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A review by coronaurora
An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield
3.0
I can't really refute the life lessons extracted by Mr Hadfield in a life dedicated to a skill-heavy, high-stakes profession. Being involved in a skills-oriented profession myself in which stakes can be life-and-death (for others) myself, I was on the same page as Mr Hadfield with "sweating the small stuff" and "Be prepared, always".
I just felt that the work failed at the editor's table and there just seemed a bit too much of talking-at-reader and couple this with being structured and titled very oddly with the titles of sections seldom bearing much resemblance with the monologue contained within, after a while it just seemed like attending a confessional one didn't particularly ask for.
The detail of the routines, training, mores, personal-life sacrifices certainly dismantles the casual life-as-astronaut stereotype, but if you aren't absolutely smitten by the charms of this man's way of looking back and transcribing his life, justifying his life choices and the life lessons (and I certainly wasn't), the book goes on a bit.
There are some glorious nuggets of breathtaking reconstruction of outlandish situations Chris found himself and what his/his fellow's actions were at that point: these I felt exposed more life and character than the book around them: like a gritty eye while spacewalking which almost renders Chris blind, a bee (!) inside his visor , a snake (!!) inside his cockpit.
I just felt that the work failed at the editor's table and there just seemed a bit too much of talking-at-reader and couple this with being structured and titled very oddly with the titles of sections seldom bearing much resemblance with the monologue contained within, after a while it just seemed like attending a confessional one didn't particularly ask for.
The detail of the routines, training, mores, personal-life sacrifices certainly dismantles the casual life-as-astronaut stereotype, but if you aren't absolutely smitten by the charms of this man's way of looking back and transcribing his life, justifying his life choices and the life lessons (and I certainly wasn't), the book goes on a bit.
There are some glorious nuggets of breathtaking reconstruction of outlandish situations Chris found himself and what his/his fellow's actions were at that point: these I felt exposed more life and character than the book around them: like a gritty eye while spacewalking which almost renders Chris blind, a bee (!) inside his visor , a snake (!!) inside his cockpit.