Welcome to Litsy!

This was an incredibly through look at what led up to the Challenger space shuttle disaster. The author starts all the way back in the beginning of the space race to show how systemic failures, political maneuvers, and human hubris, led to the dangers being ignored. Some of the science/engineering vocabulary was a bit beyond me. But I really appreciated how much he humanized the people involved, especially the astronauts and their families.

I loved listening to Orbital! What an amazing tribute to earth and humankind. Mona is finished and ready to be hung up

Orbital by Samantha Harvey follows six astronauts inside the space station as they go around the Earth in the span of 24 hours. This book doesn‘t really have a plot, nor action, just life. And love, so much love for our planet, and for people. It felt like I was reading poetry and my heart felt a little bit more at peace after.

Every audio book I‘ve started this year I have bailed on for a variety of reasons. Some haven‘t been great, all have been clawed back by the library but it‘s mainly been more anxiety driven. I want quiet in my brain when I walk, clean, cook. Today I thought I‘d try again since my hold for Orbital is almost over. I‘ve tackled the mountain of ironing and now I‘m tackling Mona

Lovely short novel that covers one day (16 orbits) of a 6 person International Space Station crew. As much a meditation as a novel, this beautiful book captures the pain and joy and awe of being human. Not big on plot, though!

I‘m not finished with this book yet, but I‘m still counting in as my favorite book of the month. Incredible storytelling; he expertly combines the human side of things with the technical details that I‘m so interested in.

Reading on the station about out of this world travel.

Bit of a contrast.

Complicated story for having no full out plot, a bit disjointed. I enjoyed the outlook on what it takes to look outside the satellite. Though the six cosmonauts are forgettable. The plot itself was split, so I don‘t know where that was going. There were many good quotes and mentions of looking down on the earth from above, though, that saved the story to me.

He dreamed - of all things, of all damned American things - of the infamous image taken by Michael Collins during the first successful moon mission, back in 1969: the photograph of the lunar module leaving the moon's surface, and of the earth beyond.

No Russian mind should be steeped in these thoughts.

Read for our faculty book club - fun when the astrophysicist joins in!

If you're looking for a strong plot, this is not the book for you. My brain decided it was a prose poem, a meditation on humanity, interconnectedness, and the truths space can reveal.