“Half my life ago, I killed a girl”.

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 first time I ever heard of this book was when it appeared in my mailbox. Sometime last year, I got involved with an online book club through The Nervous Breakdown. The Nervous Breakdown is a fascinating website that a whole bunch of different authors contribute to. You are bound to find something though-provoking, (in more ways than one), at TNB.

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!

I have read two of Gaiman’s young adult novels, Coraline and The Graveyard Book, but I had not read any of his adult novels until this one. American Gods has been getting some press lately because of its 10 year anniversary and a brand new dramatized audio book to celebrate it. However, I chose to read the paper edition I bought at Half Price Books.

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.

Defending The Enemy is a combination memoir/travelogue that chronicles its author’s time in Japan, as she worked with the legal team defending Japanese men who had been accused of war crimes after World War II. Elaine Schmidt arrived in Japan and was assigned to a military secretarial pool. She had aspirations of working as a lawyer, and she knew that the secretarial gigs were a dead end. She managed to get assigned to one of the attorneys working on the defense team. From there, she spent many long days helping to build a defense for the accused.
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I am very excited for the movie version of this to come out which should be at the end of April. I’ve had this book on my shelf for a while but as soon as I saw the trailer for the movie I knew I had to read it before the movie came out. The book is told from the point of view of Jacob Jankowski who at the beginning of the book wants to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a veterinarian. He is taking his finals at Cornell and becomes so nervous that he leaves the testing room. While he is wandering about in the night a train comes passing by. He hops the train and it completely changes the course of his life.

It turns out the train he hopped belongs to the Benzini Brothers Circus. A couple of workers take him in and finally talk Uncle Al the owner and ringleader of the circus to give Jacob a job as the circus veterinarian. Jacob is introduced to August who is in charge of the animals including 6 horses that his wife Marlena performs on in the circus, lions, tigers, and later an elephant named Rosie who is very funny and is apparently based on several circus elephants Gruen came across in her research for the book. Jacob soon gets closer to August and Marlena and eventually falls in love with Marlena but I won’t reveal how that goes.

One of the interesting facets of the book is how it goes back and forth between Jacob as an old man in a nursing home and Jacob as a young man with the Benzini Brothers circus. Jacob as an old man is crotchety, doesn’t get along with the other residents, but is very excited for the circus coming to town and is waiting for his family members to get to the home so that they can take him to the circus. It is kind of neat following these two stories of different times in Jacob’s life.

The story of life in the circus itself during the Great Depression was fascinating as well. Uncle Al and August weren’t very nice men but I won’t spoil any of that since they make up the meat of the story. It was interesting the segregation between the circus workers and roustabouts and the performers. They ate at different tables, slept in different train cars and the workers were even denied pay when the circus wasn’t making enough while the performers always got paid. What was also interesting and kind of scary was the process of red lighting someone. Basically if Uncle Al didn’t want someone he would have his security throw them off of the moving train. It was technically illegal and Al would often have to talk to the railroad authorities, but it still happened from time to time and I bet stuff like that really did happen in actuality.

Overall I would say this was a very enjoyable book. It was interesting to read about circus life during this time in American history and how these small train circuses compared themselves to the granddaddy of them all Ringling Brothers. I would highly recommend this book.

In Different Worlds is an autobiography by Dankwart Koekler. Koehler is a German man, born in the 1920′s. The book chronicles his experiences growing up in pre-war Germany, his time in the German army during the war, several years he spent as a prisoner of war, and then his post-war life. The book’s cover contains one subtitle, “From POW to PHD” and one tagline, “The story of a remarkable life.” These two things, combined with the contrasting images on the cover – one of Koehler dressed in his military uniform, above another image of Koehler in front of a large, equation-filled blackboard, are what the marketers of this book would like you to focus on when considering it for purchase. Sage wisdom advises us to never judge a book by the cover. So let’s examine this one a little further.
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This was a fantastic book recommended to me by one of the owners of this blog, Jen.  Jen interviewed me in November for her podcast and mentioned this book. I watched the trailer and immediately bought the ebook on my iPhone.  This book could easily be broken down into two halves.  The first half involves a five year old boy named Jack and his mom kept in an 11 foot by 11 foot room by their kidnapper Old Nick.  The second half occurs after an amazing escape from the room and how Jack adapts to the outside world he has never known.  I have to say that the book became immensely fascinating and one that could not be put down at the point of the escape throughout the entire second half.

