Welcome to Litsy!

Sigh. It‘s not you, Orbital, it‘s me. But maybe it‘s you, just a little. (Also maybe audio was a poor choice for me with this one.)

I was enticed by the Booker win and an immediately available audio copy on Libby. This sounded like something I‘d enjoy: meditative and thoughtful. I like meditative and thoughtful. I don‘t need a page-turning plot, but I did want some semblance of a story. Halfway through I‘m still struggling to remember ⤵️

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https://youtu.be/FiLkv_JjbBg?si=3xVZFff79eQXeZKE

Introduction

Mystery guest

Weekly highlights

Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

I know I wrote that if you won the Booker, I would give you another chance. So of course you won, but I‘m just not in the mood to do it right now. So maybe we‘ll meet again sometime in the future?

Little bit of a background change for me. I'm at a conference through Saturday. Today's pre-conference program focused on strategic planning. It was actually quite a great program. And the book I brought to read is this year's Booker Prize winner, Orbital by Samantha Harvey.

#bookerprize2024
I mean, I'm not *unhappy* but of the eight longlisted books I've read so far this one came in at 4th place. 🤷
Would love to know if it was anyone here's top pick.

I listened to the audio version of Orbital (what now seems like ages ago) and really enjoyed it. I recall it being meditative, something I am typically drawn to because life is so noisy.

Another perfect read following the results of the election. I was transported out of this world, immersed in the lives of astronauts orbiting Earth. It puts into perspective how small each of our lives is and how little we, as individuals, matter in the grand scheme of things. While this can seem upsetting at first, it‘s actually rather freeing for me personally. The book zooms in on characters‘ experiences but then way out to the universal.

6 astronauts orbit the Earth & reflect on what brought them to that point. A beautiful & poetic book. Who knew I‘d need a book set in space to gain a little perspective this week.

“We matter greatly and not at all. To reach some pinnacle of human achievement only to discover that your achievements are next to nothing and that to understand this is the greatest achievement of any life, which itself is nothing, and also much more than everything.”

This is interesting but I have no idea how it made the Booker shortlist. It all happens in a day on the ISS as they circle the Earth. It's about the environment and the absurdity of politics and maybe a bit about humanity in general.

#BookSpinBingo @TheAromaofBooks

I am not sure that I really liked the elegiac structure of this book. Didn‘t really work for me.

This is a book for language lovers. Yes there are characters, there is a semblance of a plot, Harvey talks about space, and earth and not so subtly about climate change, but it is all background to her gorgeous prose.
This is definitely a pick, and a great book for the Booker short list. I am in a bit of a slump so this book that would normally take me a day to read room me 2 weeks, not a reflection of the book but of my current struggles.

A book that made me feel dizzy with the description of a space station orbiting the earth as the astronauts contemplate their lives and families on earth who pass repeatedly in the blink of an eye. But also dizzy with prose describing the beauty of a unique planet seen from blinking lights of cities tounending oceans of blue. It was a short read, but it took me some time to absorb it all. I enjoyed it + feel it needs a reread.

Tha shortlist
Booker

The One - Nov 12

Next up on #kindle

Sustained wandering reflection. An imagined day on the ISS… reflecting - on life, pasts & futures, practical realities in this tiny station, on the earth out the window, on existence. One astronaut is determined to reach the moon, another works a radio connecting to amateur radio operators on the ground within range. One has just lost her mother, yesterday. This book is one day, 16 rotations around the earth. I floated off with their thoughts.

There were parts of this book that I liked, but mostly it just felt to me like rambling. I can understand why some people like it, and why it‘s been Booker shortlisted, but it‘s not my cup of tea. I feel it can be summed up by a quote from the book itself: “It‘s just imaginings and projections, and they could all be wrong.”

"Maybe it's hard to shift from thinking your planet is safe at the centre of it all to knowing in fact it's a planet of normalish size and normalish mass rotating about an average star in a solar system of average everything in a galaxy of innumerable many, and that the whole thing is going to explode or collapse."

This book is a meditation on existence, perspective, and what it means to be human. There's not really any plot, and listening to the audiobook was kind of like listening to a creek flowing by or to yoga studio music. It prompts big thoughts, but there's not much to it.

