Love That Moon

Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon by Craig Nelson

On the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, I was in the midst of reading this terrific account of the event. It’s the sort of book that’s difficult to put down. (Love that!)

I hereby brand myself a typical outsider looking at the space program: like so many others, I am most interested in the astronauts themselves (a situation they have found frustrating and bewildering for all these decades. Of all their tasks, the one they most dreaded was… the press conference.)

Yet they are charming:

Neil Armstrong, the “Ice Commander,” revealing little emotion, but crafting the famous statement, “That’s one small step for (a) man. One giant leap for mankind.” Some of his other statements are shocking in their profundity. (Yes, I’m placing a hold today on the Armstrong biography First Man.)

Buzz Aldrin, to Armstrong, upon learning of the ginormous TV audience watching their moon landing: “Neil, we missed the whole thing.” (p. 310)

Michael Collins, greeting Armstrong and Aldrin upon their return to Columbia after their moon shot, grabbing Aldrin by both ears and nearly kissing his forehead.

And they are also wonderfully human in their affection for their spacecraft:

Example 1: Collins “then released Eagle, which fell into lunar orbit, having to work solo as Armstrong and Aldrin did not want to be involved in orphaning their girl.” (p. 298)

Example 2: Back on earth, directly after the flight—“Before leaving their ship forever, though, Collins couldn’t help himself from sneaking back aboard and writing, next to the sextant, ‘Spacecraft 107—alias Apollo 11—alias Columbia. The best ship to come down the line. God Bless Her. Michael Collins, CMP.’” (p. 308)

Craig Nelson has written a gripping, beautiful account of this 40-year-old story. His skill is in making it all seem new.

Booking Through Thursday: Recent Funny

This week's question is: What’s the funniest book you’ve read recently?

Well, since I've been on a tragic-events reading kick lately, there are precious few funny books in my recently-read list. But here are two that stand out:

• Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

In which she makes fun of her serious approach to visiting the sites of Lincoln's, Garfield's, and McKinley assassinations. This sounds like a tragic-events book--and kind of, it is--but as a humorous book, it works.

• Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy by Lindsay Moran

Kind of weird that they're both nonfiction, but not completely so... given that apparently my system is rejecting fiction at the moment.

Cold, Cold Mystery: Good Summer Reading

Starvation Lake by Bryan Gruley

This is one fine debut mystery. And it’s got hockey in it, so if that’s your thing, you’ll be in hog heaven. For me, hockey decidedly is not my thing, but I found that it provided a great backdrop here.

This is one of those mysteries I love. Two reasons why:

1. It’s a first person narrative. (Why in the name of all that is holy would anyone choose any other narrative form in a mystery, with Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden mysteries being the obvious exceptions?)

2. It involves a Mystery From The Past. (While I would completely despise something lying dormant for decades and then rising up to bite me in the butt, I simply adore it when this happens in fiction.)

Gus Carpenter is our thirtysomething narrator. He’s a journalist by day, hockey goalie by night. He’s back in his hometown of Starvation Lake, Michigan, after Something Bad destroyed his career at a big Detroit newspaper. So he’s back in the town he was eager to flee after his mishap caused his hockey team to lose the state championship. He’s the editor of the small town paper, and he has a gung-ho young reporter named Joanie who is eager to make a name for herself.

So when the snowmobile belonging to Coach Blackburn, the locally revered hockey coach, surfaces from the lake where he drowned many years before, Joanie senses a story—and the locals all feel quite stunned by the accident rearing its ugly head again.

Needless to say, everything ain’t what it seems… Just when I thought everything had been revealed, I still had one-third of the book to go… and there was more to discover.

Yowser! Good book.

Booking Through Thursday: Preferences

Here's this week's question, with my preferences in bold (and my comments in parentheses)...

Which do you prefer? (Quick answers–we’ll do more detail at some later date)

Reading something frivolous? Or something serious? (except for that nasty Us Weekly addiction...)
Paperbacks? Or hardcovers?
Fiction? Or Nonfiction? (this was a tough one, but lately I've been on a nonfiction binge)
Poetry? Or Prose?
Biographies? Or Autobiographies? (less self-absorbed)
History? Or Historical Fiction? (love the history; really not liking the historical fiction)
Series? Or Stand-alones? (mystery series addict!)
Classics? Or best-sellers?
Lurid, fruity prose? Or straight-forward, basic prose? (the plainer, the lovelier)
Plots? Or Stream-of-Consciousness?
Long books? Or Short? (when a book is good, who wants it to end?)
Illustrated? Or Non-illustrated?
Borrowed? Or Owned? (I'm a librarian, for pete's sake!)
New? Or Used? (other than library books, I'm a fiend about new books)

I wonder if this is actually a terribly revealing psychological test?

