This story is semi-autobiographical, in fact, the main character in the book is a young boy named Jack Gantos. The story starts off with Jack looking through his dad’s Japanese binoculars from the War at the Drive-in movie screen in the distance. He is watching a war movie and he picks up his dad’s Japanese rifle as well and pretends to shoot at the movie screen. Well the gun goes off! Jack’s nose bleeds every time he gets scared or nervous so his mother comes out at the gun shot and finds Jack lying on his back with his face covered in blood and it scares her to death. Needless to say, Jack is grounded for the entire summer.

While he is grounded, Jack is recruited by Miss Volker, the town’s medical examiner and obituary writer, to help her write obituaries for the old women who are dying off in Norvelt and it seems these old women are dropping like flies. Miss Volker has severe arthritis and has to put hot wax on her hands to keep them going, thus having Jack do the writing. Jack types up the obituaries and takes them to the newspaper publisher Mr. Greene. With all of the obituaries coming during this particular summer Mr. Greene gets suspicious and tries to find out why these old women are dying off.

There are some cute and funny moments in the book. Jack’s best friend Bunny is the daughter of the town mortician and she is obsessed with telling Jack about the latest dead bodies especially when she knows that it causes his nose to bleed. There is also a funny scene when the Hell’s Angels come to town. Jack’s family dynamic is interesting also. His mother is from Norvelt and espouses the original principles of the town while his father wants to get away as fast as he can. He even has Jack mow down his mom’s corn field so he can build a runway for a little propeller airplane that he bought.

Overall, I thought it was a cute story and mildly funny. I do want to read some of Jack Gantos’ earlier books as well. I don’t know if it deserved the Newbery Award because I haven’t read the other nominees, but I would just call it pretty good.

In the pantry of Al’s diner was a portal to the past, September 1958 to be exact. Al had accidentally discovered this and was buying meat cheap in the 50′s and bringing it to the present and selling it cheaply. This concerned the townsfolk and rumors started flowing that he sold cat burgers or something. Al also had concocted a plan that he wasn’t able to carry out, but asked Jake to do in his place. That plan was to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from killing President Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Al had a lot of convincing to do before Jake decided to try the portal and walk around Lisbon Falls in 1958. Once Jake had done that, Al then had to convince him to try to carry out the plan. Jake agreed, but first he wanted to see what happened when he changed the past and he knew Harry Dunning’s family would be murdered in a month at the end of October. He was going to try to stop Frank Dunning first. One thing I forgot to mention is that every time Jake or Al or anyone uses the portal time resets and it is like nothing happened. So if Jake killed Frank Dunning and went back to 2011 and then went back to 1958 again then he would have to kill Frank all over again. Needless to say, it is not until about almost halfway through the book that Jake Epping finally makes it to Texas.

When he does make it to Texas, he decides that he can’t stand Dallas and moves to a small [fictional] town called Jodie where he becomes a substitute teacher until they talk him into a year of being a full time English teacher. Jake has taken the pseudonym George Amberson and he becomes beloved at the school doing the school play and several assemblies and changing the lives of the kids at this high school. Meanwhile he is also talking trips to Dallas and Ft. Worth to tail Oswald, bug his home, and find out what he’s doing. While in Jodie, he falls in love with Sadie, a new librarian from Georgia. This is all I’m going to say about the plot so as to avoid spoilers.

Like a lot of Stephen King books, this was a fun one to read. There were some interesting tidbits in the novel as well. When Jake travels to Derry, Maine in 1958 to stop Frank Dunning, Stephen King makes some references to his earlier novel It where a clown is killing children in 1957. In this book, the townsfolk of Derry are still trying to get over those murders. Also in the Audible version, Stephen King himself reads the Afterward and credits his son, author Joe Hill, for helping him come up with a better ending. I really enjoyed the story and, without giving anything away, thought it was really interesting what effect Jake’s actions in the past had on the present day.

That opening line grabs the reader, immediately. What happened? How did it happen? Suddenly, all these questions popped into my head, and I had to know more about this story.

The book is a true story. It is a memoir that the author wrote about something that actually happened to him, and about how he managed to cope with it. When he was eighteen years old, he was driving his father’s car. A few of his friends were with him. They were heading out to have some fun, not unlike most people that age. It was supposed to be a normal, relaxing day.

