Thanks to Rosie Croft from Pen & Sword for sending me an early hardback copy of this book, which I freely chose to review. What a blast!

There are events that become fixed on people’s minds, either because they witnessed them and felt they were momentous, or because the impact of the news when they heard them made them remember forever the moment when they heard about it and what they were doing at the time. Some become part of the collective memory. The first manned mission to land on the Moon is one of those. As I was a very young child (four years old, if you want to know), I don’t remember it, but I do remember my father recounting having gone to a neighbour’s to watch it as we didn’t have a TV at home at the time. And I’ve watched the images, seen pictures, and read articles and watched documentaries about it over the years, but no, I didn’t experience it live at the time. So, on this year of the fiftieth anniversary, I couldn’t resist this book. And I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The author collects an incredible amount of information from a large variety of sources (there is a bibliography at the end, which includes the sources although not the specific details of each and every one of the articles and news items, as that would have taken more space than the book itself), and manages to select the most informative, wide-ranging, thought-provoking, and entertaining materials, creating a fun and gripping reading experience that, although we know where it’s going, never gets boring. He is also at pains to try to provide a balanced view of the facts, collecting as well the voices of those opposing the project for a variety of reasons (mainly economic, to do with poverty and conditions in the USA, but also some for religious reasons, and others due to the fear of what that might mean for humanity and the likelihood of space’s exploitation for war purposes).

Passingham lets the materials speak for themselves in most instances (and it is a joy to read the opinions of the general public at a time before social media gave everybody the tools to share their voice with the rest of the world), and he does so while creating an easy to read and compelling account of events that evidence his professionalism and his experience as a journalist. Where some authors would feel tempted to butt in and make explicit their points of view, here we are allowed to make our own minds up.

After a first chapter called ‘Race to the Moon: 1957-69’ highlighting the USSR’s successes in what would become known as ‘the space race’ and the USA’s determination to turn things around (spurred on by JFK’s promise, in 1962, to get to the moon before the end of the decade), the book takes on the format of a count-down, from Wednesday, 2^nd of July 1969 (launch minus fourteen day) to Splashdown day (24^th of July) and a final chapter looking at what has happened since. This format makes us share in the excitement of the team (and the whole world), at the time, and, although we know what took place, we get to feel a part of it.

I have marked many items in the book that gave me pause, and the description also gives a good hint of some of the gems readers can find in the book. If I had to choose some, perhaps the comments by Michael Collins about how he felt about the possibility of having to leave his two fellow astronauts behind if things went wrong with the Moon landing; the advancements on computer sciences and technology brought up by the project (when looking at the data it sounds underwhelming today, but it’s incredible to think they managed to do what they did with the equipment they had) and the same applies to the cameras they took with them and used; the mention of Amy Spear’s role in developing radar systems used for landing and docking the module; worries about what would happen to all the people who had been working on the project once the flight was over, many of whom had come from other states (would the new jobs be maintained?). I loved the enthusiasm and the optimism of people convinced that in ten years there would be hotels in the Moon and humanity would be settling other planets (oh, and they were phoning aviation companies to book their flights already!); the sad comments by US soldiers in Vietnam who contrasted the public support the  Apollo 11 enjoyed with the general opinion about the Vietnam war; I was very sad about the fate of a monkey they sent into orbit (alone! Poor thing!);I was interested in the opposing voices as well, in the fact that Russian women had gone into space but at that point there were no women in the programme (and due to Navy regulations, Nixon’s wife couldn’t even accompany her husband when he went to welcome the astronauts aboard USS Hornet…), and a mention that the astronauts had access to a microwave oven in the Mobile Quarantine Facility (they had been in existence for a while, but they were large and only used in industrial settings at that point), and, oh, so many things.

I enjoyed the book, which also contains many illustrations, all from NASA, and apart from making me feel as if I had been there, it also gave me plenty of food for thought. Many of the things people imagined didn’t come to pass, although it is not clear why (yes, it would have been very expensive, but that didn’t seem to stop them at that point. And why did the USSR pull back as well?), there were many advances due to it, but space exploration has remained controversial, perhaps even more so now than before. I wonder if there will be some positive event that will pull so many people together again in the future, rather than the catastrophes and disasters (natural or man-made) that seem to have become the norm in recent years. I guess only time will tell.

I cannot imagine there will be anybody who won’t find this book enjoyable (OK, people who believe the Earth is flat or conspiracy theorists might not care for it, and experts on the subject might not find anything new in its pages), and I’d recommend it to anybody who either remembers that event and wants to re-experience it, or wasn’t there at the time and wants to learn all about it. A joy of a book.

I first started reading books by Wendy Corsi Staub over 20 years ago when she first published. Her stories are always suspenseful and characters believable. Blue Moon is about a series of murders, back in the late 1890's and left the bodies of his victims in three separate houses known as The Murder Houses and recreated in present day buy a deranged killer.

We have two serial killers, one who killed three times to cover up the first one and the second known a copycat , just because he was fascinated with the previous murders Sleeping Beauty Murders . 

Annabelle Bingham and her husband Trib, have a son who has severe anxiety, wanted a change and they purchased one of the murder homes. Annabelle became fascinated with the history of the house and the other two murder homes. Every year the community of Mundy's Landing has an event called Mundypalooza that draws tourists and other gawkers coming to Mundy's Landing to see if anyone can solve the old murders. So far no one has. 

