Poetry by Ron Carlson? Yes, please!

I'm participating in a month of poetry hosted by Serena at Savvy Verse and Wit, and today is my day. I'm sharing two poems by my very favorite author, Ron Carlson. Carlson had published lots of short stories and a few novels, and his prose is often like poetry to me, but his latest book is the first of his poetry that I'd read. This book also has lots of flash fiction in it. I prefer Carlson's longer prose, but I'm glad I bought this one. It's got some fun pieces to go with his wisdom and beauty.

This one, though, touched me deeply:

The Bull

When they led me
into the China Shop
I didn't mind,
though it was a bright place
and the wooden floor creaked.
But the way they watched,
smirking at the windows
filled my bull's heart
with a sadness
so large and fragile
you could have cracked it
with a whisper.

This somehow makes me think of Lennie Small in Of Mice and Men.
Who do you know that has a bull's fragile heart?

8 Authors I'd Read Anything By

We've all read one-hit wonders, and authors who we only sporadically connect with. But, who are your go-to authors? The ones who, the minute you see the name on the cover, you put the book at the top of your reading pile?

It takes a lot for an author to achieve that kind of loyalty from me. As I looked over my virtual shelves in preparation for this post, I realized that I am incredibly picky. Many authors have wowed me with one or two of their books, and failed to grab me with the rest. Still more are on my "Must Read More By This Author" list, and could very well be added to me Auto-Read list eventually.

I was going for a Top Ten Tuesday list but I only came up with four authors who are still alive and writing. So, I cheated and added some dead people. Hey, you never know what might be discovered in a drawer in somebody's relative's basement. That got me to 8.

 Ron Carlson

Carlson was one of the first topics I ever blogged about. I'm mystified as to why everyone isn't in love with this author the way I am. His novels are some of the few books I will happily re-read, his short stories are fabulous, and his book on writing is like have a kind professor as a next door neighbor.

My favorite novel of his is The Signal, though I loved Five Skies as well. Recently, Carlson came out with a book of mostly poetry, called Room Service. I am forcing myself to read it slowly, so I can savor it, because who knows when his next work will come out. The man's busy teaching and being a next door neighbor and stuff, after all.

Michael Cunningham

Cunningham is most famous for The Hours, but I've actually enjoyed his other books more. He has an insightful understanding of human nature and a beautiful way of writing about it.

His 2010 book, By Nightfall, is on my bookshelf right now and I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to get around to reading it.

Barbara Kingsolver

Okay, I haven't loved every Kingsolver book I've ever read--The Poisonwood Bible left me dissatisfied--but her batting average is still pretty darned high. I finished most of her books before I started blogging, but this year I read and loved Flight Behavior. Kingsolver is also known for non-fiction. The only one of those I've read is Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a memoir of the year she decided to eat only local foods. It had that combination of readability and new information that I look for in a nonfiction book, and it inspired me to eat more local foods in season.

John Green

Ironically, I've been working myself up to tackling the cancer story in The Fault in Our Stars for over a year. And yet, I know that I'll read it--even though I dread reading a teen cancer story that's going to make me cry--because it's by John Green. That's why he's on this list.

Now for the dead ones.

Maurice Sendak
Because:

 There are no words.

 

Laura Ingalls Wilder

As a child, I read every single one of her books, and I read them again in adulthood. If anything by Mrs. Wilder was uncovered, even if it were directions for building a sod home, I'd pick it up before you could say "Watch out for the leeches."

William Wharton
I discovered Mr. Wharton when we went to see the movie Birdy, in 1984. Oh, how I loved that movie. When I found out there was a book, I immediately devoured it (not knowing that it had won the National Book Award for Best First Novel) and then I read everything else written by him as the years went by. As a twenty-something, back when a card catalog was still a piece of furniture with index cards, I'd habitually check the W section of the library bookshelves just to make sure there wasn't a new one out. He didn't write very much, though, and he died in 2008. I'm hoping  there's an unpublished manuscript in a drawer somewhere.

J.D. Salinger

Oh, J.D.
He was a one-book wonder, but what a book it was. I'm one of many readers who would love to read the man's other works. Rumor has it there are as many as ten manuscripts that Salinger never saw fit to publish. Maybe one day we'll get to read them.

