Stephen R. Donaldson, Roger Zelazny, & L. Frank Baum

Today, Love All Books has a lengthy post for you.

For starters, we have belated birthday wishes to authors Stephen R. Donaldson (Wikipedia) and Roger Zelazny (who share May 13^th birthdays) and some guy named L. Frank Baum (born May 15^th).

So, where've I been the last few days?

Downtime.

My JavaScript class (AKA: Internet Programming - Client Side) at Saint Paul College is finished. Stick a fork in me—I'm done!

Now I pass the time waiting for the results of my final exam and the final projects by getting caught up with all the things I've ignored around the house for the last week or so.

So, on to our birthday celebrants . . . .

Stephen R. Donaldson is the author of a magnificent series of books known as The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever. How anyone could make such a disagreeable excuse for a human being into a hero is quite truly amazing.

He also wrote The Gap Cycle and Mordant's Need series.

Roger Zelazny was the Hugo Award winning (six times) and Nebula Award winning (only three times) author of too many excellent books to name, but my favorites must be the Chronicles of Amber series.

L. Frank Baum is, of course, the well-known author of fourteen Oz books and a ton of other non-Oz books.

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Gene Wolfe

Today, Love All Books wishes the happiest of birthdays to science fiction and fantasy author Gene Wolfe.

Gene Wolfe is the Nebula, World Fantasy, John W. Campbell Memorial, and Locus award winning author of many great books.

His Soldier of the Mist has long been one of my favorite books. It is the story of Latro, a Roman mercenary that—as the result of a head injury in battle in ancient Greece—forgets everything while he's sleeping, and how he copes with awakening with amnesia each day.

(Think 50 First Dates, just set in ancient times—oh, and not so funny!)

Wolfe is also the author of the extremely popular The Book of the New Sun series.

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Terry Pratchett & Harper Lee

Today, Love All Books wishes the happiest of birthdays to authors Terry Pratchett, OBE and Harper Lee.

Terry Pratchett is the wildly successful fantasy author of the Discworld series. If you enjoy fantasy fiction, you'll enjoy these books immensely if you have an ounce of a sense of humor in your body.

If you have a sense of humor, but don't care for fantasy, you still might enjoy this series because they are just so incredibly funny.

Think of the series as the fantasy world's equivalent of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

If you need me to tell you that Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, you should—perhaps—be moving on to someone else's blog.

Or not: if you need me to tell you that, you do need a "book mentor" and are, I hope, in the right place!

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Alice Hoffman & Margaret Weis

Happy birthday today to bestselling authors Alice Hoffman and Margaret Weis.

I've never read anything by Alice Hoffman, but I have very fond memories of my Role Playing days that began—as it did for many of us—with Dungeons & Dragons, and one of the fondest memories I have from that time is dungeon-mastering the DragonLance saga, co-written by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman.

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