It was narrated brilliantly by the author, full of warmth, full of humour, full of wanting to share with us all. Chris Hadfield's experience as an astronaut - or more importantly, on becoming an astronaut - proved otherwise. The book was saved from utter repellency as I found interest in the insights within NASA and Roscosmos. Turning off my little light, I was perfectly at ease in this otherworldly place, knowing that in Houston and Korolev, people in Mission Control were keeping watch as we spun through the sky and into sleep, on our journey around and around the world.

Proper etiquette on the ISS is to have a towel tucked into your clothes or floating beside you while you work out, to soak up your sweat. Management has to create a climate where owning up to mistakes is permissible and colleagues have to agree, collectively, to cut each other some slack.

If you’re looking to get into a memoir that explores the life of someone extraordinary who does extraordinary things yet still stays humble and true in his account of it, I highly recommend this. They need to get a safe distance from the ISS before lighting the engines again, or the exhaust and spattering of waste fuel would batter her big solar arrays.

We hear so much about the weirdness of loss of gravity - but this is the first time I'd heard about the weirdness of getting gravity back. Hadfield takes readers on a fascinating and exciting journey while offering insightful-if somewhat unconventional -- wisdom applicable to everyday life here on Earth.His music video, a zero-gravity version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity," received over 10 million views in its first three days online.

But since 2014, having read this book has made that journey distinctly easier through the insights it gives into how very much more extreme challenges can be! Deeply moving in its ability to engage, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth is written by NASA Astronaut and YouTube star Colonel Chris Hadfield with the complete and unabridged audiobook narrated by the author. This said, I found this to be a difficult read partly due to the repetitive and "take my advice I know better" tone.

I picked this book up because of plans to create a triptych of imagery from underwater, up in the air and then out into space (with the unique ‘vehicle’ that I work with) so had developed an interest in all things space related; especially after having the privilege of meeting the team at Houston, standing looking down at a live mission control and visiting the Neutral Buoyancy Lab there. His online videos, including a zero-gravity version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity," have collectively received more than fifty million views. Just writing about it now makes me feel especially grateful to be a terrestrial animal, feet on the ground! A certain personality type that was perfectly acceptable, even stereotypical, in the past - the real hard-ass, say - is not wanted on the voyage when it is going to be a long one. The word “guide” in the title of this book was a bit misleading, because it was actually almost a story of Chris’s journey to outer space and back.