Nonfiction Book Reviews

I’m excited to kick off Fun Fridays with Titanic: Discover the Luxury of This Famous Ship by Simon Adams (it’s a part of the Eyewitness Books series).

I’ll admit it: I watched the 1997 movie, Titanic, in the theaters, and cried the whole second half of the movie.  I loved the story line, but it was just too depressing to ever watch again.  11 years later, I own the movie (won it in a contest) but have never watched it.  I just can’t stand the thought of bawling like that for another 3 hours.

But since an Eyewitness Book is not likely to reduce me to tears, I decided to take the chance and check out Titanic.  I haven’t read an Eyewitness Book since I was a kid, so it was fun to browse through the book like I used to as a child.

I was surprised at how in-depth the information was that was included - it had a lot of text amongst all the pictures, and it wasn’t easy text that a young child would easily be able to read by himself or herself either.  The targeted age group for the Eyewitness Books is 9 - 12 years of age, and they mean it.

But for whatever reason, I was expecting huge pictures and very little text, so I was pleasantly surprised by all that the book had to offer.

My only critique was the fact that the pictures had a lot of boats in them, which have a lot of rigging and other thin, long lines crisscrossing everywhere.  Eyewitness Books use long, thin lines to point to various parts of a picture, which meant it got interesting trying to figure out which line went where.  One set of lines was a little darker than the other, but that was the only difference.

They really should have picked a whole different color, like dark red for one and black for the other, or something to help differentiate between the two sets.

But honestly, that’s a small critique of an otherwise well-done book.  Of course, I have to include an interesting tidbit that I hadn’t heard before, so here’s a quotation from the book:

On the night of April 24, 1912, a young Scottish girl, Jessie, was being comforted as she lay dying.  In her delirious state, Jessie had a vision of a ship sinking in the Atlantic.  She saw many people drowning and “someone called Wally playing a fiddle.”  Within hours of her death, the Titanic slowly sank as Wally Hartley and the rest of the band continued to play. ~Page 23 of Titanic

That sent shivers up my spine when I read it.  Uncanny…

Overall, I give Titanic 4.5 out of 5 stars.  Well done, and a great way to kick off Fun Fridays!  Make sure to check out next week’s post on A Smart Girl’s Guide to Money.

Hava

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