Orbital is a very unique literary novella about a crew of six astronauts orbiting the earth. There’s little plot or character development. Instead, the focus lays on the Earth below in all it’s terrifying wonder and majesty. The intimicy and bewilderment that those 250 miles distance from Earth create is so well captured. The atmosphere of the book was so on point that every time I opened the book, I felt like floating in space.

The writing is gorgeous, serene, atmospheric. The poetry lays not so much in the sentences, but in the journey itself.

<< Space shreds time to pieces. They were told this in training: keep a tally each day when you wake, tell yourself this is the morning of a new day. Be clear with yourself on this matter. This is the morning of a new day.
And so it is, but in this new day they’ll circle the earth sixteen times. They’ll see sixteen sunrises and sunsets, sixteen days and sixteen nights. (…) Be clear of this matter, always clear. Look often at your watch to anchor your mind, tell yourself when you wake up: this is the morning of a new day.
And so it is. But it’s a day of five continents and of autumn and spring, glaciers and deserts, wilderness and warzones. In their rotations around the earth in accumulations of light and dark in the baffling arithmetic of thrust and attitude and speed and sensors, the whip-crack of morning arrives every ninety minutes. They like these days when the brief bloom of daybreak outside coincides with their own. >>