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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Thoughts on Looking for Alaska

I won a copy of John Green's Looking for Alaska in a contest a while back and, having loved his Paper Towns, I was so excited to read it, that . . . well, that I promptly set it on my shelf to languish amongst all my other unread books for several months. As usual. But I left it on top!

Eventually I read the first 25 pages, wasn't blown away the same way I had been by Paper Towns, set it next to my bedside table, and read something else. A couple more months went by. I got back to it this weekend, having finished a book and being too sick and lazy to get out of bed to choose a new one. And you know what?

Once you get to the second half, it's wonderful.

Not that the first half is bad, if you're looking for a Friendless Geek Goes to Boarding School and Makes New Friends story. But, the dullness of protagonist Miles Halter--which is integral to the story--rubs off during the reading. Unlike Paper Towns's Quentin, whose world is irrevocably rocked by his neighbor Margo Roth Spiegelman right at the onset of the book, Miles kind of putzes around for a while. He makes friends who are mildly entertaining, he has a crush, he studies for classes. It's not boring, exactly, but it's not can't-stop-reading exciting, either.

And then the Big Thing happens, and all of a sudden it's a completely different book. The minor characters gain depth, Miles gets a backbone and loses it and finds it again, the emotional content grows from dull sparks to a full flame. And on it goes, a race to the finish, an ending that leaves the reader both satisfied and wanting more.

And so, Green did eventually live up to my expectations. It only took him 125 pages (and me, several months) to get there.

Mock Printz Report

On Saturday I attended the Mock Printz Award workshop at my library. I was the only person out of the 40 or so in attendance who was neither a teen or a librarian, but I tried to blend in. You know, by not shouting out "LOL!" every time somebody said something funny, and stuff like that.

Our task was to narrow eleven notable 2008 YA books down to one award winner and an honor book or two. After receiving instructions, we sequestered ourselves in groups of 6-7 for two hours of discussion. Our group had five adults and two bright and thoughtful teen girls. We had less than ten minutes to discuss each book and you wouldn't believe how much ground we covered in that time. We agreed on a lot, disagreed on a lot, and at the end of two hours we each cast our votes.

Then we reconvened in the large group, reported on our top three books, and then launched into a rather raucous discussion about the various contenders. There were very strong feelings on either side for MadApple and My Most Excellent Year, in particular. Where librarians got stereotyped as mild-mannered, I will never understand.

Librarian A: MadApple is a beautiful account of the descent into madness.
Librarian B: What's madness is that she didn't have an editor!
Teen A: Notice how all the people who loved this book are adults?
Teen B: I know, right?
Teen C: Can we talk about Little Brother now?

After the discussion we each got to vote on our top three again. I changed my #3 vote, but kept the first two the same.

The book that won was not everyone's favorite book by any stretch, but it had the distinction that nobody hated it. Even people who didn't love it acknowledged that it had an important and unique theme, a strong voice and setting, and characters that drew the reader in. Even those who loved it acknowledged that it wasn't perfect (unlike a couple of other books, which some had fallen for so hard that they seemed blind to their imperfections).

Our winner?

Yep, it's one of the two that I didn't get around to reviewing: Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow. This was my personal #3 in the final vote. I didn't expect to like this book and I did, mostly because the protagonist was a great narrator. Some people thought the large amounts of technical information were tucked in nicely, others thought there was too much explanation. Everyone who spoke felt that Doctorow made an imaginary situation very believable and made a strong statement about the very real anti-terrorism measures that have been happening in the U.S. since 9/11.

Here are the rest of the books, in order of the points they received.
2. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks This was my #2. This one sparked interesting discussions about feminism: what it is and isn't, and whether it's a useful concept to the up-and-coming generation. Most of the teens loved this, but those who didn't, felt that Frankie was hard to relate to and that there was too much emphasis on being accepted by the boys. One boy said, "I saw this as a feminist book, and our generation isn't about feminism, we're about equality."
3. My Most Excellent Year. Listening to people rave about this actually made me feel a little queasy. The teens said the characters (who I described in my review as "sit-com characters") were exactly like people they know at school; people loved the pop culture references and the fact that it was a happy book. Those of us who didn't love it agreed that we're looking forward to his next book. Just please don't make me ever read this one again.
4. Paper Towns. This was my #1. Nearly everyone loved this book and I'm surprised it didn't get more points. Some people said it was over-hyped because they and their friends had adored Green's other books so much. Others felt that his protagonists are too similar and he needs to branch out more (others vehemently disagreed).
5. Skim This graphic novel was popular among many, especially for its art work.
6. Black Box. This was my personal #3 in the initial vote. The main criticism others had was that the main character wasn't given enough emphasis. The focus was on her sister and then her boyfriend. I loved this book but found that when it came to discussing it, I couldn't remember precisely why, which in itself is telling, I think.
7. MadApple. The teens, who were intelligent and not at all frothy (one of the girls in our group said she prefers authors like Sinclair Lewis to YA books), were of one mind on this: not a teen book. The people who loved it were mostly over 50.
8. The Adoration of Jenna Fox. Some liked it, some didn't. Everyone hated the ending.
9. Last Exit to Normal. Most people liked this one a lot, but had criticisms of it. One of the male teens said it read like a Lifetime movie.
10. Missing Girl. I couldn't read this one, I put it down after page 50. The combination of creepiness with too many protagonists was more than I was willing to stomach, and I'd just put MadApple down at the time and needed to read something I could enjoy. Most people found it more palatable than I did.
11. Sunrise Over Fallujah. Everyone agreed this was good, and an important book--like historical fiction but contemporary. I think it was the lack of depth of the minor characters that kept it from rising to the top of people's lists.

This whole experience was great fun, and also there were cookies and fruit. My favorite part was talking to the teens about the books that were written for them. I hope I get to invite myself again next year!

Paper Towns--John Green (book review)

Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life--dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge--he follows. After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues--and they're for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees of the girl he thought he knew.

Last week I wrote that Black Box restored my faith that I hadn't grown too picky to love a novel, after worrying that my expectations had grown too high. This week, I read John Green for the first time.

Oh, Mr. Green. You've gone and raised the bar for me again. Thanks to you, I can't read anything but cookbooks and my new merit badge handbook for grown-up girls for a few days until the glow wears off, because anything that follows this one will make me grumpy with its imperfection.

Paper Towns is funny and thoughtful and adventurous. Quentin, the protagonist, is lovable and funny, if a little mundane (but that's the point). Every last one of the characters is multi-dimensional, delightful and flawed, with a distinctive voice and character arc. The plot is unpredictable. Walt Whitman's Leave of Grass plays a key role, and I loved the scenes where Quentin is trying to figure it out or even read the whole thing. Did I mention it's funny? As in, "Now-what-are-you-laughing-about,-Mom?" funny.

John Green can be found online at Sparks Fly Up. He's published two other novels, which I'll be reading as soon as I can get my hands on them.

The soundtrack: Margo circles the track Walt Whitman's Niece on a Billy Bragg album as a clue for Quentin, but I think the lyrics of California Stars, from the same album, make a better fit for the story.


Further reading: Paper Towns was also reviewed by Nymeth.