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John Caleb Grenn's Reviews > Orbital
Orbital
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Samantha Harvey, who I’m sure is very nice but also apparently became quite fascinated by the Wikipedia entry of Voyager, presents to us her Google Earth travelogue. Orbital is an essayistic file of recurring lists, rolls, catalogs, registers, indexes, directories and listings about various geography and other hobnob things noticed by a group of astronauts in orbit. Literally at one point she lists the Great Lakes. Like all 5. Just because. Full of less than profound musings, Harvey adds this awkward *literary sense of wonder* to professional astronauts that I imagine may would have been much more familiar with the humdrum STEM topics she seems to be utterly in awe of. Africa. Australia. Islands. The Antarctic. The ocean. The ocean. The ocean. The desert. Land. The land. The sun. The sun. The dark. The dark. Oops another list. Come here for surface-level musings about space and God and nature and stay for the lists and lists and more lists. And for that time she anthropomorphized the moon, saying it missed humans since we hadn’t gotten to visit in the last 50 years and when she quoted the same old story about time since the Big Bang comparing it to a calendar year and mentioning that humans haven’t been here all that long, just toward the end of December… wow did she just take Sagan’s Cosmic Calendar and present it as her own??? Is that even OKAY??? Then she goes and writes yet another list that’s her own boring version of We Didn’t Start the Fire where she mentions every blasted thing EXCEPT for Billy Joel. Contrived, trite, boring, and really just a bad book.
by
Samantha Harvey, who I’m sure is very nice but also apparently became quite fascinated by the Wikipedia entry of Voyager, presents to us her Google Earth travelogue. Orbital is an essayistic file of recurring lists, rolls, catalogs, registers, indexes, directories and listings about various geography and other hobnob things noticed by a group of astronauts in orbit. Literally at one point she lists the Great Lakes. Like all 5. Just because. Full of less than profound musings, Harvey adds this awkward *literary sense of wonder* to professional astronauts that I imagine may would have been much more familiar with the humdrum STEM topics she seems to be utterly in awe of. Africa. Australia. Islands. The Antarctic. The ocean. The ocean. The ocean. The desert. Land. The land. The sun. The sun. The dark. The dark. Oops another list. Come here for surface-level musings about space and God and nature and stay for the lists and lists and more lists. And for that time she anthropomorphized the moon, saying it missed humans since we hadn’t gotten to visit in the last 50 years and when she quoted the same old story about time since the Big Bang comparing it to a calendar year and mentioning that humans haven’t been here all that long, just toward the end of December… wow did she just take Sagan’s Cosmic Calendar and present it as her own??? Is that even OKAY??? Then she goes and writes yet another list that’s her own boring version of We Didn’t Start the Fire where she mentions every blasted thing EXCEPT for Billy Joel. Contrived, trite, boring, and really just a bad book.
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Reading Progress
July 11, 2024
– Shelved
July 11, 2024
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July 27, 2024
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July 27, 2024
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Comments Showing 1-50 of 88 (88 new)
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Yahaira
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rated it 3 stars
Jul 27, 2024 12:21PM
Get her!!
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JUSTICE FOR BILLY JOEL
My father, an English teacher, would say 'beware of writers' making lists' It's just lazy writing.
John, you have 'pinions and you're not afraid to show them! Do you know I was holding the book (to possibly read) in my hands when your review just randomly popped up! Welp, I'll put it aside for now and by the time I circle back around to it, it can be fresh again.
The listings were just so so boring, this entire book is boring. The book was just too, too, too everything. Yawn.
Felt like an MFA exercise on the Pale Blue Dot.
Completely agree with this. I hated every minute of it!
Completely agree.
She does not have an MFA. Very few people in the UK do. The whole world is not America.
…. „did she just take Sagan’s Cosmic Calendar and present it as her own???“—Lol, I wondered the same thing. And I listed Billy Joel as playlist for this novella… smirk
Rated this three stars for the same reasons, now I'm reconsidering lmao
That made me think of Billy Joel too. Can't believe it won the Booker.
Count me as another reader who had the independent thought of We Didn’t Start The Fire during that last big list. Amusing to now see so many had the same thought in parallel. :)
Great review Elizabeth. I fully appreciated your candidness. And NOT mentioning Billy Joel?... blasphemy! 😊
Wow, I’m struggling to read it and fully agree with your comments. So majorly disappointing. I’ve been hoping a Sontaran or two might show up to add a bit of interest
I’m pretty sure somewhere in there she had a list of a list. And a description of a description. Literally no point. And poor Billy got left out. He definitely should have been in there.
“Google Earth travelogue” had me losing it.
I feel sorry for people like you who seem to need to hate every book that has been well reviewed. What a limited life.
^ I have no limits, Cyndy.
A book that could have been a poem.
I loved this book but this is an excellent review! I guess I must really like a list. What a horrible thing to discover about myself.
^^joanna this comment made my whole day 😂😂😂
Same thought re: Didn’t Start the Fire!
Perfectly sums up my feelings
Took the words right out my mouth
Very funny review! I liked the book but liked your review also. I just checked about the “cosmic calendar” and Google attributes it to Bill Schopf, so I guess Sagan also took it without crediting it? 😂 or maybe he did credit it but I missed it!!
There’s also a part where she goes on about how small we are in the vast universe and… this was covered in a vastly more entertaining way in “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”
hahaha I liked it but you're so right
I wish I’d read your review first before struggling to finish this book.
I'm going to follow your reviews based on this review.
I didn't just struggle to understand why Orbital won 2024 Booker Prize, I was baffled as to how it was published. Sorry to be so negative, but ...
^^^^COMPLETELY agree.
100% agree to all of this. I have never given such a low score on Goodreads
Lmfao fact the lists almost drove me off a cliff
I also noticed a heavy reference to Sagan's beautiful pale blue dot speech.
^this too. I’ve never experienced such a contrived, cheesy novel as orbital
What the heck, we thought of the same song in our reviews 😂
Strugling to finish this one…
I'm like 2 chapters in and this is my exact impression. I flipped through and it seems to be going on the same way for the entire rest of the book
I love literary fiction, but my mind doesn't want to take on something like this.
Just finished it and even though it’s not a long book, it felt endless. I think she has some lovely turns of phrase but how exactly is this a novel? It reads like a fever dream (and not in a good way)
^^^yes like a dream someone’s telling you when you haven’t had your coffee and you’re so not in the mood
Sorry, I don't usually get abusive on this size, but... are you illiterate? Anyone who appreciates exact, articulate, expressive language HAS to bow down before this book. An immense achievement. Best thing: it's not a film script, like nearly everything else that gets splurged put these days. A homage to our world, expressed in words, not images. Sorry.
Re ^: how often would you say you do get abusive on this size (sic), Paul? And why, in relation to nearly everything else being splurged put (sic) does this one read most like a miserably boring film script? I accept your two apologies.
I could forgive all these musings and cliches if there was a story. But nothing happens, just a unconvincing slice of life with flat characters about what happens in a space station. Oh and there's a typhoon happening, and a moon landing. The end. What?
