“Franny and Zooey”
An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.
Franny and Zooey is actually two short stories that were originally published in The New Yorker magazine: Franny, in the January 25, 1955 issue, and Zooey, in the May 4, 1957 issue. Written by J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey was published as a 2-chapter book in 1961 and is both a perplexing yet satisfying read that explores the meaning of life in its spiritual context. 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
” The Sense of an Ending”
Winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize (an annual award for the best original full length novel written in English by a citizen of the Commonwealth), “The Sense of an Ending” by Julian Barnes, is a story told from the perspective of Anthony (Tony) Webster, a British pensioner who finds cause to reexamine the past after an old friend comes back into his life. Read more
Paddock Post 