Orbital

one of those rare reading experiences where you get so engrossed you forget where you are – the construction is brilliant and beautiful – so lyrical she took me to orbit with her and i loved every minute of it

This was fantastic in parts and very slow in others. Literally no plot. Just musings.

Struggled with the style of writing of this. I found it had a distancing effect that made the book hard to get into. It follows 6 members of the ISS across one Earth day or 16 orbits. The fact not a lot happens is thematically on point but makes for slow going. It's very calm and reflective. In a different mood maybe I would have enjoyed it more.

This is a very well written reflective piece about space travel in the age of billionaires. It is short, and hardly anything happens. I enjoyed listening to it, but it took me a long time to get through because nothing really pulled me in.

Ecstatically beautiful!

Not for me.

It was fine. I enjoyed the lists and descriptions of space, but the writing and lack of plot didn't quite work for me. While it's obviously pretty and aiming to be profound, I found myself zoning out a lot, and it felt like reading pretentious Tumblr posts. Meh.

It wasn't for me. And the worst part about that is knowing that, as much as I disliked it, if I wrote a book, it would be much the same. Damn it.

Space Oddity: The Book—a title that might feel slightly trite—is an engaging read. There are many moments where the prose feels like it could slot into the lyrics of the song. In fact, "lyrical" is perhaps the most fitting word to describe this ode to the planet.

Six astronauts aboard a space shuttle have thoughts about Life, the Universe, and Everything during the course of one 24 hour period. They observe a gigantic typhoon ravage the South Pacific islands, and gaze wistfully at the moon, knowing that four other astronauts are on the verge of making the first crewed lunar landing in 50 years. All of this is conveyed with beautiful descriptive paragraphs, mind-boggling lists (there are 540 hours of morning exercise in a single nine-month mission, etc.), and a bit of characterization. You either like this stuff or you don't. The folx over at the Booker Prize are obviously big fans.

Exercise in navel gazing, trite metaphors. Some nice moments but overall not a fan

I get what the book is trying to do, but this is not a style I usually enjoy and is not something I want to read right now. This is going back into the TBR pile; I will come back to this later.

Sweet, moving, humbling. At times reminiscent of--and doubtless inspired by--Pale Blue Dot, but that's just a fraction of its complexity. Much of it centers around the simple logistics of one 24-hour period aboard the ISS. The simple, even banal (it seems criminal to use that word, but there you go) humdrum (ditto) of daily existence: moving around, doing chores, performing bodily maintenance, reminiscing, gaping in wonder at our home planet below. Harvey skillfully blends feelings of awe with simple everyday reality, and I think offers us Earthbound masses a realistic glimpse into what it must be like.

The book tells the story of six astronauts on the International Space station It covers a range of topics including the feeling of detachment from each other and their detachment/attachment to their families and of earth itself. Extremely well written and the boredom of the daily routines are brought to life without boring the reader. It is easy to see why this book was short listed for the Booker Prize and why it won the prize.

I didn't think about it when I started reading this book, but the moment was wrong for me—or I assume as much. Certainly, I need to re-read because, quite frankly, a lot of things around me were stealing my focus. And I do feel that you need to find a good and nice portion of time and space to truly enjoy it as it is quite serene.

A creative writing grad student writes about the first time she saw a globe.

Occasionally poetic, largely aimless, plotless, and characterless. Decidedly not for me.

A beautiful, thoughtful analysis of mankind and us individuals that make up the whole.

The book’s construction is fascinating in that pretty much all plot has been removed to give space to this contemplation of the planet and its place in the universe. The use of repetition is also really striking - putting us in the position of the astronauts and their 16 sunrises each day.

I’d have preferred more a storyline I think, but maybe that’s just out of habit…

This isn't a book about anything. Nothing happens. There is no adventure and the author forgot to add the content of a story. However, there are endless descriptions of the earth from orbit. Page after page of run-on sentences, no paragraph breaks, and lists of things. Also lots of reflections on what it is to be human, what is humanity, and our role in the cosmos. Tedious stuff but an extra star for being relatively short.

I'm primarily a character-driven reader. I don't require a whole lot of plot. Show me the deep psychology of a character, what they mentally go through when they face some struggle, and I'm happy. To get me really hooked, throw in some metafictional elements or clever wordplay. I can read an entire novel about a man at the grocery store and love it; I can become engrossed with a book about a woman sitting in her living room, drinking coffee, and watching people go by. Plot is nice to have, but it's not a requirement for me.

Orbital essentially has no plot. It's a day in the life of a six-crew space station. Not even an exciting day, just a pretty mundane day. And I could be okay with that–except there's not really much happening with these characters either. The only points of significance is that one of their mothers has recently died, and a ship will be passing their orbit today, making them no longer the humans farthest from the earth, but neither of these really make much of an impact on the novel. We get the characters' thoughts, their interactions with one another, but in a single day without any really defining moments, it's really rather dry.

This is a novel for lovers of language. It reads like a love letter in novel form to space, earth, and humanity. Those who love metaphors and meditations on beauty (but rarely its opposite) will likely bask in the rays of this novel. Some of it might get you thinking about the bigger picture, but some is just meant to sound pretty. If you're a reader who is language-driven, this might be one worth checking out.

Personally, I thought Orbital was rather dry. I didn't dislike it, but I did find it tedious. If this novel had been two or three times the length it was, I probably would've hated it, or even not finished it. Fortunately, it was a very quick read.

In Orbital, Samantha Harvey explores the vast unknown, while remaining tethered to the kaleidoscope of human experience. Set in the near future, the novel follows a group of astronauts orbiting Earth as they reflect on life, love, and the ephemeral nature of humanity. The narrative seamlessly moves between the personal, the cosmic, and the terrestrial, exploring the fluidity of identity in ever-changing contexts.

Harvey's lyrical prose enhances the meditative quality of the setting, and it's here where Orbital both shines and stumbles. The themes of loss, time, and the search for meaning are deep, but the circular narrative sometimes feels more exhausting than insightful. For a short book, there's a lot of filler posing as profundity.

While the novel's ambition is to explore the vastness of space and self, I found the lack of narrative momentum made it hard to invest deeply in the characters. Orbital is beautiful, but frustratingly elusive - bright and shiny like a star, and just as distant.

NOMINATED FOR THE 2024 URSULA K. LE GUIN PRIZE FOR FICTION

Certainly not the most Le Guin-esque book I've read on these shortlists. It's a strangely hopeful book, celebrating our planet and the people who live on it. The thing I loved about it most is the prose– some stunning sentences can be found on nearly every page. Can't say I was too impressed by the overal message, it reeks of oversentimentalism– this entire book is basically just the “overview effect” turned into a long-form story.

Looking through a lens at people looking at our planet through a lens. Who needs a plot?