September Reading Round Up

Our trip to Yellowstone and the other American National Parks has a big effect on me - I don't think that I've ever fallen in love with a place so deeply before.  My day (and night) dreams seem to be full of mountains and wildlife and so has my September reading as I worked my way through numerous memoirs of Rangers who live and work in the National Parks.

Apart from these books I've had an interesting month - many of my books had a space theme and as I blogged earlier this week these were of mixed quality. Unsurprisingly the two books I was complaining about haven't made my best of the month...

Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornack

This book isn't actually published until the 19th of October but thanks to Netgalley I got to read this early after hearing lots of good things. This is (sort of) a Christmas book - a family are forced into quarantine over Christmas as one of the family has just returned from Africa where she has been nursing in an Ebola style emergency.  Forced proximity with family is always stressful and this family all have secrets...
The book is a little cheesy and I did guess one of the twists but this didn't matter overall as it was just a really good book - it is also set in Norfolk and trying to guess the 'real' locations was an added level of fun to the read.

The Rise of the Rocket Girls - Nathalia Holt

After the success of Hidden Figures earlier in the year I was pleased to find another book about women working in the early days of the American space program. These women worked more with the unmanned programs and were based at JPL in Pasadena, CA.  It was great to hear more about the human computers and as I've been lucky enough to visit JPL this book really came alive for me.

A Galaxy of Her Own - Libby Jackson

Another book focusing on women in space, this is supposedly for children but wouldn't look out of place in any human spaceflight book collection. Jackson goes right back to the nineteenth century to look at women in history who have influenced the space program and features women from all over the world.  We get to 'meet' women from all walks of life - astronauts to computers to the people making the spacesuits. Each woman gets a page to herself and is illustrated by different up and coming artists.

The book isn't officially published until November but I got my copy at New Scientist Live and was lucky enough to get it signed by Jackson too.

A River Runs Through It - Norman Maclean

After reading so many books set in National Parks, Wyoming and Montana it was hard to pick just one as a book of the month.  Finally I settled on this one as it was just so different. On first glance it seems to be just about fly fishing but it was so much more - it is about families, nature, love and duty. I loved it! I wasn't quite so enamoured of the other short stories but this one really spoke to me.