Reviews - Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery

176 reviews for:

Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery

I listened to the audio book version of this and nearly turned it off because Kelly's voice is so boring. Thankfully, I kept listening and got used to his voice because the actual content of the book is very enjoyable. Now I want to read more astronaut books.

eowynshelmet's review against another edition

5.0

What a fun, informative, and uplifting read. Kelly's memoir of spending almost a year on the Space Station taught me so much. Among the things I took away from the book is the exceptional nature of the station itself, one of the few projects in the world that remains truly international. Kelly walks us through both the joys and challenges of living in space. The pages dedicated to the attack on his sister-in-law, Rep. Gabby Giffords, are deeply moving. Sometimes the book is laugh-out-loud funny. I listened to the audio book read by Kelly himself, and it was better, I think, than reading the book since I got a lot from his own intonation. Highly recommend.

chuxsox's review against another edition

5.0

Scott Kelly lived the life and experiences that I dreamed of living as a young boy! Wow, what a ride! I am familiar with many of his experiences personally, having served in Naval aviation as well, knowing the culture in an F-14 squadron and the squadron ready room. Perhaps this familiarity is what informed my intense enjoyment of this book. It is a well-written detailed account of not only his year living on the International Space Station, but also the path he trod to get there. I'm really glad I read it. More like this, please! Thanks, Alicia, for the recommendation!

kami5's review

3.0

Enjoyed the read - it was a fun encapsulation of the difficulties about living in space, down to the nitty gritty details that usually don't come out of interviews or articles. It was a fascinating window on how space is tough on astronauts and what it takes to make it through a year on the ISS. 3.5

apatrick's review

3.0

This is pretty interesting, but at the end, I really wished Kelly had talked more about his life after returning to Earth. Maybe he'll write a follow-up. I'm not that interested in his life before the year-in-space experiment, but I guess everyone wants to tell their story. I was surprised that being a twin didn't feature more heavily in his writing, but I suppose he probably wanted to preserve his brother's privacy. Too bad he didn't feel the same way about his ex-wife. She comes out looking pretty terrible, but he looks even worse for portraying her as pretty terrible.

Anyway, aside from all that, the space stuff is pretty cool. It's a great conversation starter -- would you ever go up in space and why or why not? I think I'm a little bit terrified of ever leaving the planet, even just to orbit it.

Fun fact: because NASA was Kelly's employer, they couldn't actually ask him to participate in a study with his twin brother on how that much time in space would affect his genes. Once he talked about the possibility at a press conference, though, it could proceed. For me, that's an interesting intersection of privacy laws and science.

fsuarez's review

4.0

adventurous challenging emotional informative inspiring medium-paced

Equal parts heartfelt and informative. It was fascinating reading about Scott’s journey to becoming an astronaut as well as having a first hand account of the many things we do not know about and do not see on the ground.