Spaceman: An Astronaut's unlikely journey to unlock the secrets of the universe by Mike Massimino

Spaceman is an autobiography of Mike Massimino, an astronaut who twice flew a mission to space.  Once on the space shuttle Columbia (which later exploded upon re-entry to Earth, killing the seven crew members aboard), and once on the shuttle Atlantis to service the Hubble Space Telescope.

Being the same age as Mike, I too remember at seven years old watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon, wearing my pajamas and marking history on my family's black and white TV. Likely multitudes of American children watching that night dreamed of becoming an astronaut and going into space.  Mike was one of them, but his was a dream that never died.  He chased and fought for it until it became a reality. 

Massimino takes us with him on his journey to NASA, helping us to feel all the excitement as well as all the trepidation that he felt on each step along the way.  When he got into Columbia University, when he want on to MIT, when he was at first rejected by NASA, when he was selected for his first mission and then his second.  Mike has a true talent for making his reader feel a part of it all.

My favorite part of the book is from Mike's first trip to space.  He and astronaut Jim Newman were assigned the task of installing a new camera on the Hubble.  Massimino caught a glimpse of the Earth far below him and it was so beautiful he had to look away.  He writes, "My thought looking down at the Earth was Wow.  How much God our Father must love us that he gave us this home.  He didn't put us on Mars or Venus with nothing but rocks and frozen waste.  He gave us paradise and said, 'Live here.'"
Whether you are interested in science and space, once dreamed of being an astronaut yourself, or just enjoy a good adventure story, Spaceman will satisfy. Blogging for Books provided this book to me for free in exchange for my honest review. 

Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS by Ben Macintyre

It took me longer to read Rogue Heroes than any book I've read in a very long time.  Not because it was boring or hard to get into, but because it was so chock full of interesting and exciting stories about the British Special Air Service and I didn't want to miss anything.  I can sometimes be a skimmer, glossing over boring parts or long descriptive passages, but not on this book.  Ben Macintyre did an amazing job bringing the men who served in the SAS to life.

It was simply fascinating to read about the founder of the Service, David Stirling.  He was a brilliant revolutionary, but also a haphazard near lunatic. Despite being a spoiled rich kid who was expelled from college for bad behavior and who couldn't hold down a job to save himself, he put together one of the toughest, most elite fighting forces in the world. 

The other men who fought with and for David Stirling in the SAS were equally as fascinating.  They were often renegades who had a hard time fitting in regular military life.  That meant they were the perfect fit for the rough life of fighting first in the deserts of Africa, parachuting into the wilderness for sneak attacks and ambushes.  Some of them were likely mentally unstable but all were tough as nails and willing to give their lives for their country.

If you are a history buff, you'll love this book.  Read it slowly and savor every detail.  You'll laugh (often) and cry as well.  The end of the book when a group of SAS come upon Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, not realizing where they are or what it was, is gut wrenching.

I received this book from Crown Publishing Group in exchange for my honest review.

Home on the Range by Ruth Logan Herne

Home on the Range is the second book in the Double S Ranch series and I haven't read the first book, but it was not a problem at all.  Actually I didn't even realize it was a sequel until I finished the book.  I was able to follow the characters and the plot line just fine.

I would not normally choose a book about cowboys or a ranch, but I did enjoy this one. Really in the end it is a love story more than a cowboy story.  Rancher, Nick Stafford, has two daughters who need counseling after their mother deserts them. They begin seeing Dr. Elsa Andreas, who has struggled with her own issues. Healing and love soon blossom. 

Really, even more than the love story, I was touched by the family story.  The Stafford family has had its problems, but each member is learning how to love and is finding his or way back to God.  They work hard on the ranch, but they also love (and eat) well.  Redemption is a major theme of this book and I was blessed by that. 

I received this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for my honest review

The Curated Closet by Anuschka Rees

The front cover of Anuschka Rees' book The Curated Closet reads, "A simple system for discovering your personal style and building your dream wardrobe."  While Ms. Rees does indeed give the reader a system for discovering her personal style and building her dream wardrobe, I would have a difficult time calling it simple.  None of the steps outlined in this book are complicated, but there are MANY of them. 

The book is very, very thorough. If you were really serious about building finding your own style and then building a quality wardrobe based on that style, this book would be an excellent tool. Don't however, think that it could be a quick process.  You would need to spend numerous hours doing so.  Do I think it would be worth it in the end?  Yes.  Do I think you could learn from the author's tips and tricks?  Definitely.  Do I think you need to follow every single step in order to benefit from this book?  No, I don't.  While I don't think I will be putting in the time needed to do everything that Ms. Rees suggests, I certainly learned a thing or two about how to more wisely shop and dress. 

