Now, there are some pretty extraordinary accomplishments in this era of space travel – namely, some of the subjects of the book getting to orbit the earth, and achieving many ‘firsts’ for their field.
However, this book really deals with the less glamorous side of the moon landings – all the pre-Apollo missions of the ‘Mercury’ era. There was a sense of apt timing around my reading of The Right Stuff, with the anniversary of the moon landings last year, there was a dirge of documentaries to engage with. Illogical perhaps, especially as The Bonfire of the Vanities is likely to be up there in my top 10 all-time books. I’m not one for approaching books of this length generally because I rarely find any that keep my interest up for that long – and I have a nagging feeling that I could be reading two books in the same time frame.
I guess I could say the same about how I found myself being captivated throughout Wolfe’s exceptional novel The Bonfire of the Vanities – not really being able to nail down what kept me so entranced for all 690 pages of the tome. Within that bundle of books, you find yourself reading something without any concept of why you suddenly felt like reading a book published in 1979 about the NASA space program, by a guy who you knew more for his novels. It’s one thing that sums up the beauty of reading and building up a shelf of random titles to get through when you feel like it. Whilst lockdown has seemingly upped my threshold for reading – returning to books that are ‘must-reads’ like Lord of the Flies and Catch-22 alongside ploughing through mainstream bestsellers like Where the Crawdads Sing – it’s actually a book that I read at the very beginning of the year that is my standout title so far.
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