Thumper wrote:Apparently not much reading going on.
I'm finishing "Endurance" by Astronaut and former Navy Commander Scott Kelly. I've seen him twice and got the book for Christmas. It's only the second astronaut biography that I've read NOT from the Apollo era. I've really enjoyed this book. Kelly has a special skill of wowing you with cool astronaut stuff while still keeping it grounded. He's an ordinary guy getting the chance to do extraordinary things, but he explains it in matter of fact language. And he is able to make it personal. You feel his sacrifices, missing birthdays, holidays. Not being able to support his family when his sister in law was shot.
I find myself doing what I normally do as I reach the end of a book. (I take a long time to read a whole book) I'm slowing down even more because I don't want it to end. Even if you don't care a lick for astronauts and space. Scott Kelly tells a personal story about choices, hard work, and relationships.
I'll give you some other recommendations of non-Apollo astronaut biographies to read. There are some great ones.
I've had bad luck in the past year, not being able to make it through books. These three are sitting half-read on my night stand.
One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez. I'd been wanting to read it for quite a while, since I'd been to Colombia. But it turned out to be really dull. I'll share why in a moment....
The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad (author of
Heart of Darkness). I picked it up at Greenwich Observatory, because the plot is loosely associated with the Greenwich bombing of 1894.
Both of these novels were heavy on abstract descriptions of people and what they were thinking, and short of dialogue and action. That style apparently is not for me.
And the third, I'm sorry to say, is
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, sent to me by code monkey. This surprises me. I love Neil Gaiman books, and MrPi has been cracking up reading Terry Pratchett books for the past year. But a number of things bother me. It's like they are trying too hard to be be too clever. The writing style reminds me of another, I think Douglas Adams, where they add in a lot of quirky asides and asterisks that don't really advance the story but are supposed be funny. And they aren't. It worked for DA, but not them.* Also, it seems like every other paragraph they jump to a new location and set of characters, whom they don't really introduce but pick up as though you've been reading about them all along, and many chapters later you find out that they indeed are related to the story. Part of my problem is that I don't get a lot of time to sit and read, so when I pick it up I don't know if it's actually a new character or one I read about already but I have forgotten about.
Last night I decided I'd give
Good Omens one more try. I'll let you know how it goes. And I don't plan on watching the series, because it's on Amazon and I've chosen not to support that company.
Over this period I've read plenty of other good books. The most recent one I finished was another I picked up in England, the original James Bond story
Casino Royale. It also started a bit slow but I knew it would get to some action. I really enjoyed it and I look forward to reading some more. The irony is that I have never seen a James Bond movie, and I am making it my life goal never to see one. I don't really have a good reason for that. In my 20's I realized I hadn't seen one yet, so I just decided never to start. I'm sure I would enjoy the movies, but I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything by not watching them. However, based on clips I've seen, I think Sean Connery would be my favorite Bond.
*I think it's Douglas Adams** the book reminds me of, but I'm not sure. I feel like there is another writer I'm forgetting about. One that comes to mind is
Nostradamus Ate My Hamster by Robert Rankin, which is in my list of favorite books, but it's the only only book by him I've read.
**See what I did there?