“This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage”
Only writing kept me from being swept into the dust heap of third grade, and for this reason I not only loved writing, I felt a strong sense of loyalty to it. I may have been shaky about tying my shoes or telling time, but I was sure about my career, and I consider this certainty the greatest gift of my life.
“Here Beneath Low-Flying Planes”
Love the short story for what it is: a handful of glorious pages that take you someplace you never knew you wanted to go. Ann Patchett
Few people appreciate the short story although most are better written and clearly demand less of our time and attention than the novel. For me, short stories have always reminded me of those beautiful wooden Advent calendars with small doors. Beginning December 1st and continuing to December 24th, a numbered door is opened to reveal a small present – a ring, a chocolate, a key chain, perhaps, and sometimes a clever clue that if answered correctly leads to a treasured surprise: a scented soap, a kitchen utensil, a candle or a lovely writing pen. Each morning is filled with anticipation and then sheer happiness that lasts all day. Read more 
“The Secret History”
It is easy to see things in retrospect. but I was ignorant then of everything but my own happiness, and I don’t know what else to say except that life itself seemed very magical in those days: a web of symbol, coincidence, premonition, omen. Everything, somehow, fit together; some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees ….
While J.D. Salinger revealed the tortured soul of a teenager in an exclusive private school in Catcher in the Rye, it is Donna Tartt who opens our eyes to young adulthood when she takes the reader into the underworld of a small liberal arts college in The Secret History. Published in 1992, 41 years after Catcher in the Rye, The Secret History tells the story of six young adults at a liberal arts college (the fictional Hampden College in Vermont – not unlike the college Tartt attended: Bennington College in Vermont): Read more
“Never Mind”
Patrick lay awake. His heart was pounding. He knew it was his mother, but she had come too late. He would not call to her again. When he had been waiting on the stairs and the door opened, he stayed to see if it was his mother, and he hid in case it was his father. But it was only that woman who had lied to him. Everybody used his name but they did not know who he was.
“The Days of Abandonment”
Already at eighteen, I had considered myself a talented young woman, with high hopes. At twenty, I was working. At twenty-two I had Mario, and we had left Italy, living first in Canada, then in Spain and Greece. At twenty-eight, I had had Gianni, and during the months of my pregnancy I had written a long story set in Naples, and, the following year, had published it easily. At thirty-one I gave birth to Ilaria. Now at thirty-eight I was reduced to nothing.
“This Is Where I Leave You”
When someone says “literature makes my heart sing,” I sense a kindred soul. Readers fall in love with literature and the passion turns into an addiction that borders on compulsion but every once in a while a diversion beckons in the form of a hilariously funny book that makes me laugh so hard I’m afraid I might embarrass myself. That’s what This Is Where I Leave You did to me (after the first chapter I made sure I wasn’t drinking anything for fear it would come out my nose in a snort of laughter). In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever read a funnier book in my life. If a literary prize were to be given for comical fiction, this book would win hands down. I can’t even think of a runner-up…..well maybe Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple, which was notoriously entertaining but not belly laughing funny like This Is Where I Leave You. Read more
“The Fun Parts”
You think you know yourself, the world. You believe you’ve got a bead on everybody else’s bullshit, but what about your own?
Sam Lipsyte is a novelist and short story writer who recently (2013) published his fifth book: The Fun Parts – a collection of 13 short stories that rail against the wealthy, the weak, and the stupid. Humorous and often dark, the short stories are filled with characters who seem familiar – Holocaust survivors, the overweight teenager, the high school coach obsessed with the star athlete of another generation, the self-centered opportunist, the successful businessman – but who also seem distant and unreachable. Everyone is damaged, deranged, in despair, dependent, selling out, or an outright lunatic in this contemporary collection of short stories. Read more
Ten Books Not to Buy For Kids
Freedom of speech in the United States is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution and is a right we take very seriously in this country. It’s why the NRA can heckle the parents of slain 5 and 6-year olds from Sandy Hook Elementary School when they speak out for gun control or why members of the Westboro Baptist Church are allowed to protest at funerals for serviceman and servicewomen who gave their lives protecting our country. Distasteful, disrespectful, self-righteous, and judgmental but allowed. Read more
“The House of Muldoon”
There’s a mouse in the house……
Have you ever wondered why preschoolers love to hear the same story over and over and over again? Some experts say it’s because youngsters feel a sense of comfort with familiarity and predictability or because they want to repeat the sense of joy experienced when the book was first read. Whatever the reason, most authors of children’s books know that simple words, rhyming verse, and humor appeal to children. Add a cute furry animal with a bold personality, a little girl named Gretchen, her brother, Bob, a dog named Ned, two cats, and a bunny and you have The House of Muldoon – a children’s book that preschoolers will adore and want to hear again and again. Read more
“Tongues of Flame”
And suddenly the whole Pandora’s box of race, with all the unconscious, unintended, even unrecognized withholdings of respect, status, privilege, even rights we never thought about, much less understood at the time, embedded as they were in custom and usage, would open up to silence us completely.
Paddock Post 