. Such sad news. Judith Kerr was one of my favourite children's authors/illustrators. She was amazing!

>61 PaulCranswick: >64 fuzzi: >65 mdoris: strange, as I only read this article a week ago:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/may/18/judith-kerr-interview-the-t...

>66 Caroline_McElwee:: Ooh, I missed that interview, thanks Caroline.

Oh...this is very sad news. Tony Horwitz died suddenly yesterday.

>68 laytonwoman3rd: Only 60 years old and he died suddenly while touring for his new book, Spying on the South. I just checked it out of the library over the weekend.

>69 lindapanzo: I'm on the hold list for it at ours.

Oh NO! I'm so, so sorry to read about this! I wish I could convey sympathy to his wife, Geraldine Brooks.

Here's Tony Horwitz's full obituary from the Washington Post.

I learned a lot about baking from Maida Heatter, especially her "The Great Book of Cookies" (no touchstone).

We lost both Leon Redbone and Mac Rebennack a/k/a Dr. John in the last week. If this kind of thing keeps going on, how will we?

Oh no! I had heard about Dr. John, but not Leon Redbone. I loved him in the mid-70s but had sort of forgotten him. It's hard to believe that he was only 69....
My Favorite was "The Sheik of Araby."

The fashion designer, socialite and author Gloria Vanderbilt died today, at the age of 95.

The Italian author Andrea Camilleri suffered a heart attack earlier today, and is in serious condition in a hospital in Rome.

Sad about Mme V but I'm heartsick over Camilleri!

Alan Brinkley, author of The Publisher, died at 70. His look at Henry Luce was deeply disturbing and very readable.

The publisher of the Paris Review, Susanna Hunnewell has died.

>76 kidzdoc: Long life for GV, may she rest in peace. I'm another one heartsick over Camilleri. I hope he comes through this okay. I know he's up there in years himself.

We have lost the Sudsy Sweetheart Judith Krantz this weekend. RIP creator of Scruples and Princess Daisy...91 ain't half bad as a lifetime!

Missed this but back in early January we lost John Burningham.
He was married to Helen Oxenbury and created beloved picture books including Mr Gumpy’s Outing and Avocado Baby.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/07/john-burningham-childrens-author-a...

Poet Marie Ponsot died on the Fifth of July. She was 98, so not so much an early death. Easy: Poems got 4 stars out of me, not at all...wait for it...EASY to do.

I slay me.

He wasn't famous or a writer or anything but I'm thinking of my boss Brian, who died 7 years ago today of cancer, and I'm feeling sad today.

>84 elkiedee: Condolences. The sadness changes character with time, but it never goes away.

>84 elkiedee: what a wonderful boss he must have been, to have kept him so warmly in your heart.

Thanks. He was just a brilliant guy/colleague. My maternity leave cover took time off her new job or whatever to come to his funeral too. A previous secretary turned out to volunteering in the first hospital where he stayed and came to visit him.

Jim Bouton died of complications from vascular dementia at age 80. His book Ball Four was scandalous for being honest about what prats athletes often are.

João Gilberto, the Brasilian composer, guitarist and singer, who was one of the 20th century's most influential musicians, died on Saturday at the age of 88. He was one of the principal creators of bossa nova, the blend of jazz and samba that became a worldwide sensation in the 1950s and 1960s. His best known song was The Girl from Ipanema, which he famously sung and performed alongside his first wife, Astrud Gilberto, the American jazz saxophonist Stan Getz, and the great Brasilian pianist Antônio Carlos Jobim in the 1964 album Getz/Gilberto, one of the best selling jazz albums of all time and an essential part of jazz history.

New York Times: João Gilberto, an Architect of Bossa Nova, Is Dead at 88

>88 richardderus: I remember Jim Bouton from his sports reporting duties on WABC television in NYC in the 1970s, after his baseball career had ended.

>89 kidzdoc: ahh. Loved he and Astrud's work.

>88 richardderus: I remember that book. I seem to recall a short-lived sitcom based upon his tales, too.

>89 kidzdoc: my parents had a couple Bossa Nova albums. Catchy music.

Here's one of them: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nuPthGgqoWE

>92 fuzzi: I think you and me and maybe a tree remember that show. It was not very good. He appeared in it, IIRC.