Besides the interesting concept  and what-if scenario of a 5 year old boy experiencing the world for the first time after being locked in a room since birth, the uniqueness of the book is that Donoghue managed to write the whole thing from Jack’s perspective and in exactly the way a 5 year old would think and talk.  When in Room everything has its place. There is Rug and Wardrobe where he sleeps at night and Bed where Ma sleeps and Meltedy Spoon and even when Old Nick brings him a remote control jeep he calls it Remote and Jeep.  Ma was kidnapped at age 19 and the escape happens when she is 27 so she spent 8 years locked in what amounts to a backyard shed.  I’m not going to reveal any more about the escape because it one of the most exciting scenes in the book.

I do want to talk some about the second half though because I think it was probably my favorite section of the book.  They wind up at a psychiatric clinic to help them make the adjustment to the outside world.  The doctor gives Jack counseling sessions and Jack also gets to meet his grandparents and aunt and uncle for the first time.  There is also a media storm of paparazzi surrounding the amazing story.  What was so interesting to me is that Jack was taught so much in Room about math and counting and reading, but he got into the outside world and he didn’t know how to slide down a slide or that it was wrong to take a book from the bookstore.  He had to slowly acclimate to even going outside for the first time.  I guess what I liked so much about it is that Donoghue wrote in a such a way that I could believe everything Jack was going through.

The other really interesting dynamic in the book was the relationship between Jack and Ma.  Because Jack lived the first 5 years of his life in the same tiny space as his Ma he couldn’t bear to be without her when they got into the outside world.  Jack could force himself to be brave or independent when he had to be such as when Ma was “Gone” on painkillers and during the Great Escape.  But most of the time he stuck to Ma like glue and would not leave her for anything.

The last thing I would like to bring up when talking about this book are all of the references to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  There are many passages sprinkled in throughout.  I guess you could interpret that as being parallel to how Outside was so topsy turvy to Jack and how everything was strange and unusual to Alice when she fell down the rabbit hole.  It’s also interesting that the Great Escape was inspired by another piece of classic literature The Count of Monte Cristo. Over all I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone.

This was a very hard book to listen to. As a matter of fact I had attempted to listen to it once before and stopped about an hour in.  Last night I finished listening it. It is not a very long book, only 136 pages or 5 hours in the audio version, but the language and situations depicted in it are highly vulgar, but very real.  The novel Push was made into the movie Precious, which in itself was a very hard movie to watch.

This whole story takes place in Harlem, New York in the 1980s. The book is told from the perspective of Clarice “Precious” Jones.  She had her first baby from her father at age 12 and her second baby also from her father at age 16.  Her father had been having sex with her since she was 7 (that she can remember) but there is a line toward the end that the abuse may have started much earlier when she was in diapers.  Not only was she raped by her father but her mother beat her while she was having her first baby on the kitchen floor.  Remember she’s only 12 years old when this happens. It is beyond horrible that this poor girl did not get a normal childhood.  Living with her mother has been an absolute hellish existence.  The first baby is severely mentally retarded and has Down Syndrome.  Her grandmother takes care of little Mongo (short for Mongoloid).  Her second baby Abdul is a healthy baby and Precious is determined to take care of him herself.

