I think that Big Miracle fits in this “interesting non-fiction category.”

The Big Miracle movie is based on a true story. Reporter Tom Rose was one of the people who went to Barrow, Alaska to cover the event. He wrote a book called Freeing the Whales: How the Media Created the World’s Greatest Non-Event, which has recently been republished as Big Miracle, movie tie-in.

The original title shows a bit of his tongue-in-cheek philosophy (and honestly, this almost satirical view does come across a bit in the movie, too), but in reality, Rose’s book is pretty balanced. He gives information about Alaskan Eskimo whale-hunting (and how the subsistence hunting legislation actually caused more whales to be killed than before), the culture in Barrow, Alaska, the way news media works, what makes a story popular and why, the oil business of drilling in Alaska (correctly expressed in Texas vernacular as the “all bidness”), and so much more.

Set in the Cold War era of 1988, politics come into play as well, when a Russian ship is the only one available that can reach that area to break the ice.

If you see the movie (and I do recommend it for you and your whole family — I loved it), don’t expect the book to be a story like this is, but if you want to know more about the people and culture in this small remote Alaskan town and how this even affected them (and didn’t affect them), I can highly recommend this book. I haven’t quite finished it, but it’s a very readable look at this one event and the real-life characters who were principals in the action.

Truly a movie for the whole family

Big Miracle opens February 3.

I can’t wait to share it with my family, because I know that they’ll all love it, which is rare to be confident that my 13-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son, not to mention my husband, will all enjoy the same movie!

**Universal Studios took care of my travel expenses for this lovely trip to Santa Monica, California for the Big Miracle press junket, in exchange for coverage of the movie, however, I was not told what to say. My opinions are completely my own.

Check out all the Big Miracle movie coverage over at 5 Minutes for Mom:

• Drew Barrymore and John Krasinksi
• Behind the Scenes on the Big Miracle Set and Blogger Interviews (Kristen Bell)
• Ted Danson and Dermot Mulroney

We live in a culture where confidently stating what you believe is often labeled as narrow-minded intolerance rather than as an expression of personal faith. Giovannetti maintains that “we must respect and tolerate those with whom we disagree. But we still get to disagree and say so.”

With that foundation laid, the author goes on to explore several of the basic tenets of Christianity, as well as the major opposing philosophies for each. In the chapters True and Know, he introduces the reader to concepts such as the principle of non-contradiction, modernism, and post-modernism, contrasting these with what Jesus taught about truth. He also looks at the differences between empiricism, rationalism, and faith, concluding that they all ultimately rest on faith: empiricism by faith in the senses, rationalism by faith in logical postulations, and Christianity by faith in God & His Word.

Other chapters focus on the issues of pain and suffering, the existence of evil, and the Bible as the inspired Word of God. Giovannetti even tackles topics such as sexual purity, eternal punishment in hell, and eternal reward in heaven. For each of these, he gives a clear picture of the various positions that exist outside of the Christian faith and discusses the resulting logical flaws or negative outcomes.

One thing I found so fascinating about this book is that it identifies so many of the ideas that I remember debating with my peers in high school and college without realizing someone else had thought of them first! In addition to a detailed study of how faith and logic work together to lead us to the God of love, Four Letter Words: Conversations on Faith’s Beauty and Logic also offers practical suggestions for young people on how to engage with those who are interested in a way that is both respectful and kind.

Bill is celebrating the new Kindle edition of Four Letter Words (for only $4.99) by traveling coast to coast over the next few weeks on this virtual book tour and hosting a great giveaway!

Click here to find out how you can win two gift certificates to Amazon (in the amount of $50 and $25) and free downloads of his yet-to-be-released title, Recession-Proof: Living a God-Blessed Life in a Messed Up World.

We also have a copy of this book to give away – US or Canada only. Just leave a comment below to be entered to win. We’ll announce the winner in our giveaway column on February 8th. Giveaway is closed.

• The winner of The Starlite Drive-in is #16, Marjorie
• The winners of Chasing Mona Lisa are #14 riTa and #18 Cyndi

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Don’t miss a thing: Check out our current giveaways. Subscribe to our feed or video reviews on YouTube. Follow us @5M4B on Twitter or on Facebook.

Trish thanks Litfuse Publishing and Endurant Press for the review copy of this book. She blogs at In So Many Words.

Julia Scheeres masterfully weaves together of the letters, journals, and recordings that the FBI recently released of the mass murder/suicide that took place in Guyana. She adds to it the television coverage, print articles, and stories of those who had been involved with Jones over the years in one way or another.

