Reading has always been one of my passions. I love books
and the journeys that I take while I am reading. Mostly I read fiction, specifically science
fiction and fantasy. Once I had Audrey I
didn’t have the time or energy to read like I had before she was born and I
missed it When Amazon came out with the
Kindle app for the iPhone I was so excited that I could have a book with me at
all times that I immediately downloaded it and started buying electronic
books. Well, that quickly became
expensive and I had already bought most of the books that I wanted to keep. Plus I had no interest in buying books that I
would only read once. When I started
researching what electronic books the library had available I was very pleased
to find out they had both quite a selection available and they also had an
iPhone app. Sometimes a book I want to
read is on a wait list so I end up reading books I wouldn’t normally read. In an attempt to work on my writing skills I
thought I would do a book report on some of these books. Ok, I’m not in elementary school anymore so I
probably should call this a book review instead! ;)
By Eric Larson
When I was a teenager I used to
go down to Galveston, TX on a regular basis so I knew the basics about the September
1900 Galveston hurricane, that there was massive
loss of life and property and it was the reason why the seawall had been
constructed. So when I came across this
book I thought it might be interesting to read more detail about the
situation. Isaac Cline was the
meteorologist at Galveston during the hurricane and the story switched between
his life, the days leading up to the hurricane and how the U.S. Weather Bureau
had been formed. It was interesting to
read how the study of meteorology was started and how some people saw it as
nothing better than fortune telling. Meteorology
a very political topic and I was surprised how the political factors played
into how much advance warning Galveston residents received about the
hurricane. What was particularly intriguing
was the rivalry between the United States meteorologists and the Cuban
meteorologists.
The story had more tension than
I expected from a non fiction book because I knew that something horrible was
going to happen, but I didn’t know exactly how or when. Switching between the different story lines
helped make the dryer parts of the story easier to read and more
interesting. I skimmed some of the
technical information about how the hurricane was formed, but someone else
might find it interesting.
What were heartbreaking were
the stories about the families that had to endure the hurricane itself with
little or no preparation. As a mother
what affected me the most were the children that were literally ripped from
their parent’s arms by the water, or the orphans that were drowned because the
nuns had tied them together in an effort to not lose the children in the flood
waters.
Overall I would give Isaac’s Storm four stars out of
five. Only four stars because some parts were very dry and because I wouldn't want to read this book again. Overall I was surprised how much I enjoyed
this non fiction book and decided to read more of this author’s books. Maybe I’ll end up reviewing those as
well.
