"Music" by Andrew Zuckerman

Music by Andrew Zuckerman isn’t the sort of book you need to read cover to cover. You don’t have to read it at all: you could simply flip through to see unexpected photographs of famous musicians.

Before you even crack its spine, you know this is an unusual book. At first, I wasn’t even sure that it was Ozzy Osborne in the cover photo. I reacted this way to each of the fifty artists inside; each time, the author/photographer captured something I hadn’t seen before, which is saying something for people who are constantly on display. Because these portraits are mostly life-size, you see physical imperfections (acne blemishes, an untrimmed whisker, clothing wrinkles). With some artists, like Eve, you marvel at how their beauty shines even under such close scrutiny.

Alongside their photographs, each artist reflects on music, and the text adds to the thoughtful, uninhibited tone set by the photographs. These essays are freeform and conversational, and like the book in general, you really don’t need to start at the beginning. Fellow musicians will recognize the love and awe for music and the process of creation; others will have a rare glimpse inside the creative minds where so much of our popular music is born.

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Review by David.

May We Suggest...Nicholas Sparks

Nicholas Charles Sparks was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on December 31, 1965. As a child, he lived in Minnesota, Los Angeles, and Grand Island, Nebraska, finally settling in Fair Oaks, California, at the age of eight. His father was a professor, his mother a homemaker, then an optometrist’s assistant. He lived in Fair Oaks through high school, graduated valedictorian in 1984, and received a full track scholarship to the University of Notre Dame.

After breaking the Notre Dame school record as part of a relay team in 1985 as a freshman (a record which still stands), he was injured and spent the summer recovering. During that summer, he wrote his first novel, though it was never published. He majored in Business Finance and graduated with high honors in 1988.

He and his wife Catherine were married in July 1989. While living in Sacramento, he wrote his second, unpublished novel and worked a variety of jobs over the next three years. In 1990, he collaborated on a book with Billy Mills, the Olympic Gold Medalist, and it was published. Though it received scant publicity, sales topped 50,000 copies in the first year of release.

He began selling pharmaceuticals and moved to North Carolina in 1992. In 1994, at the age of 28, he wrote The Notebook and in October, 1995, rights to the The Notebook were sold to Warner Books. It was published in October 1996, and he followed with Message in a Bottle (1998), A Walk to Remember (1999), The Rescue (2000), A Bend in the Road (2001), Nights in Rodanthe (2002), The Guardian (2003), The Wedding(2003), True Believer (2005), At First Sight (a sequel to True Believer) (2005), Dear John (2006), The Choice (2007), The Lucky One (2008), The Last Song (2009), Safe Haven (2010) and a non-fiction memoir, Three Weeks With My Brother (2004), written with his brother, Micah. All were domestic and international best sellers and were translated into more than 45 languages. His newest book,The Best of Me, will be released in October 2011.

The film version of Message in a Bottle, starring Kevin Costner and Robin Wright, was released in 1999, A Walk to Remember, starring Mandy Moore, was released in January 2002, and The Notebook, starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, was released in June, 2004. Nights in Rodanthe, starring Richard Gere and Diane Lane, was released in September 2008. Dear John, starring Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried, and The Last Song, starring Miley Cyrus and Greg Kinnear, were released in 2010 to great box office success. The Lucky One, starring Zac Efron, has a tentative release date of spring 2012.

Along with his wife, Sparks founded The Epiphany School in New Bern, North Carolina, and he spent five years coaching track and field athletes at the local public high school. Sparks lives in North Carolina with his wife and family.

READ-A-LIKES

Richard Paul Evans is another popular author of gentle stories of great love and inspiration. Characters are less tortured and more in need of finding their inner strength and faith. If readers have already discovered the Christmas Box trilogy, they should sample one of Evans' most recent books, The Last Promise.

Sparks' fans should turn to Emily Grayson when looking for a similar author. Grayson writes in a slightly more dramatic style about romantic relationships with endings that are as emotional as Sparks' but less bittersweet. Start with her second novel, The Gazebo, which follows the enduring love of two people who tried their whole lives to be together and failed.

Writing in the same vein, but with more nostalgia is James Michael Pratt. His first three books, The Last Valentine, The Lighthouse Keeper and Ticket Home, use the dramatic backdrop of World War II to tell the stories of couples who are separated by war but joined at the heart.

"The Story of a Marriage" by Andrew Sean Greer

The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer is aptly named, and though most of the novel is set in 1950s California, it spans the decades before and after through the memories of its narrator, Pearlie. The phrase “We think we know the ones we love” becomes a bittersweet mantra as she tells the story of her marriage to her childhood sweetheart, Holland. As the phrase suggests, there are many revelations to come, especially when a wartime friend of her husband mysteriously arrives one afternoon. The reader will guess his connection to them long before the narrative makes its big reveal, but that doesn’t make it any less devastating for Pearlie or the reader.

The author includes several large “surprises” throughout, but it is much more satisfying to watch these characters discover what they love and make choices accordingly, all while presenting a wholesome front to the suburban neighbors. The collective fear of nuclear holocaust and communist spies hangs in the air, but even more terrifying is the characters’ own desires when they don’t align with 1950s sensibilities. Exploring these is what ultimately makes this novel such a satisfying read.

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Reviewed by David.

May We Suggest...Anne Rivers Siddons

Georgia born and Auburn University education, Anne Rivers Siddons is the author of more than a dozen bestselling novels. Her works include Sweetwater Creek; Islands;Nora, Nora; Hill Towns; Outer Banks; and Fault Lines and many more. She is also the author of a work of nonfiction, John Chancellor Makes Me Cry.

Many of her books take place in and around Atlanta, Georgia, or explore characters from the south that are living elsewhere.

