Rolling up the Wheel of Time

For any fans, check out Peter's report on the "Rolling up the Wheel of Time" panel at Worldcon.

All for Kids

On Saturday we made a pilgrimage up to All for Kids bookstore in Seattle, which is about to close. I wouldn't even have known about it if I hadn't seen this post on Mo Willems' blog. When I read the article I knew we just had to go see it before it was gone.



Kate had a fun time playing in the kids' area and checking out the puppets (and even wanted to read a few books, later).



This is what I was there for--the event room, with its autographed and illustrated walls.




It was amazing. After we'd showed Kate the pigeon on the door, she wasn't really interested in staying in the room, so we had to take turns staying with her. So I'd go in and read the walls for a bit, and take some pictures, and then go out and find Doug and say something like, "Did you see the David Shannon in the corner?" and he'd go look again while I stayed with Kate for while.

















A lot of people are wondering what's going to happen to these walls when the store closes. Perhaps some wealthy benefactor will swoop in and save them, and have them removed and displayed somewhere. We can hope!

After the bookstore we stopped by the Seattle Folklife Festival for a while. It was insanely crowded, and it was also quite a bit hotter and sunnier than we'd been expecting, but we had a good time. Kate enjoyed a participatory drumming session.

Brandon and the Wheel of Time

We just found out yesterday that Brandon Sanderson (my brother's friend from BYU, who I blogged about here), has been chosen to finish the last book of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. This series has been in the works for years, both tantalizing and annoying readers by stretching out through eleven very long books, but the author unfortunately died while working on the twelfth book. His widow-and-editor chose Brandon to complete it, after reading Brandon's work. This may seem like a surprising choice, especially since Brandon just published his first book a couple of years ago, but I think he'll do a good job. I think he's up to the work required, and it will certainly be a lot of work. You can read more about it at Brandon's blog. I've only read the first book of the series, years ago, but I'm excited for Brandon. Congratulations!

Book signing with Brandon

Friday we went up to the University of Washington bookstore again to see Brandon Sanderson and Dave Wolverton, who are doing a book signing tour together. Brandon is a friend of my brother Peter's. He's apparently one of those disgusting people who make aspiring writers green with envy, able to write thousands of words in a sitting. He's been writing unpublished fantasy novels for years, during which time Peter has been a frequent alpha reader and sometime editorial consultant, and he made the break into print a couple of years ago with Elantris. Brandon's particular gift is for long, complex fantasy novels with very detailed and original magic systems. He's also just come out with a YA book called Alcatraz Versus The Evil Librarians, which he describes as "a cross between Lemony Snicket and The Da Vinci Code." I bought a copy and got Brandon to sign it. I'm about halfway through now and enjoying it. It's quite goofy.

Brandon is currently in the middle of a trilogy called Mistborn which I have also been enjoying, though the second book ended with a most dreadful cliffhanger and now we have to wait a year to find out what happens. (Aaaagggghhhh!) Brandon has included Peter in the acknowledgments of all his books, and the first Mistborn book mentions a place called Ahlstrom square. In the second book he thanks "the incalculable Peter Ahlstrom." We spent a while trying to figure out if incalculable was a good thing. I told Peter he should make a T-shirt with "Incalculable" on it. He did, and wore it to a recent book signing in their area. Brandon told me he's going to have to make a point of coming up with unusual adjectives for Peter now. Ha. (Alcatraz also has an internal nod to Peter, in the form of a misspelled Pterodactyl.)

Brandon and Peter met on the staff of The Leading Edge magazine at BYU. This is also where Peter met his wife, Karen. Our friend Fen says that between The Leading Edge and Quark, the science fiction club, they have more inter-club marriages than any other organization at BYU. In fact Doug and I were also both on staff, but not at the same time.

Lois McMaster Bujold, and a pigeon (coo!)

We went up to the University of Washington last night to see Lois McMaster Bujold, one of our favorite authors. This was the second "reading and book signing" that we've attended there which turned out not to be a reading, but she spoke and answered questions for a while before signing books. Kate was very interested in the toys at the bookstore and not at all interested in listening to these strange grown-ups, so unfortunately Doug didn't get to hear any of it. I suppose next time we do something like this we really should get a babysitter.



Here's Kate with a big Mo Willems pigeon. We currently have Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and The Pigeon Finds a Hotdog out from the library, and Kate has been enjoying reading them over and over. (She's been practicing saying "Oh for Pete's sake!" and "Hey, I'm a curious bird!") So I was tickled when I saw this big pigeon at the bookstore. Apparently it was some kind of promotional prop, but they did say that there should be smaller versions for sale later this year.

The pigeon has his own website! Kate and I were much amused by the hotdog game.

Lois McMaster Bujold writes science fiction and fantasy and is best known for her Miles Vorkosigan series, which you could describe as space opera, but very good space opera. The "science" is mostly social and biological, with a few space battles thrown in for good measure. They're very character-driven, thoughtful, touching, at times very funny. And just so well-written. I can't give these books a blanket recommendation, because of some of the content, but I love them and keep coming back to them over and over. Memory is probably my favorite. A Civil Campaign, a close second, is absolutely charming and has been favorably compared to Jane Austen, with its regency romance flavor. We took along our copy of A Civil Campaign and got it signed. (I didn't want to drag the whole stack of books along, so we just picked out that one.)



