I finished Pictures of You within the month that I received it, but somehow, never quite got around to writing a book review of it. Shortly before writing this review, I checked the TNB website to find out when their book club talked about this book. I was certain I’d missed it, but, oddly enough, it turns out they are going to discuss this book on January 30, 2012. I never would have known it if I hadn’t gone searching for that information tonight. How lucky!

Another thing that prompted me to decide to write this book review tonight has to do with the Halfway Around the World podcast. It is a music (and more) type of podcast, that is on the Dawnforge network.

I host the show with Nathan Lott, who has written many excellent book reviews for Book Sandwich. He and I are intending to mention this book in the next episode that we record together, around ten hours from now. I find that I work better when I have a deadline to hit, and so, I made that my deadline for writing this review.

But, enough about why I read the book, and why I’m writing the review.

Pictures of You is a book about two women who are trying to escape their marriages, (for entirely different reasons). At the start of the book, readers are inside the head of Isabelle, who has just left her husband.

Isabelle is a photographer, who had been working at one of those studios where parents bring their babies to have a professional portrait taken. This, by itself, is somewhat heartbreaking, because Isabelle cannot have children, (but desperately wants one). Part of the reason why she has left her husband has something to do with this issue.

She is driving down a foggy road, very upset, and thinking about when she and her husband first got to know each other. Visibility is almost zero. She doesn’t see the car that is parked lengthwise across the road ahead of her until she crashes into it.

Later, as she is going through the healing process, she learns more about the car accident she was involved in. A woman and her son were in the car. The woman, named April, had taken her son, Sam, out of school that fateful day, and was driving to a location that only she was aware of. April died when the crash happened, but Sam survived, unharmed.

Readers later discover where April was going. She was leaving her husband, but her reasons for doing so were completely different from the reasons why Isabelle was leaving hers. Those reasons were something that April had been keeping a secret before she died.

This is one of those stories that indirectly asks readers some uncomfortable questions. How well do you really know the person that you love? Would you be able to forgive the person that you love after that person has done something absolutely unforgivable? Should you?

There are several chapters in this book that take place from the viewpoint of April’s husband Charlie, who is grieving the loss of his wife, while still trying to be a good parent to his son, (who has asthma). Leavitt really captured the way the world becomes so draining, and bewildering, for many people after a loved one has passed away. You can almost physically feel what Charlie is going through.

Isabelle becomes almost obsessed with trying to find out more about the family of the woman she unintentionally killed. It feels like she wants to make sure that they are “okay”, perhaps to reduce her intense feelings of guilt over what she has done. Eventually, she starts stalking them.

As you may have guessed these three characters, Isabelle, Charlie, and Sam, do wind up meeting each other. Their lives came together the instant the car crash happened, so perhaps it was only a matter of time before they ended up connecting with each other.

Isabelle begins bonding with Sam over photography, which she is trying to teach him about. Isabelle and Charlie both have a vast emptiness inside themselves that aches to be filled, and whole, once again. Of course, they meet. Of course, they find a strong connection with each other. All three are in a great deal of pain that was caused by the exact same incident. It is a strange thing to have in common.

I won’t say how the book ends, except to say that the ending isn’t what you might assume it would be. This isn’t the type of story that includes a simple “happily ever after” ending, painted in bright, shiny colors. That is not to say that the ending was entirely sad, only that it was complex, just like life can often be.

I found this book, and the characters in it, to be completely compelling. I wish I wasn’t so busy right now, so I could read this book a second time before the book club meets.

** An update: Upon further investigation, it appears that the TNB Book Club still exists, but they are no longer doing the online “chat room” part of it anymore. However, Brad Listi is doing a wonderful podcast called “Other People”. He just spoke with author Caroline Leavitt in Episode 39 of the podcast. I think that is pretty darn cool!

Needless to say, as much of my time as possible has been spent checking out the D3 beta. Shortly before I discovered that I got into the beta, I finished reading The Sin War: Book Two: Scales of the Serpent which was written by Richard Knaak. It is the second part of the trilogy, and is absolutely fantastic.

Since I didn’t think that too many of the readers of Book Sandwich were fanatic gamers, (like me), I decided to put my review of Scales of the Serpent over on the Shattered Soulstone blog.

Again, Shattered Soulstone is a podcast that I do with Nevik and Breja, and it is part of the Dawnforge network. Shattered Soulstone is all about the Diablo series: the games, the books, and the news, yes… but more importantly, the experiences of listeners who have played, and loved, these games.

