Non-Fiction Five Challenge 2009!

Once again, it's time for the Non-Fiction Five Challenge!


When: May - September 2009
What: Read five non-fiction books

My list:

1. Sir Francis Chichester. Gipsy Moth Circles the World -- finished 7/7/2009
2. Jack Olsen. The Climb Up to Hell -- finished 7/10/2009
3. Bill Bryson. A Short History of Nearly Everything -- finished 8/24/2009
   
4. Fred Rosen. Body Dump -- finished 9/19/2009
5. Jon Krakauer. Into the Wild -- finished 10/1/2009

While I didn't finish this challenge in time, I did enjoy reading the above books. I traveled with Chichester on the Gipsy Moth, froze on Mt. Eiger in The Climb Up to Hell, and learned about the cosmos in A Short History of Nearly Everything. I look forward to the Non-Fiction Five Challenge of 2010, and hopefully, I will finish that one in time!

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

First sentence:

"Jim Gallien had driven four miles out of Fairbanks when he spotted the hitchhiker standing in the snow beside the road, thumb raised high, shivering in the gray Alaska dawn."

Description:

"'God, he was a smart kid...' So why did Christopher McCandless trade a bright future--a college education, material comfort, uncommon ability and charm--for death by starvation in an abandoned bus in the woods of Alaska? This is the question that Jon Krakauer's book tries to answer. While it doesn't—cannot—answer the question with certainty, Into the Wild does shed considerable light along the way. Not only about McCandless's "Alaskan odyssey," but also the forces that drive people to drop out of society and test themselves in other ways. Krakauer quotes Wallace Stegner's writing on a young man who similarly disappeared in the Utah desert in the 1930s: 'At 18, in a dream, he saw himself ... wandering through the romantic waste places of the world. No man with any of the juices of boyhood in him has forgotten those dreams.' Into the Wild shows that McCandless, while extreme, was hardly unique; the author makes the hermit into one of us, something McCandless himself could never pull off. By book's end, McCandless isn't merely a newspaper clipping, but a sympathetic, oddly magnetic personality. Whether he was "a courageous idealist, or a reckless idiot," you won't soon forget Christopher McCandless."

My thoughts:

This was an interesting book about not only Chris McCandless's tragic and unnecessary death, but about how someone's romantic view of nature can blind them to its harsh reality.

Date read: 10/1/2009
Challenge: 999 Challenge, Non-Fiction Five Challenge 2009
Rating: 3*/5 = good
Genre: Nonfiction

ISBN-10: 0385486804
ISBN-13: 9780385486804
Publisher: Anchor Books
Year: 1996
# of Pages: 203
Binding: Trade Paperback
LibraryThing page

Body Dump by Fred Rosen

First sentence:

"Eight women were missing."

Description:

"In October 1996, women began vanishing off the streets of Poughkeepsie, New York. All were young, pretty and petite. Most were hustlers and crackheads. By August 1998, as the toll reached eight, a victim's mother said bitterly, 'When they find one they will find them all.' She didn't know how horrifyingly right she was.

At the height of the manhunt, prostitute Christine Sala, hysterical, told police she had barely escaped being strangled by Kendall Francois, 27, a 6'4", 300-lb middle school hall monitor whose slovenly personal hygiene had earned him the nickname 'Stinky.' When caught, Francois said that he'd killed the women because they hadn't given him all the sex he claimed he'd paid for.

Investigators in white bio-hazard suits entered the house where Francois lived and found eight female corpses, almost all decomposed. Some were placed in plastic bags together in the attic. Others lay in shallow graves in the crawl space under the house. It was such a tangle of rotting flesh and bones, even the investigators couldn't tell how many bodies there were. Now, sentenced to life in prison without parole, the man whom others dismissed a smelly oaf had finally been unmasked as one of the most bizarre serial sex-killers of modern times." -- from the back cover

My thoughts:

This was an interesting book about the efforts of the local Poughkeepsie city and town police to catch the serial killer, Kendall Francois.

