Fans pick 100 books like Riding Rockets

I read every book I could find on space flight. However, none meant more to me than this one. It wasn’t necessarily the story of the two flights Collins made that touched me. What set this book apart for me was the fact that he wrote it himself. What resulted was a first-hand experience as an astronaut. 

When I was a kid, I was able to pass enough math and physics to become a professional pilot, but I had nowhere near the aptitude required to be an astronaut. I always found this a disappointment in my life. After spending hours with this book, I was taken on a journey no other author was ever able to fulfill. For that, I will always be grateful.

I went to see Mary Roach in person at an event held in the town where I live, and the interview was nothing short of hilarious. Roach’s curiosity and zest for life are infectious, and her storytelling style made me feel like I was the one (or, often, wishing I was the one) in the wacky situations she seems to find herself.

For me, her book is no different; it covers a lot of the wild, captivating stories involved with space travel. It is just such a fun book about a fun topic.

Lynn Sherr is a reporter, and was a friend of Sally Ride. Between knowing Ride personally and her many interviews with Ride’s partners, family, and friends, Sherr was able to write a remarkably in-depth biography of a person who largely avoided sharing personal information publicly.

I learned a lot about Ride I didn’t previously know, like the fact that the US’s first woman astronaut was also LGBTQIA+! She was a trailblazer on so many fronts.

I wanted to end the list with a book that gives a sense of what life in space is like now. Scott Kelly spent a year aboard the International Space Station, returning to Earth in 2016.

Being an astronaut is undoubtedly an incredible experience, and I envy those who have had the chance to look down on the Earth from space. But Kelly’s biography makes clear that the bulk of an astronaut’s day is not comprised of these moments of euphoria.

Lots of time is spent on tasks like maintaining the space station and running experiments, and life in a cramped station orbiting Earth in the void isn’t all fun and games. Carbon dioxide levels get high and give you headaches; from time to time, someone needs to tamp down the poop in the space toilet, and it’s hard to be physically separated from loved ones, especially when something catastrophic… show more.

Through a Life is a book that won me over for its intelligence. The premise may not be new, since it presents the life of a man from his birth to his death. But the way it is presented is absolutely original: on the left page appears a specific fact of the protagonist's life and on the right appears what the protagonist sees at that moment. Or maybe it's what he remembers because that's what life is, what we build through our memories. The concise graphics and very intelligent use of color fascinate me, and I think they make it a marvel of graphic design. A beautiful and painful book at the same time, which leaves you thinking for hours.

I was fascinated by how much cultural representations of astronauts and cosmonauts reveal about our societies in this rich and diverse volume. US pop culture is analyzed through astronaut gender representations in TV series, different portrayals of pilots-astronauts and scientists-astronauts in the movies, and the use of American frontier mythology tropes. Comparing representations of spacefarers in different national cultures shows that even glossy magazines carried an ideological message: Soviets traced their achievements to the advantages of socialism, while Americans touted liberty and openness. Finally, cultural attitudes are revealed by media attention to the changing professional, gender, and race demographics of the astronaut corps in the 1980s. In particular, the media treated women astronauts differently from men by emphasizing their feminine traits and family life instead of focusing on space work.

As one of the 8,000 people who applied (and wasn’t selected) as an astronaut in 1978, I wondered what made the six women chosen, including Dr. Seddon, stand out.

How about the stamina and skill to handle 24-hour shifts saving gunshot victims in the emergency room? How about pushing her body to the limit to hold her breath and swim two lengths underwater? And then there is the sheer determination that allowed her to endure almost drowning when the spacesuit she had to wear was sized for a man.

She not only was one of the first women astronauts, but she also married an astronaut and raised a happy family during the high-pressure Shuttle era. In my opinion, Rhea Seddon’s story should be required reading for all Americans!

Cunningham was one of those mean little SOBs, and his attitude was hardly improved when his astronaut career was torpedoed by the bad behavior of his mission commander on Apollo 7, Wally Schirra, which tainted the entire crew for the NASA brass. It turns out that Cunningham could also write, and the result is this pungent memoir — the title is loaded with irony. It is the least constrained of all the astronaut memoirs, unmistakably in Cunningham’s own pugnacious voice. 

“If you can dream it, if you believe it and work hard for it, anything is possible.” This passage is why I absolutely love this book. This is repeated several times throughout this beautiful picture book that is based on the life of astronaut, Dr. Mae Jemison. Mae’s parents were very supportive of her dream of going to space, but Mae’s teacher suggested that perhaps she become a nurse rather than an astronaut. She proved her wrong! Mae also became a doctor, a Peace Corp medical officer, and the first Black female astronaut. Mae is definitely among the stars!

This was the book that made me a pilot. I often tell people that the movie was about the astronauts, whereas the book is about the pilots who were astronauts.

In this book, Wolfe captures the essence of what it is to be a Pilot better than any other book I have ever read. I first read this when I was in my teens. Before every check ride, I revisited selected passages to get in the right frame of mind to go out and crush my flight.

This is the book that inspired, encouraged, and drove me. I have read and re-read it more times than I can remember, and I will undoubtedly continue to read it far into the future.