Andrea Camilleri has passed aged 93 years. I'm a huge fan of his Inspector Montalbano books.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jul/17/andrea-camilleri-beloved-creator-o...

Not an author but a musician, activist and legend, Johnny Clegg, has died:

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/entertainment/celebrity/south-african-musician-activis...

>95 avatiakh: Gutted. Really gutted. He was one I could almost believe would live forever.

Orania Papazoglou, who wrote mysteries under the name, Jane Haddam, has passed away at age 68. She was known for her long-running Gregor Demarkian series.

This was announced in a Facebook by her friend, mystery author Dean James.

Howard Engel, Canadian mystery writer (The Suicide Murders, etc), is dead at 88.

>98 lindapanzo: I'm really sorry to hear that, Linda. While I enjoyed Gregor Demarkian and friends, I was swept away by Sanctity about modern novice nuns, which she wrote in her own name. She also wrote an earlier series featuring a romance novelist.

>98 lindapanzo: The internet is strangely silent on this, Linda. No obit, nothing noted on her Wikipedia entry. I looked at Dean James's FB page and find nothing there either. Was it a private post?

>101 laytonwoman3rd: Unless her son Matt has a very morbid sense of humor, she's really dead.

>102 richardderus: Yowza...that boy needs help...BAD.

>103 laytonwoman3rd: Agreed.

Cesar Pelli the wonderful architect who designed the world's tallest twin towers and something I see most every day and whose steel and glass houses my favourite bookshop in Malaysia (Kinokuniya), has died aged 92.

In all honesty there are few sights that have awed me so completely as the one you get from standing close to the towers in the evening and looking up.

Paul Krassner, whose name probably could stop before the "ner" and be just as accurate, died at 87. I can hear old first-wave feminists cackling with glee. They'll "welcome" the publisher of The Realist appropriately, I'm sure. Pot Stories for the Soul made me laugh, I admit.

RIP Rutger Hauer, he created some iconic roles, and iconic words.


In Legend of the Holy Drinker

>107 Caroline_McElwee: Oh no!

>101 laytonwoman3rd: Sorry, I've been away for a few days. Dean posted it in the Save Our Cozies group.

If you're on FB, you should be able to access his comments at: https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=Save%20Our%20Cozies%20dean%20james&ep...

I note that, on the Jane Haddam page on FB, there is talk about collecting for funeral expenses. There are a lot of posts under her name but it seems to be her son, Matt, who has spent quite a bit of time talking about his mother.

Daniel Callahan, one of the most prominent and influential bioethicists in modern history, died on July 16th at the age of 89. He taught at Harvard for many years, and founded The Hastings Center, the first organization in the world dedicated to "social and ethical issues in health care, science, and technology". I've read excerpts from at least two of Callahan's books, What Kind of Life: The Limits of Medical Progress and Setting Limits: Medical Goals in an Aging Society, as an undergraduate student and a medical student, and I would imagine that every health professions student who has trained in the past 30 years has also been influenced by him.

New York Times: Daniel Callahan, 88, Dies; Bioethics Pioneer Weighed ‘Human Finitude’

>109 lindapanzo: Thanks, Linda. I didn't know about that FB group, but I have seen Matt's posts on her page now. It seems very sad.

>109 lindapanzo: Thanks, Linda. I didn't know about that FB group, but I have seen Matt's posts on her page now. It all seems very sad.

>111 laytonwoman3rd: You're right, though. Not a lot of talk online about her death. A gumshoe mystery website said her death came after a long battle with cancer.

>110 kidzdoc: Thank you Darryl - what an interesting person.

>114 RBeffa: You're welcome, Ron.

RIP Toni Morrison. What an extraordinary writer and woman you were.

>116 Caroline_McElwee: I just came here to post about her death. From the New York Times:

Toni Morrison, ‘Beloved’ Author and Nobel Laureate, Dies at 88

Wow, didn't realize she was 88.

Sad news: Toni Morrison died yesterday.

The Guardian: Toni Morrison, author and Pulitzer winner, dies aged 88

Lots of us posting nearly simultaneously about this one...Toni Morrison leaves a mighty big hole in the American literary landscape.

