Nonfiction November: Nonfiction / Fiction Pairing
This week’s episode of Nonfiction November is hosted by Sarah of Sarah’s Book Shelves.
And this week’s topic is…
Pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title. It can be a “If you loved this book, read this!” or just two titles that you think would go well together. Maybe it’s a historical novel and you’d like to get the real history by reading a nonfiction version of the story.
Knowing that I was going to read Beryl Markham’s memoir West with the Night for an upcoming book discussion, I first dove in to Circling the Sun by Paula McLain–an historical novel about Markham’s life.
And while both are lyrical in style, with vivid descriptions of Markham’s free-spirited, adventurous life, Circling the Sun delves into the complicated relationships of Markham’s life. If you read only West with the Night, you’d have no idea of the messy love triangle among Markham, Denys Finch Hatton, and Karen Blixen (aka Isak Dinesen). The fictionalized account, based closely on the facts, takes a good, long look at the underbelly.
It’s a bit like reading an autobiography and a biography of the same person, and getting the glossy version from the person’s own pen, while the outside account lays it all bare. Only when the outside account is a novel, there’s also some judicious editing that creates a better story arc. And I’m OK with that.
I found the reading of West with the Night all the richer for having spent time with the fictionalized Markham in the pages of the novel. And I was struck again by the remarkable ways in which fiction, too, can speak truth.
Great book discussion book: West with the Night
Launch of Rocket Men
The Rocket Men book launch…
3 words: thrilled, awestruck, verklempt
A book launch that was a transcendent experience — these things don’t happen just every day. Robert Kurson released his latest book, Rocket Men, in the best of all possible ways: with the full crew of Apollo 8 participating in a panel discussion.
And we were there.
In the same room with Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders.
Of course I was beside myself with joy. The thing that was a revelation was the degree to which the Dear Man and my friend were exhilarated to be in the presence of those men.
It was truly an honor to be in the room with them. And such a delight to hear them interact with each other — there was jocular fondness, there was humor. They’re seriously likeable guys.
One of my favorite moments: Anders was describing the violence of takeoff, and he said they were shaking so hard, Borman took his hand off the abort handle, so he wouldn’t pull it by accident due to the way they were being thrashed around. “Just like any other fighter pilot, he’d rather be dead than screw up.”

