In My TBR Stack:

A Speck in the Sea: A Story of Survival and Rescue
by John Aldridge and Anthony Sosinski
Weinstein Books

Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

In the dead of night on July 24, 2013, John Aldridge was thrown off the back of the Anna Mary while his fishing partner, Anthony Sosinski, slept below. As desperate hours ticked by, Sosinski, the families, the local fishing community, and the U.S. Coast Guard in three states mobilized in an unprecedented search effort that culminated in a rare and exhilarating success.

A tale of survival, perseverance, and community, A Speck in the Sea tells of one man's struggle to survive as friends and strangers work separately, and together, to bring him home. Aldridge's wrenching first-person account intertwines with the narrative of the massive, constantly evolving rescue operation designed to save him.

BookSpin Review and Giveaway!

Finding Me: A Decade of Darkness, a Life Reclaimed
Michelle Knight with Michelle Burford
Weinstein Books
Hardcover

  Anyone who knows me or reads this blog knows that I read nonfiction.  Making this deal with myself often involves reading books by or about people who are or have been in horrible situations.  Sometimes these books are “true crime”; sometimes they are memoir.  True crime stories are most often written by a third-party and allows a certain distance from the horror.  When the books are in the form of memoir, the horror is often too close.

  Such is the case with FINDING ME by Michelle Knight.  One is tempted to describe Ms. Knight as a victim of a horrible kidnapping and of the special torture of the evil that men do.  After reading the book, though, I prefer to call her the more accurate “survivor”.  This is not a small difference.  

  I think most of us think we have handled adversity in our lives. To read Michelle Knight’s story is to discover that some people go through things that make our troubles seem like a two-week paid vacation.  The horrors that Michelle and the other women faced during their captivity by Cleveland psychopath Ariel Castro were horrific, not just it their cruelty but in the length of time they were held.

  The book seems purposely written in a gentler way than we deserve.  If this tragedy had happened to me, I would have worn out my thesaurus, using every word for awful, horrible, and disgusting.  It is this low-key approach that serves to allow us to read along with less tendency to throw the book in anger. In a more covert way, the writing style subtly reveals what a survivor Michelle Knight is.  

  The word hero is thrown around a lot in modern society. Too often it is used to describe sports stars or entertainment figures.  Most of us whine when traffic makes us late for an appointment.  Our life is over if we can’t find free wifi.  To my mind, Michelle Knight is a true hero because of the example she sets for how to handle true adversity.

  Read this book to learn the savage details of that news story you remember about three women being kidnapped in Cleveland.  Get the added bonus of being surprised by a spunky lady with more coping ability than most Americans in this day and age.

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I have one copy of FINDING ME to give away.  To enter to win, please retweet the giveaway details.  My twitter name is @Book_Dude.  US entries only, please.

In My TBR Stack:

Remember the Time: Protecting Michael Jackson in his Final Days
Bill Whitfield and Javon Beard with Tanner Colby
Weinstein Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Hounded by the tabloid media, driven from his self-made sanctuary at Neverland, Michael Jackson spent his final years moving from city to city, living with his three children in virtual seclusion -- a futile attempt to escape a world that wouldn't leave him alone. During that time, two men served as the singer's personal security team: Bill Whitfield, a former cop and veteran of the security profession, and Javon Beard, a brash, untested rookie, both single fathers themselves.

Stationed at his side nearly 24/7, their job was to see and hear everything that transpired, and to keep everyone else out, making them the only two men who know what 60 million fans around the world still want to know: What really happened to the King of Pop?

Driven by a desire to show the world who Michael Jackson truly was, Whitfield and Beard have produced the only definitive, first-person account of Michael Jackson's last years: the extreme measures necessary to protect Jackson and his family, the simple moments of happiness they managed to share in a time of great stress, the special relationship Jackson shared with his fans, and the tragic events that culminated in the singer's ill-fated comeback, This Is It. The truth is fare more compelling than anything you've yet heard.

An indispensable piece of pop-culture history, Remember the Time is the story of a man struggling to live a normal life under extraordinary circumstances, the story of a father fighting to protect and provide for his children. Remember the Time is the book that dismantles the tabloid myths once and for all to give Michael Jackson back his humanity.

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Experts in the field of private protection, Bill Whitfield and Javon Beard served for two and a half years  as the personal security team for Michael Jackson and have worked with numerous other high-profile clients, including Sean "P.Diddy" Combs, Alicia Keys, and Shaquille O'Neal.

Cowriter Tanner Colby, is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in the Acts, Belushi: A Biography, and Some of My Best Friends are Black: The Strange Story of Integration in America, which was nominated for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction by the American Library Association. He is also a frequent contributor to Slate magazine.