“Continental Drift”
It’s as if the creatures residing on this planet in these years, the human creatures, millions of them traveling singly and in families, in clans and tribes, traveling sometimes as entire nations, were a subsystem inside the larger system of currents and tides, of winds and weather, of drifting continents and shifting, uplifting, grinding, cracking land masses.
Through the years, much has been said about Continental Drift and probably equally as much about the book’s author, Russell Banks. Born into a blue-collar family, Banks led a tumultuous young life stealing a car and running away from home at 16 only to return and enroll in college before dropping out – leading him to hitchhike to Florida, where he got married, became a father and was divorced by the time he was 20. And, that’s just the beginning. Read more 
“Wave”
During our lifetime, there are certain dates that cause us to remember where we were when disaster struck. For my parents generation, there was November 22, 1963 and for me, there is September 11, 2001 and December 26, 2004.
The day after Christmas in 2004, I was in Guayaquil, Ecuador waiting for a flight to Madrid, Spain. I had just spent the holiday with my family exploring the Galapagos Islands and was planning to continue on with them to Machu Pichu, Peru but I developed a tooth problem and decided instead to return home to Madrid. At the airport, everyone was glued to the televisions with CNN reporting that a horrific tsunami struck Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the coasts of the Indian Ocean. At the bottom of the television screen was a counter with the estimated number of deaths increasing by the thousands every few minutes. It seemed unreal. Read more
“The Burgess Boys”
You have family. You have a wife who hates you. Kids who are furious with you. A brother and sister who make you insane. And, a nephew who used to be kind of a drip but apparently is not so much of a drip now. That’s called family. Read more
“My Father’s Tears”
He was taller than I, though I was not short, and I realized, his hand warm in mine while he tried to smile, that he had a different perspective than I. I was going somewhere, and he was seeing me go. I was growing in my own sense of myself, and to him I was getting smaller. He had loved me, it came to me as never before. It was something that had not needed to be said before, and now his tears were saying it. Read more
“How to Breathe Underwater”
….before I have a chance to really feel like her daughter again, we’re already saying goodbye.
How to Breathe Underwater is a collection of nine short stories written by Julie Orringer. Published in 2003, the book was dedicated in memory to the author’s mother, Agnes Tibor Orringer who died at the age of 46 in 1994 of cancer. Born in Hungary, Agnes Tibor was educated in the United States and grew up to be a doctor, wife, and mother. The author – 21 at the time of her mother’s death – was deeply impacted by her mother’s illness and although the stories are classified as fiction, the reader can’t help but think the author writes from experience.
Read more
“The One and Only Ivan”
I too find it hard to believe there is a connection across time and space, linking me to a race of ill-mannered clowns.
In 2012, The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate was awarded the Newberry Medal for children’s literature. Ivan, a 400 pound Silverback gorilla has been living in a large cage at the Exit 8 (off I-95) Big Top Mall and Video Arcade for the past 9,855 days (27 years). Trapped as a baby and transported to the US, Ivan was raised like a human by Mack, his owner. When Ivan got too big to handle, Mack put him in the cage at the local mall and used him to attract shoppers. Read more
“The End of Your Life Book Club”
Really, whenever you read something wonderful, it changes your life, even if you aren’t aware of it.
Mary Anne Schwalbe has just returned from a humanitarian trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan when she is diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer which is almost always fatal within months. Unwilling to give up, Mary Anne decides to fight and seeks treatment at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, where she lives with her husband, Douglas. Her adult son, Will Schwalbe accompanies his mother to her chemotherapy sessions where they pass the hours reading and discussing books they’ve read or are reading. The End of Your LIfe Book Club is Will Schwalbe’s account of the last two years of his mother’s life and how two people – a mother and a son – used books to share, discuss, and disclose their thoughts, feelings, and love for each other. Read more
“Charming Billy”
Those of us who claim exclusivity in love do so with a liar’s courage: there are a hundred opportunities, thousands over the years, for a sense of falsehood to seep in, for all that we imagine as inevitable to become arbitrary, for our history together to reveal itself as only a matter of chance and happenstance, nothing irrepeatable, or irreplaceable, the circumstantial mingling of just one of the so many million with just one more. Read more
“Strangers”
His dairy once full , was now empty. He had been to all the weddings, heard about all the children, attended several funerals, and now, it seemed, was the only survivor.
In Strangers by Anita Brookner, 73-year old Paul Sturgis lives in a one bedroom apartment in South Kensington, the only place he has lived since he moved out of his parent’s large country home decades ago. A lonely child, Paul observed his parents unhappy marriage and hoped to have a different life; one in which he could pursue his love of art with a caring wife who would share his desire for an examined life, children, and close friendships. Read more
“A Good Fall”
Nearly 10 years ago, I read the book Waiting by Ha Jin which won the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1999. Based on a true story that took place in China, Waiting is the tragic account of a man who enters an arranged marriage out of a sense of duty, not love. He later falls in love with another woman but is restricted from divorcing his wife without spousal consent so he is left to wait for his true love. Ten years after finishing the book and I can still recall feeling the seemingly endless wait for something desired that the author, Ha Jin so strongly conveys in his award-winning novel. In 2009, Ha Jin published A Good Fall – a collection of 12 short stories that center around a different aspect of the Chinese culture – the Chinese immigrant experience in the United States. Read more
Paddock Post 