When I read about the upcoming release of A Thousand Lives and had the opportunity to get a copy via NetGalley, I was fascinated. I’m not usually a bad-news junkie, a reality train-wreck watcher, or a rubbernecker, but for some reason the premise captured me. The depth of the stories and the horrific truth of the situation, coupled with Scheeres’ fantastic narrative nonfiction “storytelling” made this a book that I couldn’t put down. I also felt as if I read the book with a look of jaw-dropping awe on my face — I become that immersed in the story.

If you are the kind of person who finds yourself reading random well-written non-fiction and enjoying it, you’ll definitely like this book. If you are interested in what draws people into cults and inspires loyalty to charismatic — though obviously flawed — leaders, you’ll find some answers here.

Highly recommended.

Jennifer Donovan loves it when she can gain knowledge and be entertained (perhaps engaged is a better word in this circumstance) at the same time. She blogs at Snapshot, where she strives to inform and entertain, with no guarantee of results.

The book is a novel, but it packs in a huge amount of 20th-century history. The story follows two young men, both living in New York, both representing to various degrees the past of their people; however, the plot also follows for periods of time a Jewish professor who claimed to be Episcopalian in order to get a job in 1940s Chicago, a young Jewish girl in Poland in the years just before WW2 and then later in the camps, a beautiful black social worker whose marriage is crumbling, and many many more.

At the beginning, we are introduced to Lamont Williams, a young black man recently released from prison after serving his sentence for a crime he didn’t commit. Lamont is a fundamentally decent man who more than anything lacks self-confidence. He lives with his grandmother, and wants desperately to find his daughter, now 8, whom he hasn’t seen since she was 2. He has been given an opportunity—a job in Building Services at Sloan-Kettering Cancer hospital, where he is on probation for six months. During his first week on the job, a patient who’s been left out on the sidewalk insists that Lamont help him return to his room. Lamont does so, and a reluctant friendship springs up between the two. The patient, a survivor of Auschwitz, insists on telling Lamont his story, and has Lamont repeat it until he has it memorized, learning the difference between death camps and concentration camps, and about inside uprisings at Auschwitz. Shortly before his death, he gives Lamont a present, and you don’t need the gift of prophecy to foretell that will spell trouble for him.

The other main character is Adam Zegnelik, whose career as a history professor at Columbia is on rocky ground, and who is struggling out of the great shadow cast by his father, a Jewish lawyer who was hugely instrumental in the civil rights movement. When we first meet him, Adam is lying awake at night reliving moments in black American history—the desegregation of schools and how terrifying it was for the first black students in white schools, the 1963 church bombing that killed 4 black girls, and more. He is paralyzed by the future, and breaks up with his long-term girlfriend because he knows he won’t make tenure. His life turns around when he discovers a huge cache of first-person interviews with Holocaust survivors in refugee camps.

“Tell everyone what happened here,” says one of the women. “Tell everyone what happened here,” says Lamont at one point after he is false accused, yet again, of crimes he hasn’t committed. The Street Sweeper moves between vantage points and times, but it is ultimately a story of connection, of human beings, of unimaginable crimes but also of small beauties and justice. It’s an incredible book.

Elizabeth enjoys learning history through novels. This one made her thankful for the times and place in which she lives. Learn more at her blog Planet Nomad.

The Moment is a book comprised of short essays by a variety of people talking about a defining moment in their own lives. Submissions range from the hilarious and joyful to the disheartening to the stark and sobering, but without fail they are all fascinating, and you will see yourself reflected in these stories from others lives. There’s the girl who flew over her handlebars, later watching her mother pace the room while she gets stitches and realizing what motherhood means—that overwhelming love and concern. There’s the war journalist living with the guilt that he was unable to ferry a wounded man to safety, that being a reporter had overridden his ability to be human. There’s the dead mouse in the bottom of the trash can that prevented a woman from being there to get a call from her doctor. There’s the moment that a phone call came from another doctor, giving a diagnosis of cancer. There’s the first recognition of racism; that others are defining you by your skin colour or ethnic heritage. There’s the child on a family vacation, staring out the window, watching for an escaped prisoner on the lam that was just reported by a police stop and seeing something out there that he tells to no-one. There’s birth and death, growth and change, choices taken and deferred, but all these moments are life-changing and life-defining.

The writers are a mix; some are famous and some are not, and a few essays are in the form of a comic or a poem. Some make you smile, or even laugh; others are poignant, heart-breaking. All are real and honest, which gives them great appeal. They’re short—it’s easy to kick through 5 or 10 anytime you’ve got a minute or two to spare—but they’re well-written and thought-provoking. They’re even inspirational, although I feel that word’s been so overused I’m reluctant to use it.

In short, I really enjoyed The Moment. These brief but profound reads take you deep into someone else’s life, where you may recognize something of yourself as well. I highly recommend it. It would also make a great gift for pretty much anyone.