So sorry to hear about Toni Morrison. I read Beloved three times, I think, in undergrad and in some ways was still too young to fully appreciate it.

Harvey Frommer, a top baseball author, has also passed away, at age 83, of lung cancer.

Though I've read over 300 baseball books, I am surprised that I've read only one Harvey Frommer. I intend to remedy that.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/harvey-frommer-prolific-chronicl...

Of course I join in the world's mourning for Toni Morrison...but losing Harvey Frommer is as hard on me personally. New York City Baseball: The Last Golden Age was formative in my fandom.

Sad.

Canadian mystery author Howard Engel has also died. I am not a mystery reader at all so have never read his works but I learned a great deal about him after a neurological disorder robbed him of his ability to read and write. Yet, he managed to continue producing his novels. His perseverance also brought him to the attention of the late Oliver Sacks:

https://quillandquire.com/omni/prolific-mystery-novelist-howard-engel-dies-at-ag...

Lea Wait, one is my favorite cozy mystery authors, has passed away.

https://mysteryreadersinc.blogspot.com/2019/08/lea-wait-rip.html?fbclid=IwAR1LP-...

Sarah Andrews, geologist and mystery writer, and a personal friend , was killed in a plane crash with her husband and adult son. http://www.sonomawest.com/sonoma_west_times_and_news/news/graton-family-killed-i...

Lursa, of Star Trek fame, has died aged 65. Her novel The Copper People was a creepy take on rural Italy.

>126 Helenoel: I'm sorry for the loss of your friend. They seemed to be a special family.

This is a bit late, but biographer Edmund Morris passed on May 24, 2019. He is known principally for several books on Theodore Roosevelt and somewhat controversially for a bio on Ronald Reagan. NYTimes obit: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/27/obituaries/edmund-morris-reagan-biographer-wh...

Wow. I read several of his during my President's Challenge run.

Peter Fonda has died of lung cancer at 79.

>131 laytonwoman3rd: Yes, I saw that Linda. I always think of the Fonda family, as a US version of the Redgrave family here. The Fonda's celluloid royalty, and the Redgraves theatre royalty.

Saddened to learn that Paule Marshall, author of Brown Girl, Brownstones, has died at age 90.

RIP Richard Coeur de Livre (né Booth), King of Hay-on-Wye and literary lion. Flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

The King of Hay-on-Wye:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/22/richard-booth-obituary

Valerie Harper died today. How could Rhoda have been 80 years old?

>136 laytonwoman3rd: - I just read this. I knew she had been ill but am still sad. She was such a great character in all she played. I have a memoir by her somewhere in the piles.

>136 laytonwoman3rd: :'(

Dorothea Benton Frank has passed away, after a brief battle with myelodysplastic syndrome, at age 67.

https://www.postandcourier.com/news/dorothea-benton-frank-beloved-lowcountry-aut...

Her latest book, Queen Bee, which was released in May, reached #2 on the NY Times bestseller list.

Anne Rivers Siddons passed away on Wednesday.

I've never read any of her books, though we do have several at our library, and if pressed I think all I could come up with was that several of her books were set in the south. But reading through the obit, she sounds like a fascinating woman who once wrote an editorial in her college newspaper calling for desegregation which caused her firing and was printed with a disclaimer from university officials.

>126 Helenoel: I wrote down Sarah's name to look for a book by her the next time I went to a library sale. Since Sonoma is not that far from Benicia I was hopeful. I was very happy last night to find her Tensleep novel there. I am very much looking forward to reading it. And I am sorry for the loss of your friend.

>140 bell7: I read several of her books many years ago, and enjoyed them quite a lot. Kind of chick lit for mature intelligent women, I'd say. Usually there was a social issue somewhere at the heart of the story. I didn't know anything about her personally, though. She does sound fascinating.

Yesterday the Hungarian writer György Konrád died.

Ric Ocasek of The Cars
Rolling Stone obit

>144 amanda4242: him and Eddie Money. I hope we don't get the usual three deaths in a row. :(

Journalist Cokie Roberts has died of breast cancer at the age of 75.
https://wamu.org/story/19/09/17/cokie-roberts-pioneering-female-journalist-who-h...

>146 norabelle414: Oh, how sad.