If you would like to read my review of Scales of the Serpent you can find it here. We also spent some time talking about it in episode seven of the Shattered Soulstone podcast.

Hilly is the supreme racist and ultimately the antagonist or villain in the book. Toward the beginning of the novel, she starts an initiative to install separate bathrooms out in the garage for the maids because they shouldn’t be using the same bathrooms the whites use in the house. Another member of the bridge club is Skeeter Feelan who is also the editor of the Junior League newsletter. She wants to be a writer and in order to get something on her resume, she starts writing the housecleaning column for the Jackson newspaper. Of course she doesn’t know anything about cleaning so she starts asking Aibileen for some help. Skeeter doesn’t have the hangups about race that everyone else, especially Hilly, seems to have, and she is disgusted by Hilly’s comments on the matter.

Aibileen’s best friend is another maid named Minnie. Minnie is sassy, no-nonsense and she has to watch what she says around her white employers so that she doesn’t get into big trouble from. She is fired from Hilly’s mother’s employment when Mrs. Walters has to go into nursing care. The way Hilly fired her so incensed Minnie that she did something to Hilly that becomes one of the cruxes in the whole plot. Hilly tries to get her barred from employment anywhere in Jackson, but Minnie manages to find work for a previously poor (but has married up), outcast woman named Celia who desperately wants to fit in with Hilly’s group, but Hilly doesn’t want anything to do with her.

This sets the background for the main story. Skeeter comes up with an idea to write a book about the good and bad things the black maids have encountered while working for white women. It is tremendously risky and horrible things could happen to both Skeeter and any maid that helped out by being interviewed for the book. Only Aibileen, at first agrees (reluctantly) to help, and Aibileen finally convinces Minnie to help as well. The struggle is to try and get a dozen maids to agree to be interviewed. It takes a horrible thing done to Hilly’s maid for a good number of them to get on board.

I thought this book was very interesting, and I especially enjoyed listening to the Audible version. It was read by four different women; one who read Skeeter’s chapters; one who read Aibileen’s chapters; one who read Minnie’s chapters; and inexplicably a fourth that read one chapter about a memorable Junior League Gala Benefit. One of the readers even played that character in the movie version. All of them did a fantastic job of narrating, but I really enjoyed the Aibileen and Minnie chapters the most. Stockett has faced some controversy and criticism for writing from the African American perspective, but I think she wrote a really compelling story about an important time in recent American history.

It is the future and North America is ruled by a Capital located in the Rocky Mountains and surrounded by 12 districts (the 13th was wiped out). There was an uprising against the Capital, but the rebels couldn’t scale past the mountains and the rest of the districts were crushed. The hero of the story, Catness Everdean, is a young 16 year old girl from district 12. Catness sneaks beyond the fence the residents are not supposed to cross and hunts game with her friend Gail and then they trade their kills at the black market. They are still poor and hungry, however.

Once a year two tributes, a boy and a girl, (kids aged 12-18) from each district are chosen to participate in the Hunger Games where they must fight to the death and only one victor emerges. This is the Capital’s way of punishing the districts for the uprising. This year Catness’s 12 year old sister is chosen and Catness volunteers to take her place. The boy chosen from district 12 is Peter, the bakers’ son. The rest of the story consists of Catness’s and Peter’s preparations at the Capital and then the Hunger Games themselves. The meat of the book is the portrayal of the Hunger Games and how each of the 24 tributes fared.

The story is one of survival, kill or be killed, but it is also a little about rebellion against an unjust Capital. There is also Catness’s conflicting emotions about Gail who she left at home and Peter who professes a love for her that captures the imaginations of the Capital and the people from all of the districts. Catness shows extraordinary bravery as well as tremendous skill with the bow and arrow. As the book is being turned into a movie out in March, it will be interesting to see how Hollywood depicts the story. I can definitely see why the book has been so popular and I’ve heard from many people that it is a must read. I would agree; it was a whole lot of fun.

In the meantime, I have been re-reading some of the books that were written in the Diablo “universe”. I decided to start with the first book in The Sin War trilogy. It is called “The Sin War: Book One: Birthright”, and was written by Richard A. Knaak, (who has also written books in the World of Warcraft “universe”).

I wasn’t sure how many readers of Book Sandwich were avid video game fanatics, like I am. (Well, when it comes to the Diablo games, anyway). So, I posted my book review over on the Shattered Soulstone website, instead.

Shattered Soulstone is a brand new podcast, that talks about the Diablo games, and that invites the community to join the conversation. I am co-hosting this show with Nevik and Breja, who are very knowledgable, and a lot of fun to podcast with.

