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The author of Things Fall Apart has died. The story is reported by many news sources, including:
The New York Times — Chinua Achebe, African Literary Titan, Dies at 82
The Guardian — Chinua Achebe dies, aged 82
The Associated Press — Author Chinua Achebe dies at 82
Chris Kyle, whose autobiography, American Sniper (HarperCollins/Morrow) was a #1 NYT best seller last year, was killed at a Texas gun range over the weekend, according to news reports. Kyle, who was 38 years old, claimed that as a sniper for the military, he had killed over 150 people.
Kyle founded an organization to help veterans with PTSD; his suspected killer is a former Marine. He had also recently come out against President Obama’s gun control initiatives.
The mass market pbk of his book just released and is currently #1 on Amazon’s sales rankings. Many other titles on the SEALS are also rising, including No Easy Day by Mark Owen (Penguin/Durron), Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell (Hachette/Little,Brown) and Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team SIX Operator Adam Brown
by Eric Blehm (RH/Waterbrook).
We are shocked and saddened to report the passing of legendary storyteller and author of 23 books of folklore, Diane Wolkstein, last Thursday, Jan. 31. To children’s book people, storytellers and librarians she brought weight and honor to the art, lightness and joy to the telling. She will be missed. For over 40 years, she introduced children to the joys of folklore by telling Stories at the Statue of Hans Christian Anderson.
In a message, her daughter, Rachel Zucker stated:
It is with profound sadness that I tell you that my mother, Diane Wolkstein, passed away very early this morning in Taiwan. She had had emergency heart surgery but the procedure was not sufficient to allow her heart to work on its own. She was not conscious and she was not alone. She had several of her close friends from Taiwan there with her and at the very end she had a rabbi say kaddish and Buddhist prayers were said as well. Her death is a terrible shock. Her life overflowed with joy, intensity, friendship, love and spirit. Her love for each of us and the stories she told live inside of us forever.
A public memorial service will be held this Sunday, February 3rd, at 3PM at the New York Insight Meditation Center, located at 28 West 27th Street, 10th floor (b/w 5th and 6th Avenue). A second memorial, celebrating Diane’s life, is planned for the summer/fall.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that people consider making a donation in Diane’s name to Partners in Health, or Tzu Chi Foundation. Videos of Wolkstein are on Vimeo.
Binchy launched her career as a novelist with LIGHT A PENNY CANDLE in 1982
Popular Irish novelist Maeve Binchy has died in Dublin after a brief illness. She was 72.
The Telegraph calls Binchy “Ireland’s national treasure,” noting, “She was always delightfully self-deprecating, saying once: ‘I was very pleased, obviously, to have outsold great writers. But I’m not insane – I do realise that I am a popular writer who people buy to take on vacation.’ ”
The Irish Times, where she once worked as a journalist, writes about her love of Ireland and quotes her saying, “the fax was invented so we writers could live anywhere we liked, instead of living in London near publishers.”
Her most recent book, Minding Frankie (RH/Knopf), was published last year.
Tributes to author, filmmaker, and keen social commentator Nora Ephron are all over the media today. She died yesterday of complications from the blood disorder myelodysplasia, according to the Washington Post.
For many women who began their careers in the 70’s, she was the more sophisticated, successful, yet endearingly fallible older sister we wanted to emulate.
Ephron ended her final collection of essays, I Remember Nothing (RH/Knopf, 2010), with a list of the things she will and will not miss, which now takes on extra poignancy.
Many of her books are rising on Amazon:
#79 I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections (RH/Knopf, 2010; RH Large Print; RH Audio, read by Ephron) — her final collection of essays.
#90 I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman (RH/Knopf, 2006; RH Large Print) — essays
#206 Heartburn (RH/Knopf, 1983) — a novel based on the ending of her marriage to Carl Bernstein, which was made into the 1986 movie starring Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson, directed by Mike Nichols with screenplay by Ephron
#583 Wallflower at the Orgy (Penguin/Viking, 1970; RH/Bantam Pbk) — an early collection of essays
Scribble Scribble: Notes on the Media, (RH/Knopf, 1978, OP)
Crazy Salad, (RH/Knopf, 1975, OP) — essays
Imaginary Friends: A Play with Music, (RH/Vintage, 2002) — the script for the Broadway play, with introduction by Ephron
When Harry Met Sally, (RH/Knopf, 1983) — the complete screenplay
Thousands of tributes are pouring in for Ray Bradbury, who died Tuesday night in Los Angeles at 91.
We particularly like the following:
“A man who won’t forget Ray Bradbury,” The Guardian (by Neil Gaiman)
“Dreams of Ray Bradbury: 10 predictions that came true,” The Washington Post
“Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 And The E-book Era,” Forbes (because it quotes a librarian)
Is it possible to be so sad about the death of someone that you didn’t really know? Do we know someone through their writings? Their blogging?
Peter D. Sieruta has died. He was a kindred spirit. Even though I am not a book collector, I read his blog, Collecting Children’s Books. I didn’t read it for information about rare first editions or the probable market value of a volume. It was because I have had many an “Aha! moment” as I read with pleasure and reminiscenced about books that I loved.
