Orbital

This was good, but odd. I listened to the audio book and it took me FOUR (I'm not exaggerating) listens to actually stick to and enjoy the story.

A day aboard the ISS, multiple astronauts orbiting the Earth. Perspectives on so many themes alongside the mundane side of life aboard. It's atmospheric, detatched, and awe inspiring.

That said, it's very light on plot, the characters don't really feel they matter, and some of the themes are repetitive and shallow. I feel like it would make a great movie or tv series.

I actually think I might reread it again soon, which feels insane to say.

This is more a meditation and character study than a narrative. In that respect, it's quite beautiful, especially if one doesn't know much about space and space flight.

But since I am already in awe of human tech in space, the book was monotonous to me.

Audiobook - it’s both a brilliant and potentially damning thing that this book almost instantly put me to sleep; and I’m not sure that it would have been one I would have been able to read physically. I enjoyed the detail of the astronauts day to day life and at times it read more like an autobiography or documentary than fiction. I listened to the end and don’t remember how it ended… and yet I don’t mind. This is the vibe of it I guess.

Orbital describes the cyclical journey of six astronauts, with plenty of tasks but no real destination. They are tethered to the earth, just as human behaviour is tethered to its animal roots. And while the astronauts, much like humanity itself, have professed aspirations, they are ultimately moving parts in the interconnected whole of the cosmos.

Samantha Harvey offers beautiful prose, composed of distinct but interconnected strands of thought. It might sometimes feel that style trumps substance, but I don't think that is the case -- I think form and content are entirely congruent in a set of reflections that sometimes conflict and sometimes align.

I'm not quite as gushing as the praise that has been heaped on this book. It is very pleasant to read, but it is, for me, somewhat forgettable. It is to be praised for its brevity, many authors would have felt compelled to make this longer, but it doesn't need to be.

There is no plot as such, it's mostly the thoughts of the astronauts co-mingled with the orbits of the ISS around earth.

I wouldn't heartily recommend this as a must read, but at the same time I wouldn't caution someone not to bother, if it appeals to you, then it's probably worth it for you.

I picked this up having not seen it before, from the combination of the blurb and the reviews on the cover, promising a beautiful book about astronauts on the International Space Station.

It is precisely that. Delicious, evocative, and poetic prose in a sweeping flow that both captures the disorienting combination of the banal and extraordinary of life in space. Astronauts in (or "on") orbit are inevitably some of the most capable and amazing people alive, but their lives are finely regimented and filled with finicky, highly structured work and lots and lots of housekeeping. The juxtaposition of that caretaking work with the fact they are in space, looking down on the world beneath from a god's-eye view, is central to the narrative here. It is less a story, and more an exploration of the humanity in the extraordinariness of the astronauts, and the extraordinary in the ordinariness of the Earth that they so eagerly and passionately leave behind.

Except they are tethered to it, psychologically, and spend huge amounts of their days ensuring the ISS is kept as close to Earth-like as it can be, because that's what makes space at all liveable.

There was some ebb and flow to the reading of this, for me, times when I lost it a little bit, though that was likely to do with me and the way I was reading it as much as anything to do with the writing.

I found this book beautiful, for its humanity, and its invigoration of our relationship to the Earth. It's short, and well worth your time.

Op de valreep lees ik het beste boek van het jaar. Orbital won dit jaar de Booker Prize, iets wat ik helemaal gemist had. Het boek verteld het verhaal van 4 astronauten en 2 kosmonauten aan boord van de ISS. Alles speelt zich af in 24 uur, waarin de ISS 16 omwentelingen om de aarde maakt. Als mij vraagt waar het boek over gaat, antwoord ik "waarnemen". Of het nu om het waarnemen van grote dingen gaat, de aarde zelf, over de ontwikkeling van weersomstandigheden, het gebrek aan grenzen vanuit de ruimte, of over kleine dingen zoals experimenten met mos of muizen, over gevoelens of kunst. Briliant geschreven, er moet een onwijze tijd aan voorbereiding in dit boek zitten. Ik heb wel eens een interview met André Kuipers beluisterd en wat hij toen vertelde lees ik hierin terug.

[...]You'll see no countries, just a rolling indivisible globe which knows no possibility of separation, let alone war.[...]

Dit boek ga ik zeker nog eens herlezen.