Orbital by Samantha Harvey - Hot 🔥or Not 🧊?

Is Orbital by Samantha Harvey hot or not?

BookTubers Mentioned:
@scallydandlingaboutthebooks
@Shellyish
@benreadsgood
@BookishTexan

#booktube #bookreviews #orbital #samanthaharvey #newbooks #sciencefiction #literaryfiction
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Thanks for watching! New two (or sometimes three) times a week :)

Lots of Love,

Gem xx

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Video Contents

00:00 Intro
00:23 Summary
01:24 Writing Style
01:49 Critisisms
03:15 Characters
03:50 Alike to?
04:15 Who will like this?
05:16 Hot or Not?

[jacquelinemcmenamin]

Orbital is on the booktube prize that’s just been announced.

[charlottemolloy]

I read this recently and had a really mixed experience but ended up really loving it. Like you, the writing style I thought was really great.

Once I got my head around the fact that it wasnt about the characters, they were just a group of people representative of humanity as a whole, referred to as "they", and instead about the philosophy, time, the physical space we occupy, natural disasters, life/death, and religion.

For me, even though it was a short book, I thought it dragged in parts. And I loved the ending that reminded me of the submersible event of last year, whether this was purely coincidence or not I'm not sure but certainly was an implosive way to end the novel!

[jesssmith]

🔥
Gemma you reviewed this book brilliantly. It’s not easy to review a book that didn’t work for you without it sounding like a ‘bad’ book and you nailed it! This book probably would be for me so thanks for a honest but fair review.

[scallydandlingaboutthebooks]

I think this is a fair representation of the book even though we felt differently about it!

[CharlieBrookReads]

I need plot & character too ….plus me & space don’t mix 😂😂🥶🧊Always good to hear your thoughts ❤

[benreadsgood]

Rudy has always struck me as the philosophical type.

I do indeed have a copy of this book, and I’m now very curious to know if I will actually like it. You might know my taste better than I do 😂

[Book_Hugger]

Your thoughts and review is well done. I am in the group of enjoying the book, though by the end I did concur with the “are we done yet”, but I think it was the vibe, to possibly have the reader feel some of what the astronauts must feel, repetition

[spreadbookjoy]

This doesn’t sound like a me book either! I like how you used, other booktubers tastes as a measure of whether someone would enjoy this or not - clever!❤

[zachreads]

Idk if it would be fire or dire for me.

The similarish book I'm planning on reading soon is One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenifsyn, which is about a man in a Soviet prison and is only a little longer.

[TheLeniverse]

Great prose can possibly carry me 130 pages without the need for character or plot. But I saw it endorsed by Max Porter, so I'm not sure it's the right kind of great prose 😂 I admit I picked it up for 99p on kindle mainly because it seemed like the kind of technically innovative and creative book that might end up as a wildcard in book prize lists. And it's short. 😆

[adelecook]

Oooh im reading this at the moment. I dont feel compelled to keep picking it up. I havent really got a hang of the characters either....ill be back when ive finished.

[zoobee]

it just won the Booker Prize. interesting choice

[PageTurnersWithKatja]

I think I'd like it 🔥. I also think I'd like Julia so maybe i just assume I'll like most books until proven wrong 🤷‍♀️😂

[dylanwolf]

The need to name check every country and geographical feature on the planet annoyed me too. Not bothered about it being plotless personally, but the characters were "2-D cardboard and a bit too much like national stereotypes. The story of Chie's mother and the Nagasaki atomic bomb was the best section. Held was a far superior novel.
Orbital is a definite NOT, despite its Booker triumph.

[bookendsandbiscuits]

No plot or character - oooh not sure about that

[Shellyish]

I would love a boring book, eh? Ha!!!

[scallydandlingaboutthebooks]

You know I loved this one. Thanks for pointing to my wrap up for an alternative view. You grabbed the wrong video link though. You meant this one:

[TiborHuber]

Dear Gemma,

The YouTube algorithms must have noticed the increased use I made of the term “pretentious” after you resurrected it for me in your rather courageous video on Hisham Matar’s must-be-liked-by-everyone’s “My Friends”: they recommended your views on Samantha Harvey’s “Orbital” as well - with similar effect: I find your honest admissions of failing to catch fire by all-beloved books truly commendable.

BUT: you are too self-deprecating! I
In both instances I witnessed so far, you defended your stance by untenably pronouncing the bland objects of your reviews outstandingly well written - before demonstrating them to be not.
Both are unpleasantly pretentious, humour-free self-indulgences by writers with actually nothing to say after, in Matar’s case, all he had to say had been amply repeated and, in Harvey’s, no single noteworthy observation backs her egotistical need to use the reader as a foil for seeming erudite.

She untiringly names countries, because there is a misunderstanding in the western world that naming lots of countries is somehow proof of international sophistication lacking in parochial readers, or that listing endless metaphors to illuminate something dark is literature rather than not hitting the point from the get-go (“The Martian” has as much space-detail but is clearly not high literature because of its exciting and boy-adventurist plot); these authors probably ended up writing when their boring contributions were no longer tolerated to lead each conversation, their need to endlessly talk about themselves isolated them (as Matar is such an unreflecting author that he even makes this process part of his meandering book on loosing all his friends) - it is NOT you, at all, who fails to catch fire - you can demand substance, it’s your right as an attentive reader. It’s great you haven’t been fooled by the publishing machinery.

[olgadonskaia]

I agree with you that the characters are flat. But it's not the biggest problem here. Orbital is an open propaganda. I mean, it compares Sergei Krikalev (russian politician and a huge supporter of putin) to God. WTF??? And all the cultural appropriation is simply disgusting. The candy mentioned there ("Korovka") is not russian at all. It was created by the Polish guy who was inspired by the recipe from Zhytomyr (Ukraine). The book is full of this staff

[ameliabarlowbooks]

gimme some plot! gimme some characters! 🧊