Orbital

I wanted to like this meditation on space and Earth from the viewpoints of six astronauts in the International Space Station.  It had pretty prose, but not much else.  There’s no plot, just reflections on life in space and sweeping observations as the ISS orbits the Earth sixteen times in one twenty-four-hour period.  And at two hundred pages that should have been right up my alley.  But alas, it was not meant to be.  I could only read about wonder for so long before I got bored and my mind drifted.  At one point, I fell asleep and my e-reader slid back about twenty pages.  When I awoke, it took me about fifteen pages of reading to realize I had already read those pages.  This won the Booker Prize, which is the big book award in the UK.  I’ve only read two other Booker Prize winners, Possession by AS Byatt and Life of Pi by Yann Martel, both of which I loved.  I think Orbital won because it was pretty, and perhaps it could be because it’s a literary tip of the hat to Science Fiction.  Just guessing.