Blogs like Fuse #8 and Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast have commented on Peter’s wicked sense of humor. I particilarly appreciated his “inside baseball” children’s lit April Fools posting that claimed Neil Gaiman was under consideration to be stripped of his Newbery Prize. His Hornbook parody of Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom (Harper, 2000) is flawless.
How sadly appropriate that his final posts were about Maurice Sendak.
I know we are still reeling from the loss of Maurice Sendak, but now we have to report the sad news that another children’s book icon, Jean Craighead George has died (as reported on Twitter last night by her agent, via Publishers Lunch).
JeanGeorge was THE author for reluctant readers. She invented the adventure/survival genre for middle grade readers with My Side of the Mountain, (Penguin/Dutton). There would be no Gary Paulson if there hadn’t been Jean George.
I remember first meeting her at an ABA (now Book Expo America) years ago. I waited in line to talk to her and couldn’t believe she was real.
I told her, “I have a twin brother who only read one book through grade school and middle school, My Side of the Mountain. Every year the only book report he turned in was for that one book.”
“Did he run away? ” she asked with interest.
“Oh yes, he ran away to live off the land in Florida, he got caught and sent home two days later.”
“I get in a lot of trouble for that” she said.
Perhaps the best of all the tributes flowing in for beloved author Maurice Sendak, who died at 83 on Tuesday, is the fact that his books instantly soared up Amazon’s best seller list, with Where the Wild Things Are moving up to #14.
Sendak’s irreverent wit was on full display in an appearance on the Stephen Colbert Report in late February. During the interview, Colbert threatened to “cash in” on the children’s book game, writing one of his own. In an amazing piece of timing, the resulting book, I Am A Pole (And So Can You!), arrived on shelves the very day Sendak died, bearing the blurb, “The Sad Thing is, I Like It, Maurice Sendak.”
Colbert, who clearly developed a rapport with Sendak, ran a previously unaired portion of the interview on Tuesday’s show (see the original interview here).
Beloved children’s author, Maurice Sendak, died today at 83.
In tribute, NPR’s web site is rerunning an interview from Fresh Air (audio to be available at 5 p.m. ET today).
His iconoclastic humor was on full display in a recent appearance on the Stephen Colbert Report:
Part One:
Part Two (in which Sendak calls Colbert an “idiot” — watch to the end to find out what he thinks of eBooks):
Jeffrey Zaslow co-author with Randy Pausch of The Last Lecture, (Hyperion, 2008) and author of several other best sellers, including The Girls from Ames, (Penguin/Gotham, 2009) died in a car accident on Friday morning while touring for his latest book, The Magic Room: A Story About the Love We Wish for Our Daughters, according to a report by Detroit’s local Fox station (via Publishers Marketplace’s Automat). He was 53.
UPDATE: NYT Obituary
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In the book’s trailer, Zaslow describes The Magic Room as a tribute to his three daughters.
Writer and iconoclast, Christopher Hitchens died yesterday at 62. The death was announced by the magazine he has written for since 1992, Vanity Fair, which also put together a fitting video tribute, “The Immortal Rejoinders of Christopher Hitchens.”
Hitchens learned he had esophageal cancer while on tour for his memoir, Hitch-22 (Hachette/Twelve, 2010). Despite his disease, he continued writing, even during his last days. The most recent of his 17 books, a collection of essays, Arguably, (Hachette/Twelve) came out in September.
To those who urged him to embrace religion once he knew he was dying, he retorted,
Suppose there were groups of secularists at hospitals who went round the terminally ill and urged them to adopt atheism: “Don’t be a mug all your life. Make your last days the best ones.” People might suppose this was in poor taste.
The Guardian rounds up the tributes that have been flowing in this morning, including a tweet by Salman Rushdie, “Goodbye, my beloved friend. A great voice falls silent. A great heart stops.”
The author of fifty books for children, including the classic Frances series, Russell Hoban, has died at 86 (via NYT obituary).
The author of the enduringly popular Dragonriders of Pern series died on Monday at her home outside of Dublin at 85, after suffering a stroke. Born in Cambridge Mass., she moved to Ireland in 1970 after the Irish government began a program to allow novelists to live there free of income tax.
Her 23rd novel, Dragon’s Time, written with her son, was published in June. The next in the series, Sky Dragons, is set for publication next year. Her books are published by Ballantine/Random House and are available via OverDrive.
Obituary roundup:
LA Times, 11/25
New York Times, 11/24
The Wall Street Journal, “Speakeasy” blog, 11/23
The author of the 1967 best seller, Down These Mean Streets, a memoir of growing up in New York City’s barrios, died at his home in California at age 83.
New York Daily News, Piri Thomas, Latin American poet and novelist who wrote on NYC’s barrios, dead …
New York Times, Piri Thomas, Spanish Harlem Author, Dies at 83
The most well-known of his books, Down These Mean Streets is still available from Vintage.
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As well as in Spanish,
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Also still available is a collection of his stories.
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