At the same time Detective Sullivan Leary, Sully, is headed to Mundy's Landing to have a much-needed vacation. She chose Mundy's Landing because she really liked the area having been there previously, in the first book of the series, on a previous case with her partner Barnes. She is hoping to get some needed rest but soon finds herself curious about the Sleeping Beauty Murders.

The reader is brought into the mind of two killers and why each one is doing what they are doing. Both sets of murders are sadistic in nature and involve young women/girls. Filled with suspenseful moments, a mother's love for their child and believable characters and events that make this page turner another great story by a prolific author. Even though this is the second in a series, it can be read as a stand alone.

Blue Moon by Wendy Corsi Staub is Book II in the Mundy’s Landing Series. I have not read Blood Red, Book I, but I don’t feel it affected the reading of Blue Moon, though now I want to read Blood Red too. A map is included to help in picturing the town and I love maps.

I love to read books like Blue Moon because I am curious about the villain…his motive, his reasoning. How does his mind work? How is he capable of such heinous crimes? Blue Moon reads like a Criminal Minds episode and that is a win for me.

I revel in suspense thrillers filled with mystery and Blue Moon by Wendy Corsi Staub has two mysteries that will be solved. But…wait…there will be more and the ending definitely makes me want to be there for it.

I received a copy of Blue Moon by Wendy Staub in return for an honest review.

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When I was in college, Bill Blakemore published his article about The Shining, and I enjoyed it so much that I made a photocopy of it that I still have to this day.  It wasn't that I believed what he was saying -- that the movie was about the genocide of the American Indians.  What impressed me was his seriousness and the care he had taken to prove his case, a case that rested, absurdly enough, on a few cans of Calumet baking powder.

I might as well admit it:  I love a good conspiracy theory.

Until Room 237, however, I had no idea that Blakemore's article had spawned a small industry.  The movie presents five interpretations of the film, including Blakemore's (which, I was pleased to note, had pride of place, being the one that opens the film).  None are as cogent as Blakemore's (he simply has more to work with since the film, which is set in a Colorado hotel, is full of Native American imagery), but all are fascinating.  In the novel, Stephen King makes much of an incident involving his hapless protagonist, Jack Torrance, when he was coaching the debate team at the high school where he worked.  And the lure of all these theories is that that they are like positions in a debate, albeit positions on the losing side.  The suspense (and, indeed, the humor) hinges on our own interpretation -- of how well the debater makes his or her case.

I won't mince words.  In fact, I'll use Vincent Bugliosi's words in referring to the majority of theories cherished by JFK assassination critics:  they're "as kooky as a three-dollar bill."

It isn't long into the movie before Juli Kearns opines that a Monarch skiing poster on one hotel wall depicts not a skier but a minotaur.  We have the "suggestion," she says, of a ski pole, but it isn't really there.  Personally, I'd "suggest" that she consult an ophthalmologist.

And then there's Jay Weidner's theory that The Shining is Kubrick's confession to having faked the footage of the moon landings.  I like this one, because it widens the conspiracy to include the government.  Weidner wisely sidesteps the actual landings:  he doesn't say that we didn't land on the moon, just that the footage of said landings was faked.  What he doesn't say, and what I learned only after seeing the film, is that he believes the fakery was necessary in order to "hide the advanced U.S. saucer technology from the Soviet Union."

But again, these are (one hopes) serious people with earnest opinions.  Director Rodney Ascher lets them tell their stories in their own words, filling the screen with images from The Shining or complimentary scenes from other sources.  He doesn't judge and he certainly doesn't ridicule.  He leaves that to us.

And theory aside, some of the information presented is both fun and interesting.  I admit that I never noticed, for instance, that after the mysterious ball rolls to little Danny, playing with his toy cars in a hotel corridor, Danny stands up -- facing the opposite direction.  We can tell because the pattern on the carpet is reversed from one shot to the next.  Other examples of odd continuity similarly passed me by.  As did the fact that the hotel itself appears to be, architecturally speaking, an impossibility.

I can buy this, the idea that Kubrick intentionally included these elements rather than that they are merely errors of continuity.  But if he did, I don't think he did it for any other reason than simply to disquiet the audience on a subliminal level.  Ascher points out -- he shows us quite clearly -- that in the opening helicopter shots of the VW winding up the mountain road that the shadow of the helicopter is visible.  No one seems to have a theory about why Kubrick allowed this in the film.  Which tells me that there's general agreement that it's a "mistake."  So, yeah, maybe Kubrick added in some of these things on purpose, and then again maybe he didn't.  Obviously, he wasn't perfect.

I grew up hearing that "you can prove anything from statistics."  Well, let me tell you:  statistics ain't got nothin on art.  Back in high school a friend and I contemplated writing an essay about Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and how it was really all about Nazi Germany.  I have no doubt that we could have "proved" it, too, but we chickened out at the last minute.  (Our teacher, when we told her about it, was disappointed that we hadn't followed through.)  Subjectivity is the mother of interpretation.  That's why we can have Marxist analyses and feminist analyses and Freudian analyses of the same work.

And just as these various theories are all valid (at least, shall we say, in theory), so, too, on one level, are the viewpoints expressed in Room 237.  I thought an art dealer in one episode of Columbo captured the essence of art very well.  I'm paraphrasing, but she said, "You look at a piece of art and it either does something for your or it doesn't."  For the interviewees in this film, The Shining clearly did something.  And while I may think what it did was encourage a certain brand of lunacy, I still respect the effort that is so glaringly on display.