“The Hunger Angel”
I KNOW YOU’LL COME BACK. I didn’t set out to remember her sentence. I carried it to the camp without thinking. I had no idea it was going with me. But a sentence like that has a will of its own. It worked inside me, more than all the books I had packed. I KNOW YOU’LL COME BACK became the heart shovel’s accomplice and the hunger angel’s adversary. And because I did come back, I can say: a sentence like that keeps you alive. Read more
“The Dinner”
That which falls is weak. That which lies on the ground is prey.
Several years ago I read a book called We Need to Talk About Kevin which was one of the most disturbing books I ever read. Written by Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin was about a little boy who grows up and commits unspeakable acts. The author – through the eyes of a mother – explored themes we rarely talk about: not loving your children enough, preferring one child over another, loving a spouse more than a child, and nature versus nurture.
So, when I picked up The Dinner by Herman Koch and started reading, I realized I was again reading a book that touched on the same mostly unspoken topics. Mostly unspoken because parents won’t admit they don’t love their children enough, or that one child is preferred over another, or that a spouse is loved more than a child..and most controversal of all, that parenting or genetics (or a combination of both) may have created a bad child. Read more 
“The Buddha in the Attic”
In the United States, we commemorate December 7, 1941 as the day Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese but we don’t recognize April 2, 1942 – the day nearly 120,000 US citizens and residents of Japanese ancestry were forced to leave their homes, property, businesses, and communities to live an internment camp – most of which were called Assembly Centers or Relocation Centers created by the US government. Read more
“Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk”
No matter their age or station in life, Billy can’t help but regard his fellow Americans as children. They are bold and proud and certain in the way of clever children blessed with too much self-esteem, and no amount of lecturing will enlighten them as to the state of pure sin toward which war inclines. He pities them, scorns them, loves them, hates them, these children. These boys and girls. These toddlers, these infants. Americans are children who must go somewhere else to grow up , and sometimes die.
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is a book whose title so perfectly resonates reality that most readers will come to think they are reading a work of non-fiction. Written by Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is both the story of Billy Lynn and a reflection of American culture. Read more
“Man’s Search for Meaning”
…a man’s suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the “size” of human suffering is absolutely relative. Read more
“Felicia’s Journey”
Each time he hoped that a friendship would last for ever, that two people could be of help to one another, that strangers seeing them together would say they belonged like that.
Felicia’s Journey was written by William Trevor and awarded a Whitbread Book Award (now known as the Costa Book Award) – a literary prize given to a book (by an author in Great Britain or Ireland) that is both enjoyable to read and appeals to a wide audience. Published in 1994, Felicia’s Journey is the story of a young pregnant girl who runs away from a stifling household in a small village in Ireland to find the boyfriend who left her in a difficult situation. Read more
“Appointment in Samarra”
The road was his. He wanted to drive on the left side and zigzag like an army transport and idle along at four miles an hour. But one time when he thought the road was his he had done all these things, finally to be arrested for drunken driving by a highway patrolman who had been following him all the while. “You’d think you owned the road,” the patrolman had said; and Julian could not answer that was exactly what he had been thinking. Read more
“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
Paddock Post 