Those are my 8. For many more top ten lists, check The Broke and the Bookish.

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In which I share a few of my Best Kept Secrets

Kelly from YAnnabe emailed asking me to post my favorite YA books that aren't well known. I'm calling this the Best Kept Secrets list.

At the same time, I've been working on my best 2009 reads by people of color for the Diversity Roll Call. Astoundingly, but not surprisingly, all but one of my favorites for this list are also on my Best Kept Secrets list. (I've starred the books written by authors of color). The only one that didn't qualify as a Best Kept Secret was Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead*, which isn't a YA book and is more well-known.

I compiled my list, with Kelly's help, by looking at my Library Thing collection to see how many other members claimed my favorite YA reads in their collections. The list below links to my review and includes the number of members claiming the book, and the average rating out of 5 stars.


The Brothers Torres by Cooert Voorhees*. I called this The Outsiders with cajones, and it was one of my favorite 2009 books. 77 members, 4.11 stars.

When the Black Girl Sings, by Bil Wright*. I loved the backdrop of transracial adoption and music in this one. 48 members, 3.55 stars.

The Secret Keeper, by Mitali Perkins*. Two Indian sisters adjust to life with relatives in Bengali. 48 members, 4.27 stars.

Flygirl, by Sherrie Smith*. Amazing historical fiction about a black girl in the 1940s who's always yearned to be a pilot. She has her opportunity with the Women Airforce Service Pilots . . . as long as she's willing to pass for white. 132 members, 4.32 stars.

Incognegro, by Mat Johnson*. Speaking of historical fiction and blacks passing as white, this graphic novel is a gut-wrenching treatment of two black men who pose as whites in order to report on lynchings that took place in the deep south. This isn't YA but older teens would get a lot out of it. 91 members, 3.81 stars.

Night of the Howling Dogs by Graham Salisbury. My boys and I enjoyed this virtual trip to Hawaii as we followed a troop of boy scouts who get caught in a natural disaster. 107 members, 3.99 stars.

Tallulah Falls, by Christine Fletcher. Tallulah is an unforgettable character who stumbles into a new life when she rescues a lost dog. 48 members, 3.46 stars.

The Speed of Light by Ron Carlson. I wrote that this beautiful coming-of-age book should have been marketed to adults as well as teens--I was sad that so many would overlook it. 29 members, 4.43 stars.

Ordinary Ghosts, byEireann Corrigan. I read this and the next two books pre-Worducopia, so my reviews are only on Library Thing. I said YA novels didn't get much better than this story of a boy grieving for his mom who recently died of cancer. 60 members, 4 stars.

10th Grade, by Joe Weisberg. I said, "This was my favorite book from the summer of 2006. I took it to a cabin in the San Juan Islands we were staying at with friends, and I laughed so much that every time I set the book down one of my friends had picked it up to read it." 101 members, 3.41 stars.

Trigger, by Susan Vaught. I wrote, "This book is intense. The author has worked with brain-injured teens and her character's story of recovery from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head is realistic and heartbreaking. Well, that doesn't make you really want to read it, does it?
Read it because the writing is brilliant. (Ever wondered what it would be like to think with a brain injury?) Read it because you'll connect with this character in a way that you might not have thought possible. Read it because you'll likely never forget this kid. One day you'll see someone acting a little odd, and you'll think of Jersey Hatch, and you'll see the person behind the odd behavior. Read it if you're a parent, and if there's a teenaged boy in your life, give it to him to read, too. 120 members, 4.35 stars.

Want to make your own list of Best Kept Secrets or check out some other bloggers' lists? Head over to YAnnabe for instructions and links.

*starred authors are those that I'm aware of being people of color.

The Signal--Ron Carlson (Book Review)

I can't begin to tell you how I loved Ron Carlson's new novel, any more than I can explain the difference between the Butter Pecan ice cream from Babcock Hall in Madison, Wisconsin and the same flavor anywhere else. If you tasted it, you'd understand. I'll have a sample for you in a minute. (The prose, not the ice cream. Though you can order that delivered, I hear).

In The Signal, just as in Carlson's short stories, a lifetime of emotion is distilled into one event. This time the event is a six-day camping trip in the mountains--a final goodbye for Mack and his ex-wife, Vonnie.