>147 laytonwoman3rd: my thoughts exactly.

As I'm about to start his new book, The Liberation of Paris, I thought I'd reacquaint myself with biographer Jean Edward Smith, only to be shocked to hear that he passed away last week. The Washington Post called him "one of the most admired biographers of his time."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/jean-edward-smith-biographer-who...

A bit under the radar, as he hadn't been active in a long time, but we also lost Sander Vanocur, another exceptional journalist, last week. You have to be of a certain age to remember him, I guess.

One of Sweden's most beloved people, Arne Weise, died on Wednessday aged 89.

He worked in radio and on TV for 50 years, and his three decade long tenure as continuity announcer on Christmas Eve meant he became "Mr Christmas" to generations of Swedes. He's even referencesed in Christmas songs.
He was also the host of the nature documenary show "Ett med naturen" (One With Nature) during the 80's and 90's and narrated the documentaries they aired (including many of David Attenborough's).
Literature-wise, he's wrote an autobiography called "I blickpunkten" and narrated some audiobook versions of A Christmas Carol.
He will be greatly missed.

https://www.aftonbladet.se/nojesbladet/a/2GK67q/arne-weise-dod--89-ar-gammal

RIP Jessye Norman". What a voice, what a presence, what a loss.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/01/mourning-true-diva-jessye-nor...

RIP Elaine Feinstein

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/01/elaine-feinstein-obituary

>152 laytonwoman3rd: Very sad. I had the privilege of hearing her sing during an award ceremony honouring the Dalai Lama at St Paul's Cathedral a few years ago. He enjoyed having a little fun with her on stage.

Actress and trailblazer Diahann Carroll has died at 84. RIP. She was a real talent:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-diahann-carroll-tv-trailblazer-for...

>152 laytonwoman3rd: I'm saddened by many of these deaths, but Jessye Norman's brings me to tears.

Harold Bloom, codifier of the The Western Canon (though far from the first or last so to attempt), has died at 89. Vale.

>157 richardderus: Hmmm...RIP, Harold. But I'm not going to regret never sitting down to dinner with him.

So sad to learn that Nick Tosches, whose bio of Jerry Lee Lewis, Hellfire, really reset the living-person biography world to a better, higher standard, has died three days before turning seventy.

If this isn't sad I don't know what is https://www.wafb.com/2019/11/05/famed-louisiana-author-ernest-gaines-dies/

Late, but I just learned about this and see nobody else has mentioned: Charlee Jacob, horror author and poet, passed on July 14.

>160 RBeffa: This 25-minute interview with Dr. Gaines is a wonderful reminder of what we lost with his death.

>160 RBeffa: I just read my first Gaines book this year. :(

>160 RBeffa: I know, so sad...I, too, read my first Gaines book this year (Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman).

Karen O.

>162 richardderus: Thanks Richard. I see that youtube interview was just posted today, Nov 6th. I hadn't seen it before.

>164 klobrien2: I need to re-read Miss Jane Pittman.

I've never read Ernest Gaines. I'll fix that now - probably with Miss Jane Pittman first.

>167 jnwelch: I see how it is....

>167 jnwelch: I read A Gathering of Old Men, very good.

>160 RBeffa: Thanks to AAC, I read him for the first time this year too. And I'll read more.

And now it's Stephen Dixon...so young, taken at a mere 83...whose Tisch was 1,000 pages of scary packed into less than 200 pages of book.

On the 9th, Andrea Newman died at 81. She wrote A Bouquet of Barbed Wire in the 1960s. It was a helluva wallop to the complacently married!

>172 richardderus: I remember the tv dramatisation Richard...

Sadly, Walter Minton has left us on the 19th...abrasive and angry and impatient with fools, he scandalized the prim and pursey-lipped with Lolita and The Godfather, gave the world his like-minded compatriot Norman Mailer's ongoing career, and turned GP Putnam's Sons into a profitable, desirable acquisition for MCA. Vale.

Horripilation! Now I find out Gahan Wilson has died at 89!

RIP Clive James and Jonathan Miller.

Jonathan Miller died Nov. 27, 2019

Sadly SF lost a great presence this week: DC Fontana, major contributor to ST:TOS, died at age 80 on Tuesday.