Our Book Club: At Age 2 1/2

My lovely friends and I formed a book club in January 2007, and we've been reading up a storm ever since.

Today I'm inspired by Gentle Reader over at Shelf Life, who posted her book club's selections (some of which I'm apt to steal!)

Here's what we have been reading:

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

My Antonia by Willa Cather

Cider House Rules by John Irving

All the President's Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

Shopaholic Ties the Knot by Sophie Kinsella

Series - Short stories/novellas for the summer:
"People Like That Are the Only People Here" by Lorrie Moore
"A Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor
"The Awakening" by Kate Chopin

Series - Children's books:
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Any Nancy Drew mystery by Carolyn Keene

The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner

Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

Swimming to Antarctica by Lynne Cox

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Zen Flesh, Zen Bones by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki

various short stories by Edgar Allan Poe

The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

Casino Royale by Ian Fleming

The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

"Garden Guerrillas" [novella] by Jane Stevenson

The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey

We take turns selecting the books, which makes the mix interesting.

On Shelf Life, I read the words, "I love my book group."
I just have to concur. Here's looking at you, ladies.

Sequel: Better than the Original

Anastasia Again by Lois Lowry

Anastasia returns in this second book in the series, following her introduction in Anastasia Krupnik. I adore the first book, but I absolutely love, love, love the second.

Anastasia is dismayed when her parents decide to move from the city (Boston) to the suburbs. She decides to make the situation impossible for them and requests a house with a tower—and her parents find a house that fits the bill. Her parents are terrific, and they are as amusing as Anastasia herself; and her brother, young Sam Krupnik, is charming as all get-out.

When I met the author, she mentioned that someone had tried to ban the book, because Anastasia threatens to throw herself out a window on page 1. Needless to say, I was appalled at the book banning attempt—and, I have to admit, somewhat mystified. Since the window in question is ground-floor, the situation is downright funny because Anastasia, her parents, and the reader know she’s exaggerating for effect. Good grief. This was one of the moments that most endeared the book to me as a child and now as an adult.

Booking Through Thursday: TBR

Here's this week's Booking Through Thursday question:

Follow-up to last week’s question:
Do you keep all your unread books together, like books in a waiting room? Or are they scattered throughout your shelves, mingling like party-goers waiting for the host to come along?

Actually, both.

My to-be-read library books are grouped together on one shelf--except, of course, for the ones I'm already reading, which get scattered all over the house.

The to-be-read books I own are interfiled with the books I've already read (alphabetically by author, since they're in the fiction section of the shelves). This way, they're nearly certain to be ignored. : )

Survival

Down around Midnight: A Memoir of Crash and Survival by Robert Sabbag

This is one scary book, even though the writer survived something horrific. It’s also addictive as all get-out.

In June 1979, Robert Sabbag, seven other passengers, and the co-pilot survived the crash of a small commuter plane on Cape Cod. The pilot died in the crash. Their plane crashed into a forest, and it was hours before they were rescued. During that time, they were drenched in aircraft fuel and most were badly injured. One young woman was able to go for help, stumbling out of the woods to stun the passersby who picked her up.

Yikes. What a story. And it’s made even better by the restraint of the author, who states the facts simply and rather beautifully. This is a stunning book. And a surprising one.

One of the initial things that surprised me is that the author wrote this account 30 years after the crash. The reasons for the lag time are fascinating. Sabbag posits that people who have gone through a terrible situation (airplane crash, war, etc.) rarely talk about the experience afterward, even with those who lived through the experience alongside them. Posttraumatic stress disorder, survival guilt—it’s all here. He has worked as a journalist for decades, but he writes that he found it surprising that it was so difficult to even ask the questions of his fellow survivors. It was as though it felt indelicate, if not almost indecent, to bring up the crash.

The next thing that is surprising is that none of the survivors saw each other after their rescue. They spent several horrible post-crash hours together in a Massachusetts forest and then never saw each other again, until Sabbag began researching his book. He interviewed those survivors who were willing to talk with him, as well as paramedics, firefighters, and medical personnel. And he interweaves brief anecdotes from his own life that illustrate some of the effects the crash has had on him, even if he was not able to see the effects until a good friend pointed them out.

Finally, two random comments about how this book ties into my reading pattern at the moment:
1. While I was most definitely not thinking of this book as a segue from my Buddy Holly reading spree, I found myself thinking about him on page 8, which is where Robert Sabbag describes what it was like to be aboard the airplane immediately before the crash. Since they were flying through fog, he said he didn’t have any indication that they were in any trouble. He puts it like this: “Time never had a chance to stand still.” (p. 8) I cannot tell you how reassuring this is, for some very strange reason.

