pickThanks to @Chelsea.Poole for this excellent #AuldLangSpyne recommendation: a brief but deep book about six astro/cosmonauts from various countries circling the globe together in 24 hours. It‘s a wonderful exploration of bridging cultural differences, with awareness of how connected we are on this tiny planet. Harvey poetically explores big issues and personal pain, in the life of one astronaut and an incident on Earth that none were connected to.
panI probably should have given up on this, but it‘s so short so I just kept speeding up the narration 🤷♀️ I think I just have to leave the Booker winners alone, they never seem to resonate with me, no matter how I try. In this one, yay space- but it‘s completely observational and then reflective and has zero plot which I just can‘t do without it seems. But it did win the Booker and many readers do like this, so don‘t just take it from me!
Maybe we‘re the new dinosaurs and need to watch out, but then maybe against all the odds we‘ll migrate to Mars, we will start a colony of gentle preservers, people who want to keep the red planet red. We‘ll devise a Planetary flag, because that‘s something we lacked on Earth, and we wonder if that‘s why it all fell apart. And we‘ll look back at the faint dot of blue that is our old Earth and will say, “Do you remember?” “Have you heard the tales?”
I found 4 cool books at the shop yesterday. The 1st was a biography of Rasputin. The 2nd was called How the Irish Saved Civilization: it was about how European art was preserved in Ireland during the Dark Ages. The 3rd was historical fiction called The Rebels of Ireland, but it was #2 in its series. The 4th was the one I ended up buying. It‘s an account of the Challenger disaster by Adam Higginbotham. His book on Chernobyl is great.
This is more than just about the Challenger but rather a comprehensive look at NASA 🚀🧑🚀👩🚀
I‘m not going to Mars. Just New Jersey! Final tally of reading material that I‘m taking with me:
-7 magazines
-6 books from my shelves
-3 library books
-2 Libby books
-1 book borrowed from my brother-in-law
-1 audiobook for the drive
No, I‘m not going to run the vacuum cleaner or do laundry before I go.
Don't squander a life so miraculously given, since I, your mother, could just as easily have been with my mother that day at the market if any number of things had been different, one of the youngest victims of the atomic bomb and you would never have been born.
But here we are, and here are these men on the moon, so you are on the winning side, and perhaps can live a life that honours that? And Chie had said silently to her mother, yes, I see.
pickPoignant & ephemeral, a galactic meditation on our fragile & interdependent existence. This meticulously researched story gives a glimpse of human perspective from a space station parked on the outskirts of planet earth. It makes us wonder & marvel at the preciousness of time we have here & to synonymously long for a collective march toward valuing & defending her intricate veil of resources.
Maybe one day a robot could do your job…But what would it be to cast out into space creation that had no eyes to see it, and no hearts to feel or exult in it? For years an astronaut trains and prunes and caves and submarines and simulators every flaw or weakness located, tested, and winnowed away until what‘s left is a near-perfect unflappable triangulation of brain, limbs, and senses. For some it comes hard, for others more easily.
pickA beautifully written small book about one day in one flight in space and the six astronauts who inhabit this space ship. In 24 hours, there will be 16 sunrises, 16 sunsets, a typhoon, a death. We read about their dreams, their lives on earth, their thoughts at seeing all the beauty of life from outer space. A very special book.
