Book Review: The Six
Katie 
The Six is about 6 women who were NASA Astronauts. As a girl who would love to be an astronaut myself, I am always excited to read about some of the women who have paved the way, whether it ends up being a path I can actually follow them down or not. This was a long book and full of a LOT of details and information which made it difficult for me to really get into at times and it took me quite some time to make my way through it. But a lot of the things they had to go through being women hit home for me as I am also a woman in a male-dominated field – but we can do everything they can – if not moreso!
This book contains some great stories about some remarkable women so if you’re as interested in bad ass women and space as I am, definitely check out this book!
I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.
About the Book
In the bestselling tradition of Hidden Figures and Code Girls, the remarkable true story of America’s first women astronauts—six extraordinary women, each making history going to orbit aboard NASA’s Space Shuttle.
When NASA sent astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s the agency excluded women from the corps, arguing that only military test pilots—a group then made up exclusively of men—had the right stuff. It was an era in which women were steered away from jobs in science and deemed unqualified for space flight. Eventually, though, NASA recognized its blunder and opened the application process to a wider array of hopefuls, regardless of race or gender. From a candidate pool of 8,000 six elite women were selected in 1978—Sally Ride, Judy Resnik, Anna Fisher, Kathy Sullivan, Shannon Lucid, and Rhea Seddon.
In The Six, acclaimed journalist Loren Grush shows these brilliant and courageous women enduring claustrophobic—and sometimes deeply sexist—media attention, undergoing rigorous survival training, and preparing for years to take multi-million-dollar payloads into orbit. Together, the Six helped build the tools that made the space program run. One of the group, Judy Resnik, sacrificed her life when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded at 46,000 feet. Everyone knows of Sally Ride’s history-making first space ride, but each of the Six would make their mark.
Before starting this book, I made the mistake of looking at its reviews on GoodReads- where it had 2 stars. The book hadn’t been released yet when I read it and most of the complaints were that it was “obviously a book from WattPad”, I’m not really sure how to tell (aside from it saying so on the cover) but I’m not sure the harsh reviews were warranted. There were some timeline issues and I had a bit of confusion if it was taking place in present day or not based on some of the slang used (“Go Home Roger” screams 90s Sister/Sister to me?) but nothing that I couldn’t end up working out.
Booook! is a spooky high contract board book that will be available in July of 2023. It is a Halloween story for young children done entirely in high-contrast black and white. There’s pumpkins, ghosts, skeletons and bones all to get you ready for the spooky season! A quick read for your toddler and it is apart of a collection that helps to visually nourish your child’s brain with the high contract and clear shapes. Be sure to look for other books that feature sports, the world, ocean friends, baby animals and garden bugs!
I will admit, I wasn’t super familiar with what it meant to be in “Goblin Mode” before reading this book – but I had seen that it was one of the Oxford word of the years – and I thought it was just about being lazy and self indulgent and I wasn’t sure it was for me. But after reading this book, I realized I’m already half way there if not 3/4 of the way there – just perhaps not as in tune with nature as I should be to be in full Goblin Mode and that it wasn’t as negative as I was making it out to be based on the Oxford definitions and probably more “click bait-y” articles that I had been reading.
I am really digging these biographic books about musical artists that are mostly cool images that have been coming out lately. This one tells the story of P!NK, which I knew some of as I have been a fan of hers. But some of the information was new to me. She is such an amazing performer, I can’t wait to see her live again!
Fancy Bear Goes Phishing is about the Dark History of the Information Age and tells it by documenting 5 extraordinary hacks. Since hacking and cybersecurity are of interest to me, I was excited to read about these hacks. Some of which were eve before my time – starting with a grad student who accidentally crashed the internet creating one of the first worm viruses. Also interesting was how things got names – viruses, worms, Fancy Bear, etc. All of which is documented in this book.
The Secret To Getting Along (And Why It’s Easier Than You Think) breaks down relationships with others into 3 steps to life-changing conflict resolution. While the book makes it seem pretty easy, I’m not sure it’s quite as easy as they make it seem, but there are definitely a lot of techniques in how to approach those in your life you are having conflict with to resolve things in a healthy way and not in such a way that the conflict doesn’t end up resolved and the relationship is broken. I am trying to think positively though and have been working on some of the suggested techniques with practice exercises that were provided in the book. We’ll see how it goes…
The Baseball Field Guide, 4th Edition, helps you learn about “every inch of the baseball (from the core to the stitches!)”. As the introduction says, the basic rules are second nature to those who watch the sport regularly (me) but the official rules can be surprisingly complex. Which is true. Every now and then some weird situation comes up and you kind of wish you had a rule guide in your back pocket – and now you can! I liked how this book has the rules broken down and there’s also graphics and images to help you understand what’s going on. With several new rules coming to MLB this season, now that I have this field guide available to me I’ll hopefully be a bit less confused while I root on my Mets!