The book has redeeming qualities also which started to make it more compelling for me.  Precious never was very good at school. When the book opens she is 16 years old and in the 9th grade and has no idea how to read and write.  She sits in the back of math class.  She is sent to principal’s office and is suspended for being pregnant which she is angry about because it is not her fault.  The principal comes to her house and talks through the intercom at her about an alternative school Reach One Teach One on the 19th floor of the Hotel Theresa.  Precious wants to learn so she enrolls in the program that teaches remedial reading and writing.  There are about 7 girls in this class all, we find out later, with similar horror stories as Precious.  It is taught by a teacher named Blue Rain.  She becomes a mentor to Precious and teaches her the alphabet and how to read and write in a journal every day.  Precious even gets an award from the city for her progress and moves out of her horrible home into a half way house.  There is hope for her until she hears from her mother that her father has died of AIDS and you know where that is headed.

It was a very hard book to listen to, but after awhile it became so compelling that I wanted to finish it. Sapphire (AKA Ramona Lofton) is a very poetic writer, at times making the book sound like Slam Poetry, and the book is so steeped in realism that you are sure stories like this really happen to people, even as horrible as it may seem.  There is also some commentary about welfare, unemployment, and other issues related to poverty that make this an interesting book as well.  Overall I ended up liking it for the issues it brought up and that little bit of hope that Precious got at the end.

The cover of this book is the now-familiar chalkboard writing from the opening credits of The Simpsons except this one says “I will not write an uncensored, unauthorized history of The Simpsons” over and over again. Ortved set out to write what he calls in the introduction to this book, “an oral history” of his favorite TV show. The book primarily consists of anecdotes from various people involved in the production of The Simpsons including writers Conan O’Brien and Brad Bird, Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch, Matt Groening’s ex-wife, and many others.  Quotes from Matt Groening himself come from interviews or DVD commentary.

Ortved chronicles the history of The Simpsons from Matt Groening’s alternative weekly comic strip Life in Hell to getting the Simpsons on The Tracy Ullman Show all the way through the mid-2000s.  The book was published in 2009 so it was mentioned that O’Brien would be taking over Leno’s Tonight Show, but the ensuing fracas happened after the book was published.  Some of the more interesting tidbits I learned from this book included the in-fighting and jealousy that went on between Sam Simon and Matt Groening at the beginning of the show’s run.  Matt Groening was the face of the Simpsons since he created the main characters and he got all of the credit in the press for writing, producing and the directing where in reality he did none of those things.  Sam Simon was one of the head writers and was upset that Groening was getting all of the credit for work that he and the other writers were creating.  Also interesting is that Groening was more than willing to sell out and spearheaded a lot of the merchandising boom of Simpsons T-Shirts, dolls, etc in the early 90′s.  He even reportedly bought a second house to store Simpsons memorabilia.

Other big names discussed in the book include James L Brooks, the executive producer as well as director or producer of many big comedy movies of the 80′s.  The Simpsons made Fox, a fledgling network then, what it is today and the book talks about what free reign the show was given on the network.  A lot of the book is about the writers on the show and the eras of the different show runners from Al Jean and Mike Reiss to Mike Scully to Al Jean again in the 2000s.  Ortved talks to owners of two of the biggest Simpsons fan sites on the Internet The Simpsons Archive and NoHomers.net.  The latter half of the book is interesting in that it tries to pinpoint why the show didn’t stop when it was ahead and how mediocre the shows have gotten under Al Jean’s leadership in the 2000′s.  It also touches on its successors South Park and Family Guy and where they are taking the medium of prime time animated comedy.

If you are a fan of The Simpsons and are interested in this type of anecdotal history of a TV show then you will probably find this book to your liking.  There was a lot I didn’t know about the behind-the-scenes workings of the show and so on that level I enjoyed the book. I listened to it on Audible and didn’t know if I liked the narrator at first, but it grew on me.

Record collector and author Nick DiFonzo likes to gather what he calls “forgotten records.” He finds them mostly at swap meets and second-hand shops. These so-called forgotten records vary in description from the weird to the religious. One thing many of them have in common is that they have terrible album covers. DiFonzo catalogs some of his more outrageous finds in this small coffee table-style book. There’s the fingerless fiddler, the singing midget, Orleans and lots of innuendo-laden references to the organ (you know, the musical one). As a music fan and album collector myself, I enjoyed this book a lot. Still, anyone in need of a laugh should get something out of it.