Date read: 9/19/2009
Book #: 47
Challenges: 999 Challenge, Non-Fiction Five Challenge 2009
Rating: 3*/5 = good
Genre: Nonfiction

ISBN-10: 0786011335
ISBN-13: 9789786011339
Publisher: Pinnacle Books
Year: 2002
# of Pages: 289
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
LibraryThing page

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

First sentence:

"Welcome."

Description:

"One of the world's most beloved writers takes his most challenging trip yet, through some of the toughest questions that scientists of all kinds have been trying to answer for years - sometimes for centuries.

On this intellectual odyssey, Bill Bryson puts his insatiable curiosity to use as he apprentices himself to the great scientific minds of today, and of history. In the course of this entertainingand revealing question, Bryson asks not only "what" and "how," but more importantly,"why." Are the oceans getting saltier over time, or less salty? How do earthquakes happen? What is a black hole? And how on earth did we ever figure these things out?

Here's science like you never learned it in school - lucid, relevant, entertaining, and often very, very funny." -- from the back cover

My thoughts:

I think this will be the book that I will go back to again and again. There were so many interesting facts to learn, and I enjoyed reading about how various scientists discovered new information that often surprised them. I liked reading about William Herschel's discovery of the planet Uranus in 1781 and how he wanted to name it after King George III (Georgium Sidus). I also liked learning about prehistoric guinea pigs the size of cows.

Date read: 8/24/2009
Book #: 43
Challenges: Dewey Decimal Challenge, Non-Fiction Five Challenge 2009
Rating: 4*/5 = great
Genre: Nonfiction

ISBN-10: 0385660049
ISBN-13: 9780385660044
Publisher: Anchor Canada
Year: 2003
# of Pages: 478
Binding: Trade Paperback
LibraryThing page

The Climb Up to Hell by Jack Olsen

First sentence:

"Fritz von Almen, thirty-nine years old, serious of mien, conservative of dress, walked onto a tiny side porch of his family's hotel, 6,700 feet up in the Swiss Alps, and sat in front of a swivel-mounted pair of binoculars aimed at a towering mountain wall across the meadows."

Description:

"The north wall of the Eiger Mountain in the Bernese Alps has longed fascinated the world's best mountain climbers. Almost every attempt to conquer it has resulted in defeat or disaster.

Once again in print, this is the story of the tragic 1957 ordeal on the Eiger Mountain's north wall -- the classic account of one of the most awesome drams in mountaineering history." -- from the back cover

My thoughts:

This was a very interesting book about the 1957 rescue of Claudio Corti from the north wall of Mt. Eiger. The descriptions of the climb and the rescue were very good and I could imagine being there myself.

Date read: 7/10/2009
Book #: 38
Challenges: 999 Challenge, Non-Fiction Five Challenge 2009, Celebrate the Author Challenge 2009
Rating: 3*/5 = Good
Genre: Nonfiction

ISBN-10: 0312194501
ISBN-13: 9780312194505
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Year: 1962
# of Pages: 212
Binding: Trade Paperback
LibraryThing Page

Gipsy Moth Circles the World by Sir Francis Chichester

First sentence:

"This is a fairy story for me."

Description:

"Here is a magnificent book to match a magnificent venture -- Sir Francis Chichester's personal account of the extraordinary feat that captured the imagination of the world. Told in his own colorful words and illustrated with his own photographs, some taken by remote control of himself in action, the book literally takes the reader aboard the Gipsy Moth IV throughout the entire fabulous voyage." -- from the inside flap

My thoughts:

Sir Francis Chichester tells a fascinating and detailed story of his historic solo circumnavigation via the Southern Oceans. From day to day, with changes in the weather and the boat's responses to it, there were plenty of surprises both good and bad. I enjoyed reading this book very much.

Date read: 7/7/2009
Book #: 36
Challenges: 999 Challenge, In Their Shoes Challenge, Non-Fiction Five Challenge 2009
Rating: 4*/5
Genre: Memoir

Publisher: Coward-McCann, Inc.
Year: 1967
# of pages: 222
Binding: Hardcover
LibraryThing page