Carl Carmer (1893–1976)

How do you make hurricanes boring? This snoozefest has a hurricane hitting Florida in the late 1940s, and yet the 11-year-old main character is more concerned about searching for sea shells. He's obsessed with earning money to help save his father's failing fishing career, pinning his hopes on a valuable shell or maybe that fishing contest with the big prize.

The only remarkable thing about this book is that comic book legend Jerry Robinson churned out the illustrations for it. Not a high-point in his career, for sure.… (more)

Carl Carmer was one of the most popular writers from the 1930s through the 1950s, that popularity based largely on the success of his 1934 folk memoir Stars Fell On Alabama, which chronicled his encounters with the people and cultural landscape of the state during the years that he taught at the University of Alabama. But Carmer was born and bred in the state of New York, a “Yorker” through and through. And as such, he wrote extensively on the state’s folklore, landscape, historical figures, and local customs. My Kind Of Country: Favorite Writings About New York is a collection of fifty-odd writings - poems, stories, and essays - from those decades. Carmer’s writing today seems quaint; and apart from the handful of tall tales, folklore, and ghost story, none of remainder is truly compelling, and sadly most of it is forgettable.… (more)