Broken hearted by the death of his father, Mack blew it, big time. Amid the resulting drinking and drug-running, and the threatened loss of his beloved ranch, Vonnie left him. Several months in jail gave him time to dry out and think things over, but not to make a plan. He can just about manage one last annual fishing trip with Vonnie, and despite the fact that she's with another man now, she agrees to go. Big stuff happens on the fishing trip and it doesn't turn out how either of them planned, and that's the story. Six days.

Here's Mack waiting for Vonnie at the beginning of the trip, still unsure of whether she'll show up:

Mack was not scared. He had been uneasy and worried and scared and empty and sort of ruined, and he knew this, but now he had his ways of doing one thing and then the next and it kept the ruin off him. If she left Jackson by four, she'd be along in a while. If she hadn't left Jackson; well then.

An abundance of flashbacks fills in the details of Mack and Vonnie's courtship and how things went wrong. Flashbacks can be tricky business, more distracting than enlightening, but when they work well--as they do here--the result is magic. By the end of Day One while Mack waits for Vonnie to arrive--thirty pages--the reader has tasted enough of his history to be glad to see Vonnie, and to truly understand why his father's death so thoroughly devastated him.

His father's death changed it all. At the ranch everything was tilted, weird; it was more than something missing. Gravity had changed. Mack saw to the horses and painted the small barn, but there was no center for him without his father there.

The setting--the mountains of Wyoming--is as critical to the story as any of the characters are, and the plot becomes riveting at the halfway point. Luckily it's a short book; by the time you can't put it down, you might as well go ahead and finish it.

Some people like ratings; I don't. But if it'll make you read this one, I'll give it five (out of five) glorious pints of Babcock Hall butter pecan ice cream.



The Soundtrack: It's gotta be My Rambling Boy, which Vonnie makes Mack sing so he can't hear her peeing in the woods. Can't find it on Playlist.com but you can click on the song title to hear it at Last.fm.

TSS: Struck Wordless

For the past three days I've been sweating over my review for Ron Carlson's The Signal, which comes out tomorrow. Carlson is the author most recently of Five Skies (2007) and several other books, including my favorite collections of short stories. The trouble is, I like the man's work too much.

It can be a little terrifying, requesting to review the latest release by a favorite author, because what if it doesn't measure up? With a library book it's easier to quietly slip the book back into the book drop and pretend it didn't happen. Or with a new-to-you author, you can say "this wasn't for me," and move on. But after you've gone on and on about how wonderful someone's writing it is, it's humbling to have to say, "I didn't like it much."

And if the book is everything you'd hoped it to be? What do you say then?

"Go buy this book! Read it, read it, read it! Do! It's so...it's just so...it's really, like...you know? Really-really-really good!" Knowing that the author may at some point read this babbling, could be reading it and thinking "This is the kind of person my books appeal to? Christ."

But, hey, Dr. Carlson teaches creative writing at college. He's surely been exposed to worse than I can come up with, with the possible exception of the paragraph above this one. I'll try to do the book justice in my write-up, and then I'll force myself to hit Publish and move on.

Tomorrow.

Do you ever feel intimidated when writing about a favorite author? Which author or book has been the hardest for you to review?


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This week's giveaway winners: (this giveaway continues for two more weeks, go to parenting/nutrition giveaway and leave a comment to enter).
Dr. Sears' N.D.D. Book: Lisa
G-Free Diet: Korah and Carleen
If Your Kid Eats This Book: GShome and SpiralMama

Sunday Salon: This is me in a flurry of activity

I'm intent on getting my house in order this weekend. So far I have:

1. Made a list of things to do
2. Made ham & egg English muffins for breakfast
3. Praised Evan for his stellar job of vacuuming the rug
4. Finished reading Do-Over by Robin Hemley
5. Prevented the cat from peeing in an open drawer

Only one of these things was on my list of things to do (can you guess which?).

I enjoyed Do-Over. It's one of those gimmicky memoirs whose subtitles are reminiscent of those old National Inquirer headlines: Family spends a winter living in a tunnel! Mother deals with grief by rescuing child slaves from Ghana! Girl eats only tofu for a year! Man travels the world to find out where his clothes were made!

