Barbara's Random Thoughts

I just read that Joan Aiken, one of my favorite authors when I was little, died on Sunday, January 4th. It's odd how it made me feel. It made me remember the books of hers that I loved as a child: The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (probably her most famous children's book), and my favorites, the Arabel and Mortimer books. It made me want to go out and read all the books she's written that I never discovered: she wrote 92 novels in her lifetime, 65 of them for children. How is it that I didn't know she wrote so many books? That she was still writing? These are things I never thought about until I heard of her death. It also made me remember how I felt when Roald Dahl died...very sad that there will be no more books written by this author that I loved.

I heard someone say that when a person dies, it's like a library has burned down. All their experiences, memories, and stories are gone. Seems an especially fitting description today.