recent literary deaths

I paid for a year's membership for this account, to prod myself to write more here. I do journal about anything and everything, still, but rarely on my older Dreamwidth account - mostly it's just on paper lately.

I've been keeping a list in my paper journal that I call "Celebrity Deathwatch" - although I'm just being flip with that name. I got interested in the running Deaths page on Wikipedia, and I started writing down the ones that were people I knew of or people I thought were interesting or whatever. So I though I'd share the reading-related ones here - authors of course, but also anybody else who was reading-adjacent (illustrator, for instance). 

So here's the ones from the last month or so:
Tracy Kidder, 80, nonfiction writer (Soul of a New Machine)
Paul Ehrlich, 93, biologist, author of The Population Bomb
William Dietz, 80, science-fiction writer
Ronald Spector, 83, military historian
Ted Booth, 87, British poet
Michael Hague, 77, book illustrator (mostly of fantasy/fairy tale books, incl. The Hobbit)
Tatjana Wood, 99, comic book artist ("Swamp Thing")

26 books to read in '26

I've been doing one of these lists for several years in my paper reading journal (it was originally, I don't know, "23 books to read in 2023" or something). I limit it to books I already have, and while I've never come close - or really even tried to come close - to finishing the list, it usually does prod me to read some of these that I would have forgotten about otherwise, so I figure that makes it worth doing. However, it's already the end of March and I haven't touched the main list of 26 - although there was an "add-on" one that I read (I'll get to that at the bottom) - so I need to get on the stick about this!

Mel's version of "26 books to read in 2026":
(note: I'm updating as I read any)
1. Burning Roses
2. Middlegame
3. Back to the Garden
4. The Bookbinder (read)
5. Lincoln's Admiral
6. Agatha Christie short stories
7. An Arcane Inheritance
8. more Oz stories
9. Circe
10. The Rook
11. The Water Witch
12. The Wizard's Butler
13. The Poppy War
14. The Heart of Everything
15. The Widow Queen
16. Melusine
17. The Midnight Bookshop
18. Kingdom of Tomorrow
19. Fortress in the Eye of Time 
20. The Once and Future Witches
21. Elphie: a Wicked childhood (I think Rob gave me this one)
22. June, Reimagined (read!)
23. Poirot books (I guess I have several unread ones?)
24. Reckoning Hour
25. Lady Cop Makes Trouble
26. The Bright Sword

(I wrote "try again" by 25 and 26 because I know I started those two and never really got anywhere.)

The two "extra" ones were a Star Trek: TNG book called Klingon Empire - which I did start and didn't like - and then the one I actually did read, which was Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear. (I liked it. I have somehow managed not to read anything by Elizabeth Bear before, although I knew who she was.)

(Am I reading - or at least buying - a heck of a lot of fantasy these days? You bet.)