I will still be writing for Book Sandwich, but, I think I’m going to post my reviews of the Diablo books over on Shattered Soulstone, instead of here. That way, the review will reach the people who already have an interest in the Diablo games.

Everyone is welcome to read my review, however, even if you don’t play the games. The Sin War Trilogy is very well written, and you don’t have to have a background in, or knowledge of, the Diablo games in order to enjoy the books.

You can find the review here.

In college Andy McGee wanted to make some extra cash so he took part in a psychological drug experiment headed up by one of the professors in the Psychology department named Wanless. Another student who decided she was going to make some extra money was Vicky who would later marry Andy. The experimental drug was called Lot-Six and it had some horrifying effects with some of the students. With Andy, it gave him the power to “push” people. He could use his brain to push someone into doing something that he wanted them to do. However, any push would be followed by a debilitating headache. Vicky got a minor power of being able to close a refrigerator door from across the room, but that was the extent of the drug on her. Who it really affected was Charlie, their daughter. Charlie had pyrokinesis or the ability to start fires just by thinking about it. Whenever she got upset something would light up. The parents kept fire extinguishers all over the house when she was a baby. They eventually scared her enough into not using the power kind of like toilet-training a toddler.

However, the government agency known as “The Shop” that did the experiment are now after the family, and in particular Charlie. Now we have a good guys (Andy and Charlie) on the run and eventually fighting the bad guys (The Shop) story. After eluding the Shop guys for only so long there is a confrontation at the Manders farm and Charlie really shows what she can do. Flames go out in every direction, the cars explode, the chickens at the farm go up like popcorn and several people get burned alive. From there Andy and Charlie head to Vermont but the Shop agents get smarter too and take Charlie out with a tranquilizer dart from a long distance. From there Andy and Charlie are captured and taken to the Shop compound in Virginia. The rest of the book details the tests that go on there and the eventual plan of release.

I thought this was a fun book as most Stephen King books are plus it was a very quick read. Some things are a little dated as this book was written in 1980, but the story still holds up.

At the beginning of the story, the main character Shadow is close to being released from prison. Unbeknownst to him, his parole date gets moved up and he is flying home to be with his wife Laura. While on the plane he meets a strange man named Wednesday who offers him a job, tells him that Laura just died in a car accident with the man Shadow was supposed to be working for when he was released from prison. Shadow now basically has no choice but to work for Wednesday.

Then some really strange things begin to happen. Wednesday takes Shadow to a diner where he meets a tall, drunk Leprechaun who pulls a gold coin out of the air and gives it to Shadow (one of Shadow’s hobbies is coin tricks). The Leprechaun and Shadow also get into a fight so that Wednesday can judge Shadow’s worth. When Shadow reaches his destination, he attends Laura’s funeral and throws the gold coin into the grave. That night Laura visits Shadow in his motel room with dirt under her fingers and smelling of rotten flesh. Laura ends up making several appearances to Shadow through out the course of the book and even has a role to play in the climax of the story.

Shadow takes Wednesday’s job offer which means driving him and doing other odd jobs for him. They begin heading for House on the Rock in North Dakota, a seedy tourist roadside attraction where they are supposed to meet some people. Once there, there is a very memorable scene of a carousel spinning around into another world. It is there that it hits home for Shadow who these people really are, old-world gods. Wednesday is Odin and there is also Anansi, the spider, Czernobog, an Eastern European god kind of like Thor with a sledgehammer and they meet Mr. Ibis and Jacquel later. Wednesday is trying to get all of these gods together in order to prepare for a battle between the old gods and the new gods (modern society, computers, Internet) represented by Mr. World, Mr. Town, and others who are doggedly on their tail throughout the book. It is explained better in the book, I’m trying to not give too much away.

Scattered throughout the book are small chapters entitled “Coming to America”. These were about settlers coming from the old world to the Americas or in one case slaves stuck in a tight ship hold coming from Africa. Another one is about an Arab man who has been in America a week and tries to sell little doo-dads but won’t get anyone to talk to him. He gets in a cab and at one point at a stop, he thinks the driver has fallen asleep. He brushes his hand against the driver accidentally knocking off his sunglasses discovering that the driver is a Jinn or Arab genie. The stories common to all of these little side chapters are that the old-world gods somehow made it to America.

I thought this novel was interesting and definitely a different take on American spirituality including the Native American gods and the old Pagan European gods but excluding the Christian God or Jesus who weren’t mentioned at all. I don’t know if I would call it a page-turner. I didn’t get so bored with it I wanted to quit, but also it did take me several months to read it because I could only read a few pages at a time. It was good which is about where I would leave it.

