A Quarter of Books: From the ISS to Iridium

Eli Bendersky's reading list for the third quarter of 2023 spans a wide range of genres, from astronaut autobiographies to science fiction and technical guides. Here's a look at what stood out and what fell flat.

Space, Science, and Engineering Tales

"Endurance: My Year in Space and How I Got There" by Scott Kelly offers a solid look at the life and work of an astronaut, based on his year-long mission aboard the ISS. This young readers edition provides plenty of intriguing detail for those curious about the profession.

Similarly, "Chasing Space" by Leland Melvin (another astronaut autobiography) is an enjoyable read, though it could have benefited from more focus on the specifics of his space missions.

For a different kind of space story, "Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story" by John Bloom chronicles the history of the Iridium satellite project, concentrating on the intense effort to save it after Motorola shut it down. It is praised for its excellent writing and rich technical and business insight, though the funding negotiations can get a bit dull.

In the medical realm, Siddhartha Mukherjee's "The Song of the Cell" explores the discovery and role of cells in the body, leading into discussions of disease. While the cell biology isn't as deep as some might expect, the book weaves together several disciplines effectively. Jeffery Lieberman's "Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry", meanwhile, is a fascinating history of the field, concentrating on the 20th century.

Back on Earth, Spike Walker's "Coming Back Alive" tells the story of a daring Coast Guard rescue in Alaska. While it touches on how the Coast Guard operates, its laser focus on a single mission made it somewhat tedious.

Technical Reads

For developers, "CORS in Action" by Monsur Hossain is a useful, comprehensive resource, but it has a few significant drawbacks. The book is nearly a decade old, leading to some outdated advice given the shift from XHR to fetch. Furthermore, the content is padded to fit a book format when a long blog post would have sufficed, and the explanations often take long detours.

Fiction and Memoir

The standout recommendation is the memoir "Finding Me" by Viola Davis. The book is a powerful and genuinely raw account, especially potent in its first two-thirds. Her authentic voice is a welcome departure from the often ghostwritten celebrity autobiography.

Several novels, however, didn't resonate as strongly. "Death's End" by Cixin Liu, the final book in the "Three-Body Problem" trilogy, is described as the least enjoyable of the series, with pacing issues and a plot that turns incredibly strange. Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", set around the Prague Spring, felt more like a chore, despite its historical notoriety. Seth Kantner’s "Ordinary Wolves" is a decent work of fiction about Alaskan subsistence living, but its overly complex language pales in comparison to the author's own non-fiction autobiography on the same subject, A Thousand Trails Home. Youth novels like "Or and Alexandra" (written in Hebrew) and "Julia Child" by Erin Hagar were considered only average, with the latter getting credit for its efficiency and high signal-to-noise ratio, a feature of books for young readers.

The book "The Opposite of Spoiled" by Ron Liebler offers a scattered collection of tips on raising financially-savvy children, with a few insightful points despite being generally "scan-able." Finally, "Shrinks" is highly recommended for its engrossing historical coverage of how psychiatry developed into a science and a clinical practice.

A Quick Note on Re-reads

The list also includes a few re-reads: "Eloquent JavaScript" (3rd edition) by Marijn Haverbeke, "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan, "Masters of Doom" by David Kushner, and "Little House on the Prairie" by Laura Ingalls Wilder.