CULTURE EDITION
SAMANTHA HARVEY ORBITAL
Considering the vast nature of its content, you may be surprised by the slim size of this recently announced Booker Prize winner. The crew of the International Space Station (ISS) live 250 miles above the Earth, travelling at 17,000 miles an hour. The rhythms of their lives are set to keep them sane: in each ‘day’ they experience multiple sunsets and sunrises, the sun popping up every 90 minutes like a ‘mechanical toy’. The book takes us through 16 orbits alongside the six astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the ISS – comprising crew from Russia, the US, Italy, Japan and the UK – as they keep themselves busy with assigned tasks and experiments, recording data and noticing the shifts and stresses caused in their bodies by life in zero gravity. They’re also navigating the all-too-real tensions that spring up while living in close quarters with relative strangers. They watch helplessly from the space station’s windows as a hurricane rages beneath them and wonder about the safety of their friends and relations below, isolated, yet invisibly and inescapably linked to the rest of humanity. It’s like a tiny workplace drama; yet out of one window you have the unimaginable majesty of space, while out of the other lies the perfect blue marble of our home planet – everything that has ever existed. It manages to be both impressive and mundane in the same moment: very little happens, but so much takes place. If you let yourself float off into the writing, Orbital is a marvellously meditative read that could shift your perspective on what it means to be human.
GIFT IDEAS FOR BIBLIOPHILES
Library Card reading journal £29, papier.com Keep an analogue record of your reading adventures in 2025 with one of Papier’s personalised reading journals. There’s space to record your loans, wish list and even the addresses of your favourite bookshops.
Biblio Bloom book vases
Literature sock set
£33 (set of four), chattyfeet.com Terrible puns, but brilliant socks: this quartet of foot-warmers (featuring names like Jane Austoe and Virginia Wool) is the perfect winter gift for the book lover who’s spending the season hibernating with a hardback.
From £24, bibliobloom.com These literary-themed, book-shaped vases are a beautiful addition to a home library or to-be-read shelf, and an ideal way to showcase your love of literature. Whatever the reason, it’s got to be Pride and Prejudice for us!
CAMBSEDITION.CO.UK DECEMBER 2024 31
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