Schmidt was incredibly lucky during her time in Japan. She was able to take advantage of work breaks and downtime and travel. She visited many different parts of Japan, as well as neighboring countries like China. She also came to Japan as an accomplished tennis player. She was able to parlay this skill in to meeting many interesting people (both American and Japanese) during her time in Japan.

Defending The Enemy contains a thorough appendix of Schmidts letters and photos, as well as historical documents from the war and war trials. The book is an enjoyable read, and is likely to appeal to anyone who has an interest in the time period, especially the trials and life in post-war Japan.

Tina Fey talks about everything from working at a theater company during the summer as a teenager, her first job at the YMCA, auditioning and then making it to the famous Second City Improv group in Chicago, her stint at Saturday Night Live, and writing for and acting in her series 30 Rock. Along the way she talks about her dad who was a wonderful father figure and role model for her as well as what it is like to be a mother herself. She does spend quite a bit of time talking about breast feeding and other aspects of parenthood.

Some of the highlights of the audiobook (as opposed to the print version) is that the Saturday Night Live sketch where she first played Sarah Palin is featured in its entirety. In fact that whole episode of her life where she became super famous playing Palin because of the similarity of their appearance was one of the more interesting parts of the book. I also thought some of the behind-the-scenes stories of getting 30 Rock off the ground was kind of interesting also.

Overall I thought it was an enjoyable book; I laughed quite a bit throughout. It was a good short road trip kind of audiobook to listen to. My biggest problem with the audiobook was some of Tina Fey’s narration. She would slip in some theatrical “asides” that came across as mumbles that I really couldn’t understand. However, that is my only complaint with the book.

Alan Lomax was a folk song collector, ethnomusicologist, radio and TV producer, a freelancer for the Library of Congress and researcher of American folklore particularly music and later dance. His father John Lomax Sr. was also a folk song collector and wowed academic audiences in the 1920′s with his lectures at Universities on the folk songs he collected in the fields. Alan Lomax joined his father on these early recording expeditions to East Texas plantations, prisons and prison farms, and juke joints. When Alan finished his schooling at the University of Texas, he set out on his own to make recordings. He started out in the Southern U.S and encountered racism and even arrest for being a white man hanging out in black neighborhoods and bars. He was with a prominent African American writer of that time Zora Neal Hurston who was able to bail him out of these predicaments. After touring the South, he went to Haiti and recorded sea chanteys including an early version of Sloop John B which was played in the book. He also recorded a lot on land in Haiti including children’s games and other folk music.

Lomax never made much money at what he did and was often broke and plagued with self-doubt as to whether he should really be travelling all over and recording folk music (in the 30s he recorded everything for the Folk Music Archives at the Library of Congress). Alan subsisted most of his life on grant money from foundations such as Carnegie or The National Endowment for the Humanities. In the late 30′s Lomax made one of his seminal recordings which was an extended interview session with one of the early jazz greats Jellyroll Morton. Morton claimed to have been an inventor of jazz which some critics dispute and labeled him a braggart, but there was no question he was an important figure in early jazz music. During World War II he began working for radio and came up with ideas to bring a kind of National unity through folk music bringing along his friends like folk singers Woody Guthrie, Burl Ives and Pete Seeger. In fact his relationship with the Seegers and his political leanings on issues related to the average American people roused the interest of the FBI who suspected he may be a communist.

In the 50′s at the height of McCarthyism Alan was overseas recording the folk music of Spain, England, and Scotland. When he returned to America in the mid-1950′s Rock ‘n Roll was in full swing. Alan had a hand in helping to bring about the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island and during the 60′s had an interest in using folk music to foster social justice during the Civil Rights era. During the 60′s, 70′s and 80′s Alan came up with several anthropological methods of coding folk music performers using several measuring systems. When he was in Europe in the 50′s, he figured out that people from different regions typically used different vowel placements in the mouth for singing. For example, people in the south of Italy placed the vowels in the front of their mouths and in northern Italy people placed the vowels in the backs of their mouths. In the 80′s he started analyzing dance patterns and movements and came out with a measuring system based on that as well.

Alan Lomax died in 2002, but one of the fascinating things about this book is how devoted he was to American culture and preserving it with recordings and later video. He was also ahead of his time on some things. In the 80′s he wanted to develop a global jukebox where people could hear whatever they wanted whenever they wanted using what we know now as metadata. With the advent of iTunes and now Spotify and similar services we basically have this global jukebox to hear whatever we want.