Introducing...Ron Carlson

I have been writing since my school days. My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Thornton, allowed me to put on skits with my friends which I wrote under the heavy influence of monster movies, tarzan movies, and a sense of real wonder about the world. I continued writing in college at the University of Utah and I began to see that writing would be an adventure itself. By this I mean, I had thought that writing fiction would be a clear and organized endeavor. I didn’t know what I know now, after ten books, that writing fiction is about going into the unknown each time. We start with what we know and we write from there toward what we don’t know, into the dark, building each sentence carefully so we can believe it and find out – if we stay in the room – what our stories are. In Five Skies you can see me building a world in those first forty pages, process by process. I was so glad to see Ronnie finally get that tent up –with a little help. In the book I worked forward scene by scene, and then, maybe a dozen times, I stopped and made decisions about the direction I might go next. I wanted to make each step in the book a firm and credible step. More soon. April 30, 2009. Ron Carlson

LT Governor Elizabeth Roberts on Five Skies

As the Lieutenant Governor of The Ocean State, where each of us lives closely together and the ocean breezes and tides are part of our weather forecast, the Idaho setting of Five Skies fascinated me. I have long been a reader of books set in the wide open spaces of America. Willa Cather and O Pioneers set in the plains of Nebraska, Wallace Stegner and his Pulitzer Prize winning Angle of Repose, Larry McMurtrys Lonesome Dove these are three of my favorite books and I look for literature set in the west.

Five Skies, with its wide open, rugged setting, transports the reader to a different world. There are big skies, canyons, long distances to the closest town and to family. It is such a different world that surrounds the three men in this novel, isolating them and causing them to create their own family, father, son and grandson, on the canyon rim.

I look forward to the discussions on May 9, at the Reading Across Rhode Island May Breakfast."

"Five Skies" comes alive at Fidelity Investments

If you were to put seniors from Smithfield High School, “seniors” from the Smithfield Senior Center, Fidelity Investments specialists, and Reading across Rhode Island committee members in a room together, do you know what you would get? One of the best book discussions you could imagine!

Such a gathering took place at Fidelity Investments in Smithfield on March 26. The event offered a wonderful opportunity to discuss this year’s RARI selection, Five Skies by Ron Carlson, from numerous perspectives and to ask questions that either puzzled or intrigued individual readers.

A member of the RARI committee since 2003, I loved this luncheon and discussion as they exemplified the sharing of viewpoints and feelings that we have been encouraging for years!

A quick confession: I liked Five Skies, but I’m not sure I’d say I loved it. However, I left this gathering with a deeper appreciation of the subtlety and richness of the book.

Many thanks to Fidelity Investments and to Michelle Publicover, Fidelity’s assistant manager of Public Affairs, for making possible an excellent event.

Maxine Williams

The Five Skies of Idaho

Confess. What do you think of when I say “Idaho?” Potatoes, right? Well, believe me when I say that, after reading Five Skies (the 2009 Reading Across Rhode Island selection) I know Idaho is a lot more than potatoes! And the author of Five Skies, Ron Carlson, is at his best when presenting what can only be described as the book’s fourth main character – the rugged mountains and canyon gorges of Idaho.

The New York Times describes it this way, “Most impressive, though, is Carlson's evocation of the Western landscape, especially its immensely variable sky. Every few pages there's a new image of this panorama, which shifts from ''a luminescent charcoal ceiling scalloped with glowing seams'' to an ''amorphous glaring canopy'' to an ''ebony quadrant of the sky'' where the ''ghosted flashes of an electrical storm'' are ''blooming like small stars.''

If you are looking for a way to travel to Idaho (without actually spending money on airfare) check out the following sites – and then tell me what you think about when someone says “Idaho?”

1. One of the most beautiful sites about Idaho is called simply Scenic Byways. Choose and click on a locale; then click on View slideshow, sit back and enjoy.
http://www.idahobyways.gov/byways/

2. Idaho – Adventures in Living also has some wonderful photos. Scroll about two-thirds of the way down and find the Snake River Canyon Area.
http://www.visitidaho.org/mapsimages/photo-search-results.aspx?keyword=Twin%20Falls#content

3. And finally, one of the Reading Across Rhode Island Committee members “just happened” to be visiting her brother in Idaho and brought back the following collection of photographs by Dave Cabitto of Meridian, Idaho.

Journey with us to the Five Skies of Idaho

The Reading Across Rhode Island selection for 2009 is Five Skies by Ron Carlson, and the folks at the Rhode Island Center for the Book at Providence Public Library invite you to join with us in exploring and discussing this wonderful book, its characters, its setting and its message.

Five Skies is about a developing friendship among three troubled men: Darwin Gallegos, forman of the group, has lost his wife to a tragic accident; Arthur Key, Hollywood stunt director recently lost his brother in a stunt gone bad, and Ronnie Panelli, a shiftless young man has been in and out of jail for much of his young life. These refugees from the painful past are drawn together one summer by a construction project in the Idaho Rockies – constructing a ramp to nowhere for a bizarre and ill-conceived motorcycle stunt.

Author Ron Carlson makes his first visit to Reading Across Rhode Island 2009 at the RARI Launch Conference, which will be held on Saturday, January 31st from 9:30am – 2:30pm at Bryant University, Smithfield RI. The cost per person is $25.00. The Registration Form is available online and must be submitted by January 22nd.

This conference is designed for librarians, members and leaders of book discussion groups, educators and readers across the state. Please join us in welcoming Ron Carlson and in beginning our state-wide discussion about Five Skies.

If you cannot attend the conference and would like to ask Ron a question, simply post your question on this blog and we will include his answers in a future post. Join the discussion!

Let's Talk about the RARI 2009 book

The Nominating Committee of Reading Across RI is busy reading books for the 2009 selection from the list of over seventy titles nominated this year by readers all over the state. Join in the discussion of the ten books on the 2009 Short List by posting your comments about these books (each title has its own post):

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman
Trudy's Promise by Marcia Preston
Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat
Song Yet Sung by James McBride
The Nightbirds by Thomas Maltman
The Girls: A Novel by Lori Lansens
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
Five Skies by Ron Carlson
Behind the Scenes of the Museum by Kate Atkinson

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
NoveList Summary: Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.

Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman

Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman
NoveList Summary: In India, in 1941, when her father becomes brain-damaged in a non-violent protest march, fifteen-year-old Vidya and her family are forced to move in with her father's extended family and become accustomed to a totally different way of life.