I believe this book would be especially helpful to a young woman starting out on a career after college, to an older woman returning to the workforce after raising her children, or to anyone who is changing jobs and needs a different wardrobe.  It is also useful for anyone who shops frequently but doesn't feel like she ever has the right outfit.

Although the book does feature photographs, I believe the book would still be beneficial after the styles in those pictures are outdated.  The method Anuschka Rees presents is timeless.  The photos don't really tell you what to wear, but do add interest to the book. 

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

Saffire:A Novel by Sigmund Brouwer

Saffire by Sigmund Brower is a novel that takes place in the early 1900s at the Panama Canal.  It was a rough and tumble place, full of seedy characters and the main character, James Holt, fits right in.  Formerly a cowboy in Buffalo Bill's  Wild West Show, he is now a widowed father who enjoys a quiet life on a cattle ranch in the Dakotas. When President Teddy Roosevelt, a longtime friend, sends him on a secret mission to Panama, he embarks on an adventure fraught with danger and intrigue. Upon arriving in Panama City, he meets a young girl named Saffire, whose mother has disappeared.  Local authorities claim she ran away, but Saffire is not convinced and will not give up trying to find out what happened to her mother.

James becomes involved in Saffire's search, trying himself to discover the details surrounding her mother's disappearance. He ends up angering some of the native folks, who don't want a foreigner poking around in their business.  There are bar fights, gun fights, fist fights and even torture in this story.  I would have to say, despite a little romance between James and a local woman he meets named Raquel, that this story is one that men would enjoy more than women. I had a hard time following the plot at times and really didn't like all the fighting and gritty adventure.

Saffire is billed as Historical Christian fiction.  It is indeed historical and gives lots of details about building the Panama Canal, including much of the political goings on of that day.  It is also fiction, although based on many actual events and people.  I have a very hard time however, calling it Christian.  I only remember one vague reference to God when James visits a dying man and the man asks James to pray for him. 

Although well written, I just didn't enjoy the book very much.  I do like historical fiction, but I guess I'm not that interested in the wild west type adventure.  I received this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

Avenue of Spies: A True Stor of Terror, Espionage, and One American Family's Heroic Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Paris by Alex Kershaw

There is a quote from a review by the Chicago Tribune on the cover of Avenue of Spies that reads, "Classic...constructed and written like a thriller."  Another quote on the back cover by Post and Courier states, "A gripping, taut story that will keep readers turning pages long after they should have turned out the light."  All I can say is that we must have read different books.  I have read many thrilling, page-turning books about World War II and the Resistance, but this is most definitely not one of them.

It's not that I doubt the story of American doctor Sumner Jackson, his French wife Toquette, and their son Phillip is true.  I believe it and it is an interesting story, worth noting and remembering.  I salute anyone who participated in the Resistance against the evil of Nazi Germany.  I firmly believe that stories such as theirs must be told so that history never forgets.  However, their story is just not written in a way that was compelling to me. The author, Alex Kershaw, stretched the story into a full novel by inserting facts and stories of other historical characters into the tale of the Jacksons.  He claims to have spent hours interviewing  Phillip Jackson and reading family letters, yet I barely felt like I knew the family or sensed their emotions.

I wish I could recommend this book, but honestly there are myriad other books on this topic that I have read that were much more riveting and worth my time.  Quite the opposite of page-turning, I had to force myself to finish it. I received a copy of this book from Blogging for Books in return for my honest review.

June: A Novel by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

June was a very strange novel.  Indeed, if it weren't for the fact that I received this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review, I likely would not have finished it.  I had a very difficult time getting into the story, which is always a turn off for me, I want to be hooked right away.  I just didn't particularly like or care about the characters much.  The main character, Cassie (yes I know the book is titled June, but I still deem Cassie the main character), was probably the hardest to like.  Through much of the book she was in some sort of depression or deep funk.  She slept much of the time, didn't take care of herself and let her house fall apart around her.  If you're not rooting for the main character, it's not easy to want to keep reading, but I did.

Another strange thing about the book was that the house that Cassie lived in, her ancestral home, was a character itself, as though it were alive.  The author, Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, referred to the house as thought it had feelings and memories.  Even stranger yet though was that Cassie dreamed true dreams, about actual events that occurred in the life of her grandmother, June, before she was born.  She saw the story of June's life as though it were a movie.

Not strange, but disappointing to me was the way the author stereotyped the lesbian character in the story, Lindie.  She hated wearing dresses and preferred to dress like a boy, even preferred rough and tumble boy's play.  Beverly-Whittemore also stereotyped the people in the fictional town where the book took place.  Being from Michigan myself, I can definitively say that not everyone who is from a small town in the Midwest is dumb, out of touch with the rest of the world, and serves Kraft Mac & Cheese and instant potatoes to company. 

The good thing that June has going for it is surprise twists.  I often didn't know where the story was going and even up until the very end, was not sure how things were going to turn out for the characters. I like that!