Siddons and her husband, Heyward, spend their time in Charleston, South Carolina, and Brooklin, Maine.

NOVELS -

• Heartbreak Hotel (1976)
• The House Next Door (1978)
• Fox's Earth (1981)
• Homeplace (1987)
• Peachtree Road (1988)
• Kings Oak (1990)
• Outer Banks (1991)
• Colony (1992)
• Hill Towns (1993)
• Downtown (1994)
• Fault Lines (1995)
• Up Island (1997)
• Low Country (1998)
• Nora, Nora (2000)
• Islands (2004)
• Sweetwater Creek (2005)
• The House Next Door (2007)
• Off Season (2008)
• Burnt Mountain (7/2010)

READ-A-LIKES -

Rita Mae Brown - Brown's work has a similar tone to Siddons. She fills her books with Southern settings and the tough, vibrant, multi-generational women that live there. The characters face down social taboos and the risky politics of race. Try reading Venus Envy and Southern Discomfort

Lee Smith - Writing with an equally appealing Southern voice, many fans of Siddons enjoy the work of Lee Smith. She creates significant relationships that grow and change within her characters. Begin with The Last Girls or News of the Spirit.

"The Help" by Kathryn Stockett

Author Kathryn Stockett debuts with a page-turner that brings new insight to the moral issues involved in The Help. Stockett spins a story of social awakening as seen from both sides of the American racial divide intertwined with emotions that provokes timely thoughts. Set in Jackson, Miss in the 1962, the story is told from the perspective of three narrators. First and foremost is Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, an aspiring writer attempting to simply tell a story that will impress and sell to an abrasive New York editor. Skeeter's novel idea is to interview the black maids in her hometown in order to fabricate a story of truth about what it's like to work for white women and raise the white children. Taking a risk of an integration violation, for which the black maids could be fired, jailed or worse, Skeeter forges ahead and finds two brave women who are fed-up enough to participate in the project.

Next the readers are introduced to Abileen. Since the death of her son, she has struggled to find acceptance, patience and the unconditional love of a child. She's lovingly raised more than a dozen white children, moving on to the next family "when the babies get too old and stop being color-blind." She is finding it hard to hold her tongue with her current boss, Elizabeth Leefolt, a childhood friend's of Skeeter's. Elizabeth is a neglectful, unloving mother and Abileen feels it necessary to compensate for her Elizabeth's lack of love, affection and acceptance by repeatedly telling the young daughter, "You is kind...you is smart. You is important."

The third narrator is Minny Jackson, who is known for her quick temper and fiery disposition. She's Abileen's best friend that finds herself without a job after tangling with Hilly Holbrooke, the head of the Junior League chapter, Skeeter's childhood friend and high and mighty above all else. Hilly takes her disdain for "the help" so far as to start a "Home Help Sanitation" initiative for "separate toilets as a disease-preventative measure." It is this hurtful, malicious attitude that proves to spur the black maids to tell their stories.

Filled with mystery and intrigue, readers are enticed to keep reading page after page. What "terrible awful" thing did Minny to do Hilly before leaving her mother's employment. What became of Constantine - Skeeter's beloved childhood maid that disappeared while she was away at college? What deep secret throws Minny's current boss into depression and causes her to keep big secrets from her husband? Will the maids suffer consequences and repercussions for telling their stories?

Stockett skillfully weaves the characters' stories reflecting their courage, fear and pride. Writing of her hometown, Stockett says she wrote The Help because she regrets never having asked her beloved family maid "what it felt like to be black in Mississippi, working for our white family." The novel addresses not only the injustice but the "inexplicable love" that blooms between the maids and their young charges. The Help evokes both admiration and respect and as Skeeter said of her writing, "please let some good come out of this."

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"Scoop" by Evelyn Waugh

What happens when the nature writer for a London newspaper is mistakenly sent to Africa as a foreign correspondent in the place of a fashionable novelist who shares his name? Scoop, by Evelyn Waugh, follows William Boot, who is torn from his quiet life on his family’s country estate to the fictional nation of Ishmaelia, where civil war threatens to break out. He meets other journalists, all anxiously crawling for news to wire back to their editors. In the mean time, they buy each other drinks as a comradely gesture (and charge them to the newspaper’s expenses).

Boot eventually gets the “scoop” the other more experienced journalists are scrambling for, and he goes back to London a hero and reluctant celebrity. Of course, the case of mistaken identity that sets the novel in motion cannot be ignored, and the newspaper’s editor must face the inconvenience of the two Boots, and avoid the wrath of newspaper magnate Lord Copper in the process.

There is much to enjoy when reading this novel. As a master of satire, Waugh’s biggest theme is the absurdity of human nature. Most of the novel’s humor comes from its very human characters. The newspaper’s editor is so afraid of his superior, that instead of answering questions with “yes” or “no,” he says, “Definitely, Lord Copper” and “Up to a point, Lord Copper.” There is humor in the names of the newspapers, like the appropriately named the Daily Beast and the Daily Brute. There is also pleasure in watching the hapless protagonist be dragged to another continent with little say in the matter. But because this novel is ultimately comedic, the characters end happily, no matter how much they sweat and worry between its covers.

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Reviewed by David.

"Dangerous" by Diana Palmer

Dangerous is a continuation of the Long Tall Texan series and one of my favorites so far. The author, Diana Palmer, is famous for adding details about previous characters and storylines, and I like to follow along. Dangerous makes the reader feel involved in the romance and the story, which is set in present day Texas. The heroine is a 911 dispatcher, and Palmer also includes many realistic details about FBI agent Kilraven. You can imagine how he walks and talks, and I just fell in love with this character. Diana Palmer’s stories always have a lot of romance and a little mystery. If you like Julie Garwood and Linda Howard, you will love Diana Palmer.

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Reviewed by Becky.