Photo: Contrail from a Starlink satellite launch a few months ago.

Starting my next book

#booker #booker2024 #longlist #shortlist

I liked it. It's not as profound as the blurbs would have us believe and, little glimpses of their Earth-lives notwithstanding, the astronauts are largely interchangeable (though I suppose it's a vocation selecting from a narrow bandwidth, character-wise.) While there's no plot to speak of (I'm not doing a very good job of selling this, am I?😆), I found the repetition soothing and, though it's a short book, I wanted to take my time over it.

This poetic, rhythmic, meditative novel was not for me. There is no plot, and although I can appreciate what this work is doing, it did not captivate me. I switched to the audio version at about the 50% mark since I was having trouble making myself pick it up. 3 🌟 #bookerlonglist
@squirrelbrain @JenP @AnneCecilie @charl08 @JamieArc @BarbaraBB @Graywacke @jlhammar @Deblovestoread

This was just okay for me. It is beautifully written but very loose/lacking in plot and character development. This is a book about reflections and big ideas. Repetitive and ultimately boring for me.

Our panel reviewed it on the blog here:

https://thereadersroom.org/2024/08/23/20024-booker-longlist-orbital-by-samantha-...

The premise is simple: a day in the life of 6 astronauts on the ISS as they orbit the earth 16 times. But this slim book contains some profound musings about humans, our place in the universe, and the stupidity of our petty grievances with one another. I thought it was really good and expect aspects of it to really stick with me.

They have each at some point been shot into the sky on a kerosene bomb, and then through the atmosphere in a burning capsule with the equivalent weight of two black bears upon them. They have each steeled their ribcages against the force until they felt the bears retreat, one after the other, and the sky become space, and gravity diminish, and their hair stand on end.

#Booker24

So far, I‘m quite liking this one. #bookerprize

#Booker 4/13

This book felt so real. I can imagine life in a spacecraft to be exactly like this. The repetitiveness, the small things that happen, the role everyone has, the earth below, always circling around it.
And yet that repetitiveness made it hard for me to concentrate and I know I started skimming more than once. A well-written slim book but no favorite of mine for the shortlist.

📸 A new Kokeshi doll, souvenir from Japan

My current reading location

A day in the life of six astronauts aboard an international space station - From the minute details of their routine to contemplations of humans place in the universe. I think I‘d have preferred reading this, but I got the audiobook. The narrator was great, but the subject matter might be better suited to a slow read.

Despite its slim size this is a book you take your time with. A day of the compiled thoughts of six astronauts orbiting the earth for months, both distant from home but also seeing everything from a new perspective. There isn‘t more to the plot than that but there is gorgeous writing and reflections that had me pausing to reread and absorb.

I found this slight novel to be wonderfully moving as it considered the triviality and momentousness of our lives on Earth. From the vantage of space, over 24 hours, Harvey‘s astronauts internal dialogues consider such a wide range of global, spiritual, and philosophical issues that I found almost every sentence said something profound, thought-provoking, or moving. Harvey succeeded in inspiring my awe at the magnitude and smallness of my life.

The best part of every vacation is buying a bookish souvenir, right? I bought the tagged book here at Point Reyes Books. 😀❤️📚

Hard book to review. A novel and yet it reads more like a memoir. It is about everything and nothing. We share the inner and outer lives of 6 astronauts/cosmonauts as they orbit the planet in an international space station. The descriptions of the earth from space and the 16 ascending/descending orbits that make up a day and a night are beautiful and enigmatic and otherworldly and unimaginable and this novel is unlike any other I have read.5⭐️

I tried this one but are putting it back on my shelves. I am not in the mood for it and will safe it for another day. I feel restless with all these Women Prize longlisted books and the International Booker coming soon too. Right now I need something easy until I decide what I‘ll do with the those longlists… whether to join in or not 🤦🏻‍♀️😉

I‘d like to get this one in print because the prose is akin to an elegy, a plea really, to awaken us to the beauty & fragility of our planet. 🌍

And this cover!!

So so beautiful! The combo of the interiority and emotions of the astronauts along with technical ISS elements. Such an interesting perspective on earth/the planet. I also really liked the camaraderie between the astronauts

🤩 wow! Some of the most beautiful and deep writing I‘ve ever had the privilege to read.