I'm a sucker for these. I don't know why.

The gimmick of Do-Over is that Mr. Hemley decides to go back and relive the experiences that hold regret for him. So, at 48, he spends a week as a kindergartener, a week as a camper at summer camp, a week attending the boarding school he dropped out of before Prom, and so on. I'll be reviewing it next week, for now I'll just say, gimmicks aside, this was a good read.

Next on my reading list is Ron Carlson's The Signal. So excited about this one! Ron Carlson is one of my favorite authors of both short stories and longer fiction. When I learned he had a new novel coming out, I was just about as close to squeeeee! as I get. But before I can get started on that, I must get to my to-do list. Item #1: Draw giveaway winners.

This week's drawing for the Parenting & Nutrition Book giveaway:

Dr. Sears' NDD Book: Pam
The G-Free Diet: Teddy Rose and Marion (I have an extra one this week because Jen, who won last week, also won the book in another contest)
If Your Kid Eats This Book: Gaby317 and last week's winner, SpiralMama (still waiting to hear from you, SpiralMama!)

Winners, please email me at Worducopia/at/gmail/dot/com with your mailing address so I can pass it on to the publicist at Hachette Book Group and get your book to you. If you haven't won yet, you'll have another chance each Sunday until mid-June, and I'm taking new entries through then.

Short Story Mondays: The Clicker at Tips, by Ron Carlson

Source: At The Jim Bridger (2003) by Ron Carlson
Date Read: January 30, 2009 (#3)
Briefly: Matt meets his old friend/old flame Eve, for drinks at a bar called Tips.
Afterthoughts: Two words: Ron Carlson!

You want more than that? Okay. But first: Ron Carlson is so much my all-time favorite writer of short stories, that my very first Worducopia post was about him. So much, in fact, that I've had At The Jim Bridger sitting on my bedside table for months without reading it, because knowing there are Ron Carlson stories I haven't read yet is like having a full bowl of ripe strawberries waiting to be eaten.

But, for the sake of Short Story Mondays, I've eaten the next strawberry (and the next, and the next, because it's impossible to stop at one) and I'm ready to share the bowl with you. And, just like describing the taste of a fresh, in-season Oregon berry to anyone who's never tasted one (are you tired of the metaphor yet? I'll stop), I'll have a hard time explaining what was so great about it. But I'll try.

Except I can't tell you what happens because (a) part of the pleasure of watching the story unfold is figuring out who and what and why for yourself, and I don't want to ruin it for you, and (b) not all that much happens. Stuff happening is not the point. The point, as in many of Carlson's stories, is the relationships between people and how every action and word reflects that relationship and makes it real to the reader. Carlson is the master of distilling a world view down to one moment; a moment down to one motion of the head or the rearranging of glasses on the bartop.

In The Clicker at Tips the reader is an invisible third person at the bar, feeling the tension between this man and woman like an oncoming thunderstorm, without knowing any of the history behind it. Matt, the narrator, fills us in as the evening proceeds. The ending is unexpected but perfect. Go ahead, get yourself some Carlson for your bedside table, and let me know what you think.

Notable Quote: In the corner [of the bar] near us the group of young regulars had circled their chairs around two of the little tables and were making noises about Chicago this, Arizona that, even though it was going to be a one-sided exhibition. There were five or six guys. They leaned back in their chairs and pointed at the screen from time to time, yucking it up. They got to me for all the wrong reasons. I didn't envy them so much as I wanted to correct them, ask them to display some real comaraderie, some real something the way I had with my friends Eve and David and Christopher and Jeff and Deborah, now Debbie, my wife. We had met in magical ways and hung out in the real places like a kind of family over an evening of drinks and appetizers, plate after plate, and we had talked wickedly, tenderly, and we all knew that those hours once a week were our real lives, the center. One thing led to another; there was a sense of things happening. I hated those young guys and their surface lives, a night with the football game. I hated the evening coming on this way, and my life, one good part of it, over.

I'm cheating. It's not really Tuesday.

Today's Question: Favorite Authors. Who do you have named in your LT account as favorite authors? Why did you choose them? How many people share your choices? Can you share a picture of one of them?

