Diana Wynne Jones, 1934-2011.

I read the news on Saturday, but couldn't bring myself to post about it until now.

I assumed that you'd already have heard, and if you hadn't, I didn't want to be the one to tell you.

Robin McKinley said it better than I'll be able to:

Everyone leaves a themselves-shaped hole when they go, and we all feel it, whether we know or recognise the individual holes or not. No one is an island, as John Donne almost said, each human death diminishes me. But Diana was a bigger piece of the promontory than most. This is not the same world without her in it.

Neil Gaiman's post was the one to make me finally sit down and big sob. Because this loss -- and I know I'm not remotely the only reader to be feeling this -- this loss is a painful one. But, true to form -- both DWJ's and Gaiman's -- that post also made me laugh out loud.

The stories that have been coming out about her have been making me laugh -- the bubbling ceiling and Beatrix Potter's slap and mention after mention of her traveling/techno jinxes -- and they've also made me wonder how much of the magic in her books was invented, and how much she actually experienced. Because it seems, from reading these essays, that Things Happened When She Was Around. That, possibly, she was secretly related to Joan Aiken's Armitage family. 

I was in elementary school, and already a huge reader when I discovered Diana Wynne Jones. But her words, and her humor, and her truth... For me, she was the first author who made reading more than just a hugely enjoyable way of spending time -- for me, she was the one who first made reading into something magic.

Comments

[Maureen E]

Crap. Now I'm crying again.

I said this somewhere else, but I'll say it again: other authors I love have died before, but this one hurts. And I have to admit that I thought of Donne almost immediately myself.

[rockinlibrarian]

"and they've also made me wonder how much of the magic in her books was invented, and how much she actually experienced. Because it seems, from reading these essays, that Things Happened When She Was Around. That, possibly, she was secretly related to Joan Aiken's Armitage family."

--THIS. Very much this.

[Sarah I.]

Ye gods... *sob* I found out through Maggie Stiefvater's blog only this morning. Gratefully out of the loop for once... I haven't felt this cut up about an author's passing before...I was going to say: and I haven't even read half her books - but actually that's a great thing, come to think of it. Although before I read a new-to-me one, I have to reread Howl's Moving Castle. Like, right now.

[jean]

I've been rereading her books in memory. I've never been so upset by an author's death, but of course I've never loved any other author so much.

I was in 6th grade when I read Witch's Business, and it's the only book in that school library that I can still tell you where it was.