Where I'm Calling From
By the time of his early death in 1988, Raymond Carver had established himself as one of the great practitioners of the American short story, a writer who had not only found his own voice but imprinted it in the imaginations of thousands of readers. Where I’m Calling From, his last collection, encompasses classic stories from Cathedral, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, and earlier Carver volumes, along with seven new works previously unpublished in book form. Together, these 37 stories give us a superb overview of Carver’s life work and show us why he was so widely imitated but never equaled.
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What Hacker News says
- I don't just read books; I wallow in them. I remember well the acute pain of not knowing how to read and the relief when my mother taught me. I was five, and I just haven't stopped reading since. I'll be 38 in a couple of months.
I'm reading Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor, because O'Connor is wicked and funny. Favorite book? As others have pointed out, this is a ridiculous question -- my favorite kind! Some books I love: Lolita, As I Lay Dying, The Ghost Writer, Goodbye, Columbus, Blood Meridian, Anna Karenina, Where I'm Calling From, Huck Finn, Dubliners and on and on. I read mostly literary novels, but I read fairly widely -- genre stuff (skiffy, crime), history, philosophy, pop science, whatever's good. I average around 1 book per week, but I read in jags and sometimes go a couple of weeks without reading anything but blogs and news.
I'm sure there are any number of studies that will show the benefit of reading, but I much prefer to classify books with whiskey and cigarettes. How do you measure the utility of whiskey and cigarettes? I like the Romantic idea that books are bad for you. You know, the kind of thing that destroyed Emma Bovary and robbed Señor Quixote of his sanity. Maybe I just need to manufacture a vice. I don't like cigarettes, and a beer (and a book) after the kids are in bed is about all I can handle these days.
- > One thing that struck me is how much he reads. He had a list of suggested books to read in the back page, and there were probably hundreds
Here's the list, from the ebook I have at least:
- Abrahams, Peter: A Perfect Crime - Abrahams, Peter: Lights Out - Abrahams, Peter: Pressure Drop - Abrahams, Peter: Revolution #9 - Agee, James: A Death in the Family - Bakis, Kirsten: Lives of the Monster Dogs - Barker, Pat: Regeneration - Barker, Pat: The Eye in the Door - Barker, Pat: The Ghost Road - Bausch, Richard: In the Night Season - Blauner, Peter: The Intruder - Bowles, Paul: The Sheltering Sky - Boyle, T. Coraghessan: The Tortilla Curtain - Bryson, Bill: A Walk in the Woods - Buckley, Christopher: Thank You for Smoking - Carver, Raymond: Where I’m Calling From - Chabon, Michael: Werewolves in Their Youth - Chorlton, Windsor: Latitude Zero - Connelly, Michael: The Poet - Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness - Constantine, K. C.: Family Values - DeLillo, Don: Underworld - DeMille, Nelson: Cathedral - DeMille, Nelson: The Gold Coast - Dickens, Charles: Oliver Twist - Dobyns, Stephen: Common Carnage - Dobyns, Stephen: The Church of Dead Girls - Doyle, Roddy: The Woman Who Walked into Doors - Elkin, Stanley: The Dick Gibson Show - Faulkner, William: As I Lay Dying - Garland, Alex: The Beach - George, Elizabeth: Deception on His Mind - Gerritsen, Tess: Gravity - Golding, William: Lord of the Flies - Gray, Muriel: Furnace - Greene, Graham: A Gun for Sale (aka This Gun for Hire) - Greene, Graham: Our Man in Havana - Halberstam, David: The Fifties - Hamill, Pete: Why Sinatra Matters - Harris, Thomas: Hannibal - Haruf, Kent: Plainsong - Hoeg, Peter: Smilla’s Sense of Snow - Hunter, Stephen: Dirty White Boys - Ignatius, David: A Firing Offense - Irving, John: A Widow for One Year - Joyce, Graham: The Tooth Fairy - Judd, Alan: The Devil’s Own Work - Kahn, Roger: Good Enough to Dream - Karr, Mary: The Liars’ Club - Ketchum, Jack: Right to Life - King, Tabitha: Survivor - King, Tabitha: The Sky in the Water (unpublished) - Kingsolver, Barbara: The Poisonwood Bible - Krakauer, Jon: Into Thin Air - Lee, Harper: To Kill a Mockingbird - Lefkowitz, Bernard: Our Guys - Little, Bentley: The Ignored - Maclean, Norman: A River Runs Through It and Other Stories - Maugham, W. Somerset: The Moon and Sixpence - McCarthy, Cormac: Cities of the Plain - McCarthy, Cormac: The Crossing - McCourt, Frank: Angela’s Ashes - McDermott, Alice: Charming Billy - McDevitt, Jack: Ancient Shores - McEwan, Ian: Enduring Love - McEwan, Ian: The Cement Garden - McMurtry, Larry: Dead Man’s Walk - McMurtry, Larry, and Diana Ossana: Zeke and Ned - Miller, Walter M.: A Canticle for Leibowitz - Oates, Joyce Carol: Zombie - O’Brien, Tim: In the Lake of the Woods - O’Nan, Stewart: The Speed Queen - Ondaatje, Michael: The English Patient - Patterson, Richard North: No Safe Place - Price, Richard: Freedomland - Proulx, Annie: Close Range: Wyoming Stories - Proulx, Annie: The Shipping News - Quindlen, Anna: One True Thing - Rendell, Ruth: A Sight for Sore Eyes - Robinson, Frank M.: Waiting - Rowling, J. K.: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - Rowling, J. K.: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azakaban - Rowling, J. K.: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone - Russo, Richard: Mohawk - Schwartz, John Burnham: Reservation Road - Seth, Vikram: A Suitable Boy - Shaw, Irwin: The Young Lions - Slotkin, Richard: The Crater - Smith, Dinitia: The Illusionist - Spencer, Scott: Men in Black - Stegner, Wallace: Joe Hill - Tartt, Donna: The Secret History - Tyler, Anne: A Patchwork Planet - Vonnegut, Kurt: Hocus Pocus - Waugh, Evelyn: Brideshead Revisited - Westlake, Donald E.: The Ax - * Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, by Winifred Gallagher (So-so. Pop-psychy, but interesting ideas.)
* 500 Essential Anime Movies: The Ultimate Guide, by Helen Mccarthy (Perhaps one doesn't actually read such a book, but graze.)
* Mister Blank Exhaustive Collection, by Christopher J. Hicks (Fun. Love the art.)
* Programming Cocoa with Ruby, by Brian Marick (Tonight I will likely crack this open and see how soon I can code something.)
* Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories, by Raymond Carver (Started in, will work slowly through the stories.)
Sitting on the floor, beckoning me:
* Sunnyside, by Glen David Gold
* The Invention of Air, by Steven Johnson