>178 richardderus: waah...

>179 fuzzi: I know...she was a huge force in shaping the best of what ToS was. Very very sad.

Now Robert K. Massie has died of complications from Alzheimer's. He was 90.

>181 richardderus: I just recalled my 8th grade teacher telling me I should read his book Nicholas and Alexandria, though I never did.

>182 fuzzi: I certainly second the recommendation. It's a terrific story. Massie wrote well, I guess better said as "the Massies wrote well together." Suzanne Massie was a very significant collaborator.

>181 richardderus: Ah....I loved Nicholas and Alexandra, and I have Catherine the Great around here somewhere. I really ought to read that.

>184 laytonwoman3rd: I can't imagine the self-control it's taken not to gobble it down the second you bought it! Indulge, it's Yuletide.

Well, see....it came to me second hand from family, in a pile of others, and got stashed somewhere...outofsight-outofmind, until just now. And of course I can't for the life of me remember which of my many many stashy places it might have ended up in.

I loved Nicholas and Alexandra, too. It sparked a fascination with the Russian Revolution that fueled term papers in high school and college, and a number of other reading experiences on the subject. I'm really sorry to hear that Massie has died.

Catherine the Great was very good, too. But it didn't affect me the way Nicholas and Alexandra did. That may be a function of when they were read -- N&A as an impressionable 8th grader; C the G as a jaded fifty-something.

D.C. Fontana is another that I'll mourn.

>186 laytonwoman3rd: Oh great goddess below us, the Curse of the Too-Well-Stashed Desideratum!

>187 tymfos: The gulf between 8th grade and fifty-plus is a mighty and yawning one, Terri.

Fontana's many roles in TV should make her a biographer's dream, given how few women were behind the camera in positions of power in that era.

Andrew Clements, author of Frindle and many other middle-grade books, passed away in November.
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-authors/article...

Caroll Spinney, aka Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, has passed away at 85. 😭

https://www.npr.org/2019/12/08/786115746/caroll-spinney-who-played-big-bird-and-...

>190 fuzzi: - Awww, this is sad. About 5 years ago or so I saw a wonderful documentary about Spinney, called I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story. He was here in Toronto with his wife (and Oscar) for the screening and a Q&A after the film.

And just today, 79-year-old Rene Auberjonois, narrator of many an audiobook, as well as Odo on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, died of metastatic lung cancer. Second Star Trek actor, after Robert Walker from The Original Series on the 5th.

Leonard Goldberg, one of the creative minds instrumental in many many popular movies and TV shows (including one of our current favorites, Blue Bloods) has died from injuries sustained in a fall. He was 85. The cast had good things to say about him.

I just saw this article on Facebook about Johanna Lindsey passing on Oct. 27, 2019. She is one of my favorite historical romance authors and have many of her books. She was only 67 and she died due to complications of treatment for Stage 4 lung cancer and her family was too devastated by her death to announce it earlier. Here is the link to the article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/22/obituaries/johanna-lindsey-dead.html?searchRe...

Ward Just, war correspondent and novelist, died on December 19th. He is the author selected for reading in October, 2020, for the American Authors Challenge.

Sadly, Elizabeth Spencer has died. The Light in the Piazza, The Voice at the Back Door, and multiple others was 98.

Alasdair Gray the Glasgow born novelist and author of Lanark has died. He helped bring on a generation of writers in Scotland such as Ruth Galloway, Irvine Welsh, AL Kennedy and Alan Warner and will be sorely missed.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/29/alasdair-gray-obituary

I think you might mean Janice Galloway who is mentioned in the Guardian obituary, rather than the author of picture books (guessing from the titles) Ruth Galloway (not the crime series character!)

>198 elkiedee: Haha Thank you for pointing out the typo, Luci.

Neil Innes

Guardian obit

>200 amanda4242: aww.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qfTlGMCeuDE

Just read that Marion Chesney, aka MC Beaton, who wrote the Hamish MacBeth and Agatha Raisin mysteries, has died at age 83.

Gertrude Himmelfarb, a leading historiographer of conservative and Jewish cultural thought, died at 97. Young William Kristol is an orphan.

>202 lindapanzo: aw shucks. 😞