Turn The Page

please forgive the lack of reviews right now....I am trying to really focus on reading again and not worrying about how my reviews are or anything else...

Thanks for understanding...

trying to come out of a major reading slump....bear with me people...

A riveting tale of adventure, hope, and ultimately defying death in the Peruvian Amazon. This is the true story of Yossi Ghinsberg as he sets out on an Amazon exploration adventure with 3 others and ends up on his own trying to survive for the next 3 weeks. I kept putting myself in his situation and quite frankly it scared the crap out of me. I have no desire to see the movie as I don't think it could come close to what I was imagining him going through while reading this. A nice piece of work...recommended for all.

The Fate Of The Jedi saga continues with this novel as Luke and Ben actually work alongside the Sith to hunt down Abeloth. This one also starts to move the overall plot of this particular saga along more so than the previous entries. The Jedi Council starts to break up their stalemate (thankfully), and more light is shed on the mentally disturbed Jedi that have haunted Han and Leia and the Council since book one. Hopefully the next one will further provide answers to the issues being faced by the main characters.

I probably should have read this before I watched the Amazon series of the same name, as the series reveals the hidden plot in the book in much more detail. I think I missed out on how Dick constructed this novel with interesting, conflicted characters that are trying to find the truth and exist in a world vastly different than ours post World War II. This reminds me again how reading the novel first is the best course of action.

This is the second book on Chernobyl I've read. This one goes into a little more detail on the people involved in the incident in the months and years after the event. It also presents a little more history on the Soviet nuclear industry and the lack of attention to safety that precedes the accident. The author has put together scientific fact and storytelling very well for a very interesting read.

This was better than I thought it would be, and yet it went in a really different direction than I anticipated. The 80-year mission to explore an earthlike planet discovered orbiting the star Sirius C, some 8+ light years away, brings a team of scientists an unexpected discovery: the planet is just like Earth with "humans" inhabiting it. The group then is torn between all the wonderful discoveries that await with trusting the people they encounter. During this they discover that something has happened in the center of the galaxy that puts all life in their sector of the Milky Way in mortal danger. This is one of Bova's later works, but this guy can still spin a helluva story, albeit one here that requires just a little more suspension of disbelief than other Grand Tour novels. Worth a read, and definitely worthy to be in the Grand Tour storyline.

I love NASCAR and while he was driving, Junior was my favorite driver, so naturally I gravitated towards this book. I kept my expectations in check before I read it, not really expecting a work of Shakespeare or Jules Verne, but this book really surprised me. It was informative, honest, well-written, and really had a "page-turner" feel to it. It also explains a lot of things that fans like me wondered about him during certain times late in his career. I would highly recommend it for people who like autobiographies, or even partial autobiographies, of athletes or others in positions of high visibility, as it is much better written than anyone would expect.

Going back more to the roots of The Grand Tour, Bova describes how Dan Randolph wrestles control of mining for certain ores in space out from the dominant Soviet empire. This is kind of the forbearance of Randolph setting up his Astro Manufacturing company where he will begin to help explore and colonize the solar system in future novels. Bova's earlier works in this series tend to be better written, so this one falls into the very good category...fun to read.

The subject itself begged for this book to be written, so reading this was enjoyable and very interesting, but the writing itself was good, not great. Nevertheless, chronicling what led up to and created perhaps the most disorganized and dark year in Tennessee Volunteer football made for an eye-opening experience while taking this in. Tom Mattingly's contribution in the beginning about the history of Tennessee football, while it had some interesting notes, was sporadic and disjointed in my opinion. The book really picks up though with Summers interviews with key donors to the school and its athletic department, then moving on to discussions with print and radio journalists, along with players and fans reactions. Summers best writing was the latter third of the book, covering the narrative of the later months of 2017, when everything literally fell apart. The main subject of the book is described in this portion, where the fans literally had had enough of the incompetence in Knoxville and with the power of social media, shut down an ill-advised attempt at hiring a certain coach with a checkered past. The most eye-opening part of the book, to me, was the afterword by Dr. John Staley, Jr., where he discusses what could have been considered criminal actions by the coaching staff during the 2017 season. Worth a read for any Tennessee fan....