Review: Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery

Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery by Scott Kelly
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm honestly fairly conflicted about this book. I was equally intrigued and bored by this book. Simultaneously interested and disinterested.  One of the great real-life heroic stories of scientific strife in our lifetime times written by the world's most average dad. I wanted to like this book but walked away with very middling feelings about it. I don't regret reading it, but still wished it was better.

The book is written with a very dry, matter-of-fact writing style. There are vague outbursts of emotion, the rant on CO2 scrubbers sticks out in my mind, but most of the volume is just recalling examples of the trials of being a navy pilot, test subject, and space dad. There's nothing particularly wrong with the writing. But not bad doesn't mean it's good.

Side note: The by-line has the name Margaret Lazarus Dean added to it. My guess is this is the person who physically wrote the book. Or, at least, was assigned by the publisher to refine the text. Either way, the prose needed work.

I will praise the book in that it does successfully create a strong sense of what it's like to be an astronaut. I learned a good deal and realized it's far more physically demanding than most might suspect. Most of the novel isn't written in a well-constructed exciting way, but it is at least interesting from a pure experience sort of way.

There's not much else to say about this book. Looking back on it, I'll probably only remember the more interesting facts of the novel and disregard most of the text. It's a great story but would have preferred it was written in a different style. Or any style really.

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