I’ve been sharing tidbits from You Will Die straight from my nook. Â It can share straight to twitter. That’s cool!
Just now, it told me that I had reached the “Sharing Limit“. Â That’s amazing!
You know what that means? In a conference call, someone said “But what if they tweet out the whole book?”
Mary Roach’s books are just like her TED talk. They’re smart, funny and charm you with a total affection for her subject matter.
I’ve read all her books and so far Packing for Mars is the best. She is writing about the insane goal of shipping a few bubbling meat bags through an irradiated vacuum for 500 days so that we can visit a lifeless planet.
She covers it all from a people perspective, looking at the glorious business of being a person. How do we handle the boredom, the food, the farting? She covers the serious problems with poop, pee, vomit and also sex. The book is worth reading for the chapter on Space Hygiene alone. It’s called “Houston We Have a Fungus”.
Near the end, a final quote from Ben Franklin, on someone who sees the Montgolfiers’ maiden balloon flight and calls it frivolous:
What use is a newborn baby?