It's been a few years since the last Miles book--Lois has been working on other things. We have enjoyed her fantasy works as well, but we are eagerly awaiting the next Miles installment next year. Yippee!

Memories of Lloyd Alexander

Once upon a time, lo these many years ago, I was at BYU--this would have been the 93-94 school year, I think. My roommate Christy, who was an Elementary Music Ed major, was taking a Children's Lit class. Now I pretty much never stopped reading kids' books, so I had a great time talking to her about the stuff she was reading and recommending books, and reading the ones that she brought home. The class sounded like so much fun that I decided to take it the next semester. At the same time Christy found out that Dr. Tunnell and Dr. Jacobs were going to be teaching an evening seminar on Lloyd Alexander. Dr. Tunnell and Dr. Jacobs are both Lloyd Alexander nuts, and have written extensively about him and had a lot of contact with him in the process, and they had convinced Lloyd, who never went anywhere, to come out to BYU and speak, and they had planned this seminar in conjunction with the visit.

We both decided to sign up for the seminar (Christy took it for credit--I audited). Most of the other people were children's librarians and teachers. We read most of his books (some of which I had read before, some I hadn't), heard a lot about Lloyd's life, and were treated to readings from the delightful and out-of-print Janine is French, about how he met his wife. I was taking a bookbinding class at the same time, so I made a link-stitch book with a pig on the front (copied from Eveline Ness's cover illustration of The Book of Three) and a matching clamshell box.

The day of Lloyd's visit, he spoke during the afternoon to a crowded concert hall full of elementary school children. He read from The Arkadians, his most recent book, and answered questions from the audience. I remember one boy asked, "What does Gurgi sound like?" and he replied, "Gurgi sounds like what you think he should sound like." In the evening he came to our class, visited with us and signed all our books. One lady handed him a book open to a specific passage and asked, "Could you read this for us?" It was a bit of Gurgi dialog. Lloyd looked stricken and everybody laughed. Dr. Tunnell said, "There was a boy this afternoon who asked what Gurgi sounded like." And the lady said, "I know! That was my son!" Lloyd did read it for us (I think it was a bit about smackings and whackings on his poor tender head), sounding properly pitiful and squeaky, and we all applauded.



Several people had gifts for Lloyd, and I gave him the book and box I had made. He exclaimed over it for a while and gave me a kiss on the cheek (awww!).

We had watched a film in class earlier where Lloyd talked about answering fan mail, and showed off a few things that readers had made for him, like some little figures of the Prydain characters. So I pictured him keeping my little book in his office and maybe showing it off to somebody else later. Shortly afterwards I got this letter.

Best known for his Prydain Chronicles, Lloyd Alexander wrote nearly forty books, many of which feature cats and/or spunky redheads. He passed away May 17th at the age of 83, at home in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. His wife Janine died just two weeks ago. They were married for 62 years.

An evening with Pterry

Friday evening we went up to the University of Washington to see Terry Pratchett, one of our favorite authors. He's often referred to as "Pterry" online, because of his book Pyramids, which takes place in an Egypt-like setting and features characters with names like Pteppic, and a girl named Ptraci who says all "t" words with a P in front of them.


Our friend Tom, also a fan, came along too. Kate also, perforce, went with us. She did pretty well, though Doug took her out a couple of times. We brought along her Schleich lion and tiger for her to play with, and she got a bit loud with them. She'd say "Raah!" in her cute little voice, and we'd say, "Shhhh!" We didn't want to disturb the people near us who were trying to listen to Terry.

The event was advertised as a reading of his new book Wintersmith, but he didn't actually read anything. He talked for a while and told us about the upcoming Hogfather movie (yay!), and signed books. He's a fun speaker. (Speaking of Nick Tennant, who is playing Nobby in the movie, he said, "He was not born Nobby, but he has achieved Nobbiness.")

For the book signing, they divided the crowd up into groups of a hundred according to the numbers on our ticket stubs. Mine was #422, but a guy who wasn't staying for the signing gave me his ticket #81, so I got in the first group and didn't have to wait long. (Which was great, because by the time we got out of there and went to find some food it was 9:00.)



There were some very creative costumes in the audience. Here Kate checks out Quoth the Raven and the Death of Rats.

We have most of the Discworld books at home, but we decided to take along just Where's My Cow? (A Discworld picture book for people of all sizes) and get it signed for Kate. While we don't read it to her every evening at 6:00, it has been in the favorite-book rotation. I remember once reading it six or seven times in one day. She enjoys the animal sounds, and pointing out things in the pictures. There's even a picture of Terry on the last page that she can point to. ("Where's the baby? Where's the ball? Where's Terry Pratchett?") He signed it, "To Kate--Here's your cow!"



We had a fun evening. We'd listened to a Terry Pratchett interview online before, but we'd never seen him in person. Our other favorite author, Lois McMaster Bujold, was the guest of honor at Norwescon this year, but we didn't find out about it till after the fact. Phooey.

Check out Doug's Douggerel page for a Discworld-related poem ("With A-Poe-logies to 'The Raven'").

And since two people in one day sent me this link, I must include it here: Discworld Cake.