Homer Hickam

Carrying Albert Home by Homer Hickam is a wonderful "somewhat true story" that weaves a wonderfully fantastic trip around nuggets of family lore from the author's life. When you start reading it simply seems like a nice tale, a bit fanciful in the events but otherwise just a down home rural story with the usual embellishments those tales usually incorporate. Yet as each section ends you feel both closer to the characters as well as closer to understanding the dynamics of a relationship in show more general.

The writing flows such that you don't realize how much you're reading. This really allows the reader to get lost in the story, pulling for or against characters. I even found myself imagining the personality of Albert and really liking him, and this isn't one of those talking animal books where the personality is explicit.

I would recommend this book to just about anybody. The sections are often like little adventures or mysteries while the entire book is about love(s), relationships and what people will do try to make love come, grow and stay.

Reviewed from a copy made available through Goodreads First Reads. show less

Well, this was a hoot. Before marrying Homer Hickham, Sr., Elsie Lavendar wanted out of Coalwood, West Virginia. She did not intend to spend her life as the wife of a coal miner. So she accepted an invitation from her once-rich Uncle Aubrey to visit him in Florida, where she met a handsome young dancer with Hollywood aspirations, named Christian Ebsen. She developed quite a crush, but his intentions did not include a romantic entanglement just at that time, and he took off for New York, to show more seek fame and fortune, which he found. (You may have heard of him under the name of Buddy.) Elsie finished a secretarial course, and found a job in Florida, but she was lonely, and eventually she got back on the bus, ended up in Coalwood, and somehow found herself agreeing to marry a coal miner after all. To her surprise--and that of her new husband--one day the postman delivered a wedding present from Buddy Ebsen, a tiny alligator Elsie named Albert and came to adore the way some of us do our cats. A growing alligator has no business trying to live in West Virginia, however, no matter how well-loved and pampered he maybe. Elsie, and even more so Homer the Elder, soon realized that the only thing to do was to take Albert back to Florida where he belonged. Hence, this "somewhat true story" of a long journey to carry Albert Home.
Homer the Younger spins this out in a series of episodes he sets up as tales told to him by one or the other of his parents at various points in his life, explaining what-all happened on that epic road trip during the Great Depression. Like I said, it's a hoot. It features John Steinbeck, Ernest and Pauline Hemingway, bank robbers, union organizers, a hurricane, a mysterious rooster and some other fanciful stuff. Oh, and Buddy Ebsen shows up again too. If you can imagine a mash-up of Paper Moon, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and The Grapes of Wrath written by Fannie Flagg, you'll have the idea. But if you read it, watch out for the ending. Like Albert's tail, it could hit you a serious wallop. show less

In Rocket Boys, Homer H. “Sonny” Hickam, Jr. details his late adolescence growing up in Coalwood, West Virginia. As the younger son of the mine foreman with no particular talent for football or other pursuits valued in his community, he faces the prospects of following in his father’s footsteps. His mother dreads this prospect as the mine controls his father’s and, by extension, the family’s lives. The Soviet launch of Sputnik grips the nation and inspires Sonny to want to launch show more his own rockets. While his initial attempt simply succeeds in destroying his mother’s fence, he enlists a group of friends and eventually the whole town to build and fly his rockets. When the local football team finds themselves unable to play, the Rocket Boys become the talk of the town, eventually going to the National Science Fair to show that Coalwood can do more than mining and sports. Along the way, Sonny learns some hard life lessons and discovers that the people in his world are far more complicated than his young adolescent self imagined. Hickam takes his time in Rocket Boys to ground the reader in the world of Coalwood so that the reader can appreciate the changes in daily life that follow young Sonny beginning the Big Creek Missile Agency and inspiring people to look up. In addition to being a memoir of a specific time in the Space Race and detailing its impact on those outside of policymaking circles, Hickam’s account rings true as a coming-of-age narrative to which anyone can relate who went through the pangs of adolescence and the desire for more than they say in their everyday lives. Hickam eventually succeeded in his dream of working for NASA from 1981-1998, training astronauts for EVAs, the Hubble mission, Spacelab-J on STS-47 (featuring the flights of the first African-American woman and the first Japanese astronaut), and payloads for the International Space Station. Joe Johnston’s 1999 film October Sky adapted this work, though it included changes for the sake of a movie. Fans of that film are recommended to read the original work and better understand the depth of young Sonny’s world. show less

I enjoyed the movie before I read the book. Now, well... Reading the book makes the film incredibly disturbing at best.

It was oddly compelling for a book featuring such backward sexist, homophobic thinking throughout. I think part of the reason is because it's a lot closer to the truth than the film ever got. The things the film did in reaction to this telling of the 'story', such as it is, of the Rocket Boys, are rather creepy. The film made the book!protagonist's cat into a love interest. show more The film made women prizes. True, Book!Homer still thinks of women in a stereotypical young adult male fashion, but it's better than what the film did. Book!Homer at least acknowledges that women aren't these stereotypical cheerleader/pretty things that are only good for dances. They have their own lives and get down and dirty and have their own investments in life.

Homer's mother is much more of a character. She's got chutzpa. His father is much more of a sexist, homophobic prick. His brother is a sexist prick.

I also really don't like how they stuck to Hollywood formula for the gang of protagonists. Homer and Co. are far more intellectual in the book. I don't get what the problem is with showing a protagonist who is stereotypically nerdy in some ways who is also interested in stereotypically non-nerdy things like football and roughhousing. Not that either of those are good things, but it would have helped people see that the definition of a 'nerd' as we see it today has quite the range.

I also think it's odd that Homer got something of a reputation boost in the film among the school crowd. Thinking logically, even in the film logic his original position in the social hierarchy before he spoke to Quentin the first time makes no sense. He's still the son of the guy most kids' parents dislike. His brother is a big football star who doesn't really like him who should be a subject of envy. It doesn't work.

Honestly, the movie's kind of shit in light of that. It's a feel-good film that does so many things wrong and sticks to formula too much to sacrifice other things. Even if some parts are more realistic to fact that others, the film just isn't good. And it's still pretty sexist, although the book tries pretty hard to put that to shame.

Overall it was a quick read and showed a better understanding of the town and local history and gave Homer and Co. a lot more credit for their work. Don't watch the movie. Read this. show less