Review – Fault Lines
“Fault Lines” is an interesting book. Presented in four sections going back in time, each section is twenty years after the next section, the book creates puzzles about the characters and then slowly reveals the answers as their past is revealed. Each section is presented as written by the parent of the child who wrote the previous section until the final section is written in 1944-45 by the great grandmother of the writer of the first section.
The story presented involves an aspect of Nazi history rarely written about and the author does a nice job of linking the sections together. But each section of the book is supposed to have been written by a six year old and the writing makes this unbelievable. Right from the start, we are presented with a character, Sol, who at six years old likes to look at videos of beheadings and rapes. He doesn’t chew his food but lets it soak in his mouth and is overly concerned with his bowel movements. His oddities make him unbelievable and completely unlikeable but worse his behaviors are unexplained. Each of the other voices are from children who have been damaged but the reasons for their damage is part of the puzzle that is revealed as the story unfolds. The other three children, although not sounding like any six year old, are at least sympathetic. And each section also discusses a piece of history: the war in Iraq, the massacres in Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon, the Bay of Pigs (why is the US sending pigs to Cuba?), and finally the bombing of Dresden.
If you can get past the narration by these adult six year olds, there is an interesting story here. There is a unique humanity to the characters (other than Sol) that makes the book hard to put down. It is worth giving a try. I will add that the final section of the book was by far the best. It made me interested in finding a novel about life in Nazi Germany from the viewpoint of a child.
Breaking Benjamin is an alternative rock band from Pennsylvania. The group was founded ten years ago by Benjamin Burnley (lead singer) and Jeremy Hummel (drummer) and gets its name from an incident in which Burnley knocked over a microphone during a show and was “thanked” by the owner of the equipment for “breaking my f***ing mic.” The group has been very successful with 5 singles making Billboard’s main stream rock list.
That is what many American insurance companies are telling their customers but none more blatantly than the Oregon Health Plan. Barbara Wagner has lung cancer which had been in remission but returned. Her doctor suspected she had only a few months to live but he wanted to prescribe a medicine called Tarceva which could extend her life expectancy by several months. The Oregon Health Plan rejected the request for the medication which costs about $4,000 a month because of the cost but did state in the same rejection letter that they would be willing to pay the $50 for the drugs required for Ms. Wagner to commit physician-assisted suicide, which is legal in Oregon.
Mikey and I were in the living room the other day watching his new favorite show, 
I hate summer colds. We have all been sick in the house as the cold virus has been circulating through us. Michel was first and she passed it on to me. Michel was so bad last week that she was wheezing and had to use a bronchodilator. Sunday was my bad day as I didn’t have the energy to do much except complain. It’s still in my nose but I feel much more normal. 
Linkin Park is a rock band from California. The group has had great commercial success from the release of their first album although it took them five years to get that first record contract. The groups use of two vocalists (Chester Bennington does the main rock style singing and Mike Shinoda does the rap and backup singing) has allowed the group to meld different styles of music into a cohesive whole. The band has sold more than forty-million albums and won two Grammy Awards.
I doubt that too many of my readers did see it since the best viewing was in Central China, Siberia and Greenland. 
