Lisa's Review: You Are Here

You Are Here (Around the World in 92 Minutes) by Chris Hadfield

My Rating:  4 of 5 Stars

During Chris Hadfield's five month mission being Commander of the International Space Station he orbited the earth 2,597 times & took about 45,000 pictures. In You Are Here, he presents close to 150 of his favorite shots.

The book is organized by continent and within each section, Hadfield presents a wide range of photographs - deserts, forests, bodies of water, cities at night, just to name a few. Each photo is accompanied by some sort of description - ranging from a simple descriptor of what/where the location is, to a more in-depth background of what we are looking at & how a particular land formation came to be. Some pages also contain fun & whimsical comparisons as to what a particular bit of earth looks like - like the brain-y hills in Paraguay with an eerie coloring that reminded Hadfield of something Frankensein might create or the channels & docks in Melbourne that seem to form the upper body of a dinosaur (the legs and tail of a t-rex are included below the picture to complete the image for the reader).   

I have to say, this is an impressive collection & I often found myself saying "that's so cool" (out loud) as I turned the pages. It is a great illustration showing how impressive, beautiful, and diverse this planet is. I think the following excerpt from An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth really sums up what Hadfield presents in You Are Here:

"The windows of a spaceship casually frame miracles. Every 92 minutes, another sunrise: a layer cake that starts with orange, then a thick wedge of blue, then the richest, darkest icing decorated with stars. The secret patterns of our planet are revealed: mountains bump up rudely from orderly plains, forests are green gashes edged with snow, rivers glint in the sunlight, twisting and turning like silvery worms. Continents splay themselves out whole, surrounded by islands sprinkled across the sea like delicate shards of shattered eggshells." page 1, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth

This is my thirteenth book read for the 8th Annual Canadian Book Challenge.