Apollo 8 command module, Museum of Science & Industry
I love that.
I had the good fortune to read an advance copy of Rocket Men, which I adored
for all kinds of reasons. And the people brought to life in its pages were clearly recognizable in that room. Kurson really captures their essence.
So, the event is over. But the story lives on in the pages of Rocket Men, a book I truly love.
This one’s going down in my personal history as the best book event ever.
My fellow readers… Book launches can be amazing. Tell us about the best book event you’ve ever attended. What made it fantastic?
Best nonfiction book of 2018: Rocket Men by Robert Kurson
Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon
3 words: lively, heroic, crisp
I’m a cautious soul by nature. But I have no problem declaring Rocket Men my favorite nonfiction book of 2018. Even though it’s still 2017.
When a book is this perfect, I know it’ll hold its own against all the others coming down the pike next year.
I’m one of the luckies (along with Andy Weir!) who got hold of an advance copy of Rocket Men, which drops on April 3, 2018*.
And while I’m an aviation/space fanatic who’s inclined to enjoy a book about astronauts, I’ve also read enough books on the subject to become fairly discerning. I’m a picky little thing when it comes to books on topics I love.
This book works for all kinds of reasons:
First: the writing style
Kurson’s writing is crisp and lively and compulsively readable. There’s exciting forward momentum throughout the book, yet he sneaks in each astronaut’s back story and details about 1968 America in a way that feels natural. The structure of the book is very satisfying. And even though we know the happy outcome of the mission from the start, there’s tension in this story. During the perilous Trans Earth Injection (when the spacecraft accelerated out of lunar orbit to return to Earth), my stomach got a little bit flippy when I read this section about the CapCom attempting to reach the astronauts:
“Mattingly writing a full eighteen seconds, then called again.
‘Apollo 8, Houston.’
Still no answer.
Susan Borman and Valerie Anders were silent. There was no sound in the Borman home but for the squawk box, and their husbands’ voices were not coming out of it” (p. 274)
People, that is intense.
And then, Lovell: “Houston, Apollo 8, over,” followed by “Please be informed—there is a Santa Claus.”
Second: the subject matter
Apollo 8 was humankind’s first trip to the Moon, and it was risky as all heck. In order to beat the Russians to the Moon, NASA decided to hurry up the timeline for the mission, so: even riskier. When they ran the idea past Frank Borman, Apollo 8 commander, he accepted on the spot, then headed back to tell crewmates Jim Lovell and Bill Anders. “Sometimes Borman used the T-38 to do aerobatics, looping and rolling to help clear the cobwebs after a hard day’s work. This time he flew level and fast, back to his crewmates in California in the straightest line a test pilot ever flew” (p. 38). Anyone else get goosebumps from that?
Third: the focus on the humans
This book brings these people to life: the astronauts, their wives, the flight controllers. We particularly get to know the personalities of the astronauts and their wives, who emerge as real people facing challenges with all the courage they had—and sometimes struggling. It makes them more impressive to know how difficult it was, and it also makes the true story more interesting and nuanced than the standard story of heroic triumph. Granted, these humans were not standard issue humans; this happened when they were on the launchpad: “And in a testament to the cool that runs through the bloodstream of fighter pilots, Anders fell asleep, ready to awaken when things got good” (p. 147).
But this wasn’t easy stuff, and the unsentimental heroism of these people made me weepy (lots of times: weepy). Plus, I love reading about the camaraderie of a crew, and this crew had it going on: they liked each other, and they worked smoothly together, and they did that beautiful reading from Genesis on Christmas Eve (which also makes me weepy every single time I hear it). There’s a fantastic human story here.
Fourth: the clear and informative scientific details
While the human story draws me in most, the science-y sections made me smarter without making me bored. I’m a serious skimmer when I get restless as a reader, and I did not skim anything here. I found myself marveling at how the author described the science in a way that held my attention. I’ve read a fair number of books about space and aviation, and this one stood out in the way the author presented the technological details in a way that made them compelling. I learned more than I’d ever learned before, and I enjoyed it.
Reading this book was a complete delight. It’s so good, I’ll be re-reading it with pleasure next year, so it can truly be the best book I read in 2018.
Give this book a whirl if you like… space; tales of heroic daring; crisp, clear writing
Update from April 2018: Best book launch ever — with astronauts!!
*thanks to the author, with whom I’m acquainted (which in no way shades this review, since I’d say absolutely nothing if I didn’t like the book, and I’d write more modest praise if I merely liked it. It’s sheer good fortune on my part to know an author who can seriously write.)

Nonfiction November: Books about airplanes
topic:
books on a single topic that you have read and can recommend (be the expert),
you can put the call out for good nonfiction on a specific topic that you have
been dying to read (ask the expert), or you can create your own list of books
on a topic that you’d like to read (become the expert).
us fly our freak flags. And heaven knows we’ve got ’em.
tragedy? The modern West?
airplane books.
several years and blogged about.
keeps it real. Here we’ve got two fine examples, one from a fighter pilot and
one from an airline pilot.
books don’t have blog posts about them, but they’re a couple of my favorites
from years past.
of those days when things went wrong…
All of these books just make me happy.
topic do you keep reading about, over and over again?

Flight the Wright way
triumphant, character-driven, family
McCullough is one of my guys. Two of his books appear in my blog banner, which
I realized only when I was reading his latest, about the Wright brothers.
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(courtesy of Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division) |
Wilbur and Orville, we go back a ways, too.
years, I’ve gotten all misty-eyed and boring at cocktail parties* every
December 17, because I regale anyone within earshot with the news that it’s the
umpteenth anniversary of the first powered flight.
and “Kill Devil Hills.”
the life of any party.
book had me all in a flutter. The
flutter was worth the while.
is a wonderfully comforting writer, who is a master of his craft. His sentences
just flow.
other thing that makes him comforting is that he tends to tell the heroic
stories, in a tone that’s relatively wart-free. He’s not out to tell how the
Wright’s competitors tried to make them out as mean-spirited moneygrubbers
whose protection of their patents bordered on the obsessive.
book is about their hard work and their triumph. And it’s very much about their
personalities and their family.
man married, and they lived with their father and sister. Which sounds kind of
horrid, except that it sounds like they had rather a happy home life.
were quiet fellows who largely kept to themselves, at least until fame struck.
are quiet, wonderful moments like this one, when Wilbur was about to take off
on a demo flight in France:
at six-thirty, with dusk settling, Wilbur turned his cap backward, and to Berg,
Bolée, and the others said quietly, ‘Gentlemen, I’m going to fly.’” (p.
170)
those words made me stop and clap a hand against the center of my chest and do
the heartstruck look.
yeah.
is a pleasant, talented author, and he’s writing about these quirky fellows
whom he finds pleasant and talented himself, so it’s a whirlwind of goodness.
despite the theme of flight, McCullough keeps it down to earth:
nephew Milton, who as a boy was often hanging about the brothers, would one day
write, “History was being made in their bicycle shop and in their home, but the
making was so obscured by the commonplace that I did not recognize it until
many years later.’” (p 113)
heroic, and stoic.
cocktail parties like the plague. But anywhere else I am, I bore people with
this December 17 business. Avoid me on that date.
Sometimes it sucks to be the wife
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(photo: courtesy of the Library of Congress) |
she’s speaking in Anne’s voice in this book. That’s high praise from an AML
reader.
Lindbergh.
immediate, more personal, more felt. Even AML’s diaries and letters, which were edited before publication (by both AML and her husband) keep her at a greater distance.