I didn't even realize you could pick favorite authors on LibraryThing! Upon adding a few to my profile I found that I'm the only LT member with Ron Carlson as a favorite. How can this be? Okay, the short story isn't everyone's favorite format, but he's an absolute master of them, and his recent novels are excellent. The man has the dubious honor of being the subject of Worducopia's very first post. It blows my mind that he's not more well known. So, here's his picture.

Other favorite authors include:

Michael Cunningham (shared by 30--only 30???--readers)
Christopher Moore (shared by 211 readers, two of whom also have Cunningham as a favorite)
Sara Zarr (I just finished her book Sweethearts, which raised her from great author to a favorite author--shared by only 3 readers but she's relative new and only has 2 books so that's oka)
Dick Francis (shared by 72 readers, one of whom also has Christopher Moore as a favorite. I'm not a big mystery fan but I've been reading his since I was 14 and discovered a dusty shelf of his books in an old farmhouse in Tuscany)

Now, go read some Ron Carlson. Unless you happen to be Ron Carlson, in which case: Get off the internet, professor. No you don't need another cup of coffee. Stay in the room, and write.

Ron Carlson

I've decided to start highlighting my favorite authors, beginning with Ron Carlson.


A Creative Writing professor at UC Irvine, Carlson belies the old saying that those who can't do, teach. (Though his one book about writing, Ron Carlson Writes a Story, made me want to sign up for every class he teaches, if he's half as brilliant, funny and wise as the written version of himself).


The first Carlson novel I read was The Speed of Light (2003). Marketed as a YA book because the protagonist is 12, the book's delightful detached irony will appeal to adults more than teens, as the narrator recounts his summer on the verge of adolescence. The adventures of Larry, Witt and Rafferty are funny and endearing, and his childlike analysis of the world he's not quite ready to enter is spot on. The writing is at times achingly beautiful. And, like most YA books, it's a relatively quick read, which is always a good way to test out a new author.


Carlson's most recent novel is Five Skies (2007), the story of three very different men working on building a motorcycle jump in the middle-of-nowhere Idaho desert. Carlson effortlessly moves between three points of view as the reader experiences these mens' private pain intermingling with increased connections to each other. It's a very subtle novel, not one to breeze through quickly or you'll miss the pockets of humor. Much of the dialogue reminded me of a play--the lines bloom when read aloud, the subtle meanings behind words could easily be glossed over by an inattentive reader.

In fact, it's almost too subtle at times, losing opportunities to keep the reader in suspense. In one scene a character is injured, but instead of starting with the moment of injury, Carlson chose to start with the men in the car on the way to the clinic in town, then to go back and tell how the injury happened. Well, you knew the guy was OK because of the tone of the text as they drove along. In the climax, I again found myself spending more energy figuring out what had happened than reacting to it.

I have yet to read Carlson's other two novels, Truants (1981) and Betrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1977).


His short stories, however, are magnificent. Short story collections, no matter how well-written, are harder for me to dive into than novels. Reading A Kind of Flying underlined why: in many short stories, by the time I figure out who the character truly is and what their motivation is, I've reached the climax of the story and it's a few more pages and on to the next one. Not true with Carlson.
Almost every one of these stories feels like the guy next door (even when the guy next door happens to be Bigfoot, or in a couple of cases the guy next door's wife) started a conversation with you over the side fence. By the end of the first paragraph you know these folks, and you know their story will take you somewhere you'll remember. From the baseball player who can't lose (Sunny Billy Day) to the man traveling to Alaska in search of a connection with the son he lost years before he died (Blazo); from men aching to become fathers (Life Before Science) or trying to re-establish relations with their wives amid young parenthood (Plan B for the Middle Class), to women struggling with the process of letting go of their teenaged sons (The Status Quo, The Summer of Vintage Clothing)--Carlson brings these characters to life and lets us ride along with them for a while. It's well worth the trip.

A Kind of Flying contains stories pulled from Carlson's previously published three collections, Plan B for the Middle Class (1992), The Hotel Eden (1997), and At the Jim Bridger (2002), which I've been reading sporadically. I'm hoping that if I go through them slowly enough, by the time I finish every story Carlson will have his next novel ready for me to review.