Awww, man. Louie Zamperini, the subject of Laura Hillenbrand's book Unbroken sent her one of his two Purple Hearts after he read about her struggles with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in her story for the New Yorker "A Sudden Illness."

That was a wonderful thing to do. I had heard about Laura Hillenbrand having CFS, but I had no idea how severe it has been. What an incredible story.

Did you go to Kenyon, David? I didn't realize you knew her. Cool.

I was good friends with her older sister, Siouxsie, who also went to Kenyon. I was graduated by the time she started at Kenyon, but we'd started a correspondence when Laura was about Emmett's age. I remember I sent her something for her 16th birthday.

I had a long involved correspondence with Sioux when she was at Exeter for a year, and Ralf (aka, Laura) started writing to me as well. Their older sister and some of their friends started writing to me too. Ahhh, letters. It was fun. (I've got one of her doctored teenage postcards on my fridge. Presciently - considering Unbroken - it has a WWII bomber on it with her picture pasted on in the corner.)

And then we just had a sporadic correspondence over time as her CFS got worse. Actually I'd fallen out of touch with her when I went on Amazon in 2001 to check how my Bubblegum book was doing and saw that the #1 seller was by Laura Hillenbrand. And at the time you could email the author directly through Amazon, which I did and we reconnected.

And then...lost touch again until her sister emailed me last year and now (long story, sorry) I'm friends with her on Facebook.

In short: the only time I met her in person was when I was driving my mom's car back from Florida to Boston, and stopped to see them at their place in Maryland and it was the weekend of Live Aid. So we watched that for a couple hours and then I hit the road again.

The sloth talk in Natter reminded me to mention Lauren Beukes' Zoo City here - it's a pretty amazing read (& Arthur C. Clarke winner).

it's a pretty amazing read

Isn't it? I thought the ending was a bit too fast, and hard to follow, but the world-building, concepts, and characterization was so good. I will be reading more by her.

I wanted to like it more than I did, but it was good.

I want to know more about the Ontological Shift. What does the animaling mean? What are the parameters of that? But she never really got into it.

BTW, there were a couple of Zoo City stories in Yuletide this year, one of them talking about the Ontological Shift. It was pretty cool, although too short.

I want to know more about the Ontological Shift. What does the animaling mean? What are the parameters of that? But she never really got into it.

I know!! I was really hoping for more worldbuilding since the idea was so interesting.

I want to know more about the Ontological Shift. What does the animaling mean? What are the parameters of that? But she never really got into it

yes. This.

I hope we'll see more from her on the subject.

Wait- do they become animals or have to carry around the animal?

The latter.