I was just googling some books, trying to find the proper order in which to read a series by Diana Wynne Jones when I glimpsed that dreadful word tacked onto the end of the search results: Obituary.

Now many a book’s author has passed away by the time you may pick up their book for the first time, but most of the books I read are in fact by authors who are still producing work in this same era as I’m living in.

Diana Wynne Jones is one such author. I’d had the impression she came from the same writing era as the great Tolkien, but that she was also still writing away with the best of them. Indeed I’ve seen some books published as recent as 2008.

So it was a bit of a shock when I found out just now that she passed away recently, March last year. She is the author of Howl’s Moving Castle, which I latched onto after watching the anime version; I fall in love with it more each time I watch it. Simply enchanting, it leaves me feeling wistful every time. It is magic. It is my favourite anime and the book holds up its end of the bargain.

There are other works of hers that I was planning to read and it’s no more imperative now than before but now when I pick them up I will remember.

RIP Diana Wynne Jones.