2. Reading this book now also may seem to indicate that I’m on an aviation crash spree (having just read Huston's Marine One)—which I certainly hope I am not, given that that would be creepy.

Booking Through Thursday: Unread

An idea I got from The Toddled Dredge (via K for Kat). Here’s what she said:

“So here today I present to you an Unread Books Challenge. Give me the list or take a picture of all the books you have stacked on your bedside table, hidden under the bed or standing in your shelf – the books you have not read, but keep meaning to. The books that begin to weigh on your mind. The books that make you cover your ears in conversation and say, ‘No! Don’t give me another book to read! I can’t finish the ones I have!’"

I rescued myself from this scene by resolving one day to take (nearly) all my unread books to the library for the book sale. So there are only two left screaming at me from the shelves:

The Mirror by Marlys Millhiser, which I keep hearing is a great time travel romance. It's been sitting here for a decade plus. I hang onto it because I'm certain someday I'll be snowed in and will be aching to read This Exact Book.

Big Cherry Holler by Adriana Trigiani, which I keep dodging because I think the nice couple who met in Big Stone Gap have become middle-aged and troubled. Egad, who needs that? (I'm hauling it off to the book sale tomorrow, I swear.)

Now, while I've divested myself of books I own and will not read, I have a whole stinking shelf of library books that I've checked out. Some I've begun reading, some I've not cracked yet but will be unable to put down once I do, and some are likely to be given the 2-page test and then returned to the library straightaway. It's fascinating (and a little sad) to see how many books sound terrific in the review and then just fail to grab me.

Legal Thriller with President (sort of)

Marine One by James W. Huston

So legal thrillers are new to me. I read Presumed Innocent back when I was in college, but that’s as far as she goes. So this was a bit of a stretch, and I have to say it turned out well. Mr. Huston can spin a suspenseful tale, and throughout the book he had me wondering how things would pan out. So far, so good.

I actually saw the title of this book and got all excited, thinking it would be about a fictional president and a pilot of Marine One—both titillating topics. And those two guys appear here, but they both die on page 1. (I actually put the book down at this point, thinking it would be painful to read more. But I persevered. What strength of character! Give this woman a cupcake.)

The hero here is a lawyer—and former Marine pilot—named Mike Nolan. He’s a barracuda of a lawyer, but he’s likeable anyway because he’s on the right side of things. The interesting thing here is that Nolan is an attorney for the helicopter manufacturer, which is being made out to be the big bad foreign company whose malfunctioning helicopter killed the president. You almost have to dislike the corporate attorney who’s opposing the attorneys for the widows. I mean, really.

But of course Nolan, who narrates the story, is the good guy and we know it from the start. There were some things here that surprise the reader: for example, the way Nolan holds back key evidence from everyone until the very end of the trial. It felt rather Perry-Mason-contrived to me, I have to confess. But I also was turning the pages like a mad fiend, so the author was doing something right.

I was on high alert for puke-y female characters, and there were none. There was just one moment when the hard-nosed female attorney, a former Navy officer, confesses to her colleague that she’s aching to have a baby. For the love of Mike (no pun intended). As if she would talk about that at the office. We didn’t hear Nolan saying that he wished he could spend more time with his kids, did we? (I didn’t even realize he had any until near the end, when there was a mention of the wife seeing them off to school.) OK, rant over.

Overall, this was darn good entertainment. I’ll give it a thumbs-up.

Booking Through Thursday: Celebrities?

The "Booking Through Thursday" question this week is grand:

"Do you read celebrity memoirs? Which ones have you read or do you want to read? Which nonexistent celebrity memoirs would you like to see?"

Oh, yes.

Though I'm much more guilty of reading celebrity biographies. Witness the recent--and, yes, ongoing--Buddy Holly Reading Spree.


But the occasional celebrity memoir is practically required reading for me. At least a couple each year.

I'm just finishing the addictive Waylon by Waylon Jennings and Lenny Kaye. Hard to put down!

And I have a bit of a tendency to read the memoirs of women on the sidelines--those who hang out with the huge celebrity and thus become famous themselves. So I've read Elvis and Me by Priscilla Presley and Sandra Harmon, and Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me by Pattie Boyd and Penny Junor.

My true celebrity memoir addiction, though, is the "famous journalist memoir." I'm a total sucker for those puppies! This is good stuff:
This Just In by Bob Schieffer
Merriman Smith's Book of the Presidents by Merriman Smith
A Reporter's Life by Walter Cronkite
A Good Life by Ben Bradlee
Talking Back by Andrea Mitchell
Eyewitness to Power by David Gergen