October Sky - Homer H. Hickam, Jr

Once in a while you find a memoir by someone who actually had an interesting life, and is able to write about it in an interesting way. Hurray!

Okay, Homer Jr lived in a West Virginia coal town in the 1950s, and instead of high school ball and working in the mines, he got stuck into rocketry. Being an egghead in a coal town wasn't always the best plan, but Homer and his mates made out alright.

I think what keeps this story interesting is that it doesn't rely on the "I did this, then that, then this, then that..." approach. He's managed to tie in the events that happened around his immediate experience, and then with the hindsight of a few decades, relate the whole works as intertwined events - like when his father, the coal company's head guy in the town, couldn't slip him some materials for building rockets after the company was bought out and the unions showed up and so on.

Almost made me want to go out and build a rocket.