Elizabeth thinks that life has many defining moments, and she loves to hear about those in other people’s lives. Tell her about a defining moment in your own life at her blog Planet Nomad.

I’m not a huge Mac fan. My family loves our ipods, but that’s about it. I don’t really care much about the growth of the computer industry or the particular person of Steve Jobs, but this book was riveting, and if you’re at all interested in the changes in our use of technology that have taken place over the last 20 years or so, there will be facts that inform and interest you in this book. I learned that Steve Jobs had a hand in so many things, including the success of Pixar, ebooks, and much more. Knowing what was coming — each new innovation from the growth of the personal computer, to the ipod to the iphone to the ipad — built a sort of tension throughout. Knowing that Steve Jobs had lost his battle with cancer right before the publication of the book lent it slightly more weight, and did make me consider the weight of the loss of that creative and innovative mind.

There’s been a lot of press about how the book reveals Jobs to be an unsympathetic and callous boss and person in general, and yes, that’s true. Isaacson doesn’t cut Jobs any slack on the issue, though it is usually manifested as a result of his desire for everything to be perfect.

Jobs cooperated with Isaacson on this project — in fact he asked Isaacson to author his biography — but did not have a hand in the finished project at all. He didn’t read the book before publication and didn’t read it before he died. Isaacson talked to personal friends and family, co-workers, those he had spurned and those who admired him.

This is a long book (although the amazon page says “abridged,” the Simon and Schuster audiobook I have is 20 long unabridged CDs), but I honestly was interested in every single chapter. Because it’s nonfiction, it’s easily the kind of book that you could work your way through when you had time. You could listen to the audio in bursts, or read a chapter here and there when you have time.

AUDIOBOOK NOTES: Dylan Baker read this book and he did a great job. Never did I get lost in the details or glaze over while listening to something that wasn’t interesting. Baker made Steve Jobs’ thoughts and words come to life, and allowed Isaacson’s prose to shine. Though the audio was log, I got through it within a month or so, which is probably sooner than I would have read the big chunkster of a book. But it was compelling enough — even though it was non-fiction and not a suspenseful novel — that I found myself finding time to listen.

Jennifer Donovan enjoys fiction best, but interesting, informative and readable nonfiction fuels her love of reading as well. She blogs at Snapshot.

The most notable feature is lighting that actually allowed me to read. Not only was the lamp nice and bright, but there were reading lights on both sides of the bed, not to mention two books on the nightstand for those who might be in need of reading material: Poems of the Sea and Paulo Coehlo’s The Alchemist.

This chaise at the end of the bed was a VERY cozy place to sit and read (or — yes– watch TV). The cabinets around the TV also had some books (mostly decorative, but it was still a nice sight).

In addition to a really homey interior, the location — right on the Santa Monica boardwalk — was beautiful. Please read more about the surprising way I enjoyed the boardwalk at Snapshot.

Jennifer Donovan has enjoyed writing for 5 Minutes for Mom, especially attending press junkets (This trip and hotel was sponsored by Universal Studios). Be sure to check out the Big Miracle movie coverage next week.

Drawing on her own experience, Mary shows how to get out of debt, prioritize where your money is going, and be prepared for the unexpected. Her approach boils down to seven simple rules:

1. Spend less than you earn.
2. Save for the future.
3. Give some away.
4. Anticipate your irregular expenses.
5. Tell your money where to go.
6. Manage your credit.
7. Borrow only what you know you can repay.

They seem self-explanatory, I know, but how many of us know these things and still have trouble following through on them in our own financial lives? After briefly sharing her personal story and her philosophy of money management, Mary walks us through the specifics of implementing each money rule.

My favorite practical tip of hers is the formula 10-10-80, meaning simply that you save 10% of your income, give 10% of your income, and live on the other 80%. Out of the 80%, you also learn how to set aside money for expenses that aren’t fixed monthly amounts, such as annual insurance premiums or car repairs, through what she calls the Freedom Account.

For those facing large amounts of debt or even more serious credit issues, she gives a thorough explanation of how to understand and manage your credit report and walks us through how she evaluates debt before committing to any. I will admit that I think she is too lenient in her allowance for future debt, although she does provide some good guidelines for minimizing your risk if you do need to borrow money. She also spends several chapters at the end of the book explaining how to pay down debt more quickly.

If you have wanted to get control of your finances but haven’t found a way that works for you, 7 Money Rules for Life offers a simple but effective plan that will help you get things turned around in the right direction.

Trish is a self-proclaimed nerd who enjoys balancing her checkbook but can always use a bit of encouragement to keep her money moving in the right direction. She thanks Bethany House for the review copy of this book. You can find Trish blogging at In So Many Words.