That’s not how things went, though. What happened instead changed his life, forever. A girl from his high school was bicycling on the side of the road. In the book, he calls her “Celine”, but I am not sure that was her real name. All of a sudden, she swerved into the road, and Darin hit her with his car. She survived the initial accident, barely, but didn’t make it. At eighteen years old, he killed a girl with his car.

The book gives an unflinchingly, often painfully, honest examination of the events of that day. The author reveals his every thought, every emotion, every action, from that day, no matter how embarrassing or exposing those things may be. It is an incredibly compelling story.

Some eighteen years later, Darin Strauss wrote this book, about the event that happened “half a life” ago. The book includes his ability, or inability, to cope with what happened. How do you go back to school after killing a classmate, (even though it was an accident)? What is it like to deal with the girl’s parents? Should you attend her funeral? How do you cope with having to drive down that road, where it happened, ever again?

He did manage to go on with his life. He would have had to, of course. He grew up, got married, had children. All through his life, thoughts of “Celine” stayed with him. He thought of her when he got married, and when his wife told him she was pregnant. He worried that employers would find out what he’d done when he was eighteen, and fire him. Eventually, he decided to tell his wife about what happened, and experience her reaction to it. There was a court case that he was involved in.

There is more in this book than I can adequately describe here. It is an incredibly compelling read, that is achingly honest, about an incident that really did happen. If you have a severe driving phobia, then this book probably has a few “triggers” in it that you may want to avoid. For everyone else, I highly recommend this book.

The book follows Jobs from his birth parents and eventual adoption through founding Apple, being fired from it, his return to Apple, all of the innovative products he helped produce in the 2000s, to finally his fight with cancer. Steve Jobs had a very black and white personality. Things either sucked or they were great. Food was either inedible or he liked it. He had a very confrontational side of management. During the creation of the original Macintosh in 1983, the Mac team gave out an award to the person who could stand up to Jobs. Sometimes that worked for him, however, such as when he was sixteen he got his first job working at Hewlett-Packard and he needed a part to complete a school project, he called up the CEO Bill Hewlett on the phone and asked for it. It also helped him in his negotiations with Disney on behalf of Pixar or with the music industry in getting iTunes off the ground. But, it made him very hard to live with or to work for. There is a lot of crying in this book. Either Steve crying because he didn’t get his way or Steve hurting someone else’s feelings with his words or actions.

I would have to say the most interesting part of the book for me was the latter half. I had read a lot before about the creation of Apple and the original Macintosh, but it was interesting to read about what went on behind the scenes of making the first iMac, iPod, iPhone, and ultimately the iPad. Jobs was so detail oriented that the smallest details on these devices had to be perfect. He was known to have the team go back and work on something or rebuild something days before the product was supposed to launch. It was also interesting that these products started as foam models so that Jobs and Jony Ive, the lead industrial designer, could see and touch every minute detail before the product was manufactured. Even with the Apple Stores, they had a secret mock Apple Store built in Cupertino so that Steve and Ron Johnson, the vice president of retail operations (now CEO of JC Penney) could get the layout and design exactly right.

People thought that Jobs would mellow out after he was diagnosed with cancer, but he fought hard to be at the company as long as he could. He said that his best days at Apple were arguing with people over the smallest details of products. Even though Steve Jobs was incredibly difficult to work for, Apple attracted A-List people and these employees said that Jobs incessant pushing and browbeating helped them do some of the best work they have ever done. There will probably not be another person like him in business or any other profession.

This book, like the rest of the trilogy, are books that are related to the Diablo video game series, (which is created by Blizzard Entertainment). I believe that The Sin War trilogy can be enjoyed by anyone who likes to read fantasy novels. However, it is the fans of the Diablo games that are going to get the most out of it.

As such, I posted my review of The Sin War: The Veiled Prophet over on the blog for the Shattered Soulstone podcast, instead of here, at Book Sandwich. Anyone who has in interest in gaming, the Diablo games, or books based on the “universe” of the Diablo game series is more than welcome to read the review. You can find it over there.

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.