By reading Mary Roach’s Packing For Mars, I’ve crossed another book off of my Unread Books list and off of my Christmas 2010 list. Plus, it was a nonfiction book that actually merits the phrase “compulsively readable” for being at once so funny and so intelligently written that I hardly realized I was learning anything about living in zero gravity. But I did. I learned that astronaut food used to be made by veterinarians and tasted so bland that most astronauts preferred not to eat. And that you can die all sorts of interesting ways in space but not, probably, by your blood boiling.
It’s a delightful read if you like strange-and-sometimes-gross details and have a keen sense of situational irony. Now I want to read her book, Stiff, about cadavers. It will probably be hilarious.
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