Against type
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(photo credit: Library of Congress) |
solemn vow I’d made to myself.
horrid little Christmas-season books—usually novellas—that are published by
bestselling authors of series?
things.
combination of grotesque commercialism and sentimental tripe, and I can’t
stomach them.
swearing I’d never read one, guess what?
because of Craig Johnson. This is not going to become a habit, this reading of
the Christmas-themed mini-books.
acknowledge that even though nearly this entire book took place on a B-25
Mitchell, I still found the plot a bit thin. It was basically an adventure
story. Now I have no quarrel with that, but it didn’t result in quite the usual
Craig Johnson bliss attack I usually experience.
that when Walt Longmire was a brand new sheriff, he needed to get a little girl
flown to the hospital in Denver
after a car accident. And the weather was ghastly and the only plane that
possibly could make the flight was this old warbird. And Lucian Connally, the
crusty old feller who was sheriff before him, had been a Doolittle Raider, so
the dude could handle that kind of aircraft. And off they go.
stuff to like there: Walt, Lucian, an airplane. And a female pilot in the right
seat. A happy (of course—it’s a Christmas book, for the love of Mike) ending. And
I liked it just fine.

Unruly pilot
flying days when I was but a girl, recently invited me to go flying. Hadn’t
seen the man in over 15 years, and here, just when my life could use something truly good, he invited me to fly an airplane again.
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moments before my second take-off, which again would involve uncontrolled laughter |
Seriously: lucky.
put that airplane in my hands, and man, was I rusty. The few skills that came
back… reemerged slowly.* I had us
flailing all over the Iowa
skies, laughing like a goon, and he didn’t even appear concerned. Nerves of
steel, those pilots.
nerves, not the laughing goon).
were on the ground, and he said this book gives a really good sense of what
it’s like to fly on a crew. (He’s doing the airline thing these days.) And I’m
all about the workplace memoir, especially when an insider has vouched for its
veracity, so I scribbled down the title and placed a hold at my first
opportunity.
that it was published in 1961, but it still feels fresh today. Granted, the
aircraft and the methods are archaic (Yikes! At one point, they’re plotting
bearing fixes!) but the human dynamic rings true, and that’s the important part
of the book, anyway, in my opinion.
clever, and altogether a delight to read.
that some people who do their day job admirably also can write books!)
the airline pilots were male in those days [sad shake of the head]), and it’s
enormously fun to read. It really does give a sense of the camaraderie of a crew—those
that get along well, and those that are a bit less well-suited for each other.
too. During Gann’s time as a military pilot, he and the others got sent to some
far reaches of the north Atlantic. Here’s their
introduction to the base:
moon and said, ‘Welcome to White Pigeon.’
more tranquil period when I had served briefly as his co-pilot. We had found
ourselves flying a plane chartered from our line by a political team junketing
around the United States.
Our passengers displayed a constant and abnormal interest in their exact
location—information we seldom had ready at hand. And so we would assume a
solemn mien and point out a town, or village—any one visible would do—and we
would say, ‘That is White Pigeon.’” (p.
177)
never would’ve picked it up if it hadn’t been for the personal recommendation I
received. Again, all I can say is: Lucky.
hitting the throttle at the threshold of the runway, I thought to ask, “What’s
the rotate speed on this baby?”