Dear Page-Turner,
I think I have written to you already about author Samantha Harvey's book Orbital. And yet, it stays on my mind and my desk. If you haven't already read it, I want to offer some incentives. I have been thinking about the way people tell you to read a book; I notice some people will tell you a thing like this:
Tilted Picnic Tables is about a middle-aged woman who rescues a goat in rural Maine; she knows nothing of animal husbandry and her foray into this world is funny and touching. Along the way, she meets many crepuscular creatures, including a skunk, a raccoon, an oppossum, a coyote, and a rapist! It's an exciting and deeply human story that you won't want to miss!
Okay, so, that's nice, but what's wrong with it from my standpoint, is that I kind of don't want to know anything about the plot or, shall we say, the subject or the content. Weeelll, okay; I don't mind a little on the content- like, telling me that the book is funny, touching, human, that I can live with. But I should find, in my own good time as a reader, that she has met a rapist and a skunk. I don't want to know much beyond "this is good- I think you'd like it" when I open the book. I don't even read the little blurb things on the back before I start a book. I want to be led, to be surprised, to be told by the book itself.
Still, have you seen the bookstore?? So. Many. Books! How do I entice you without telling you too much? Let me, in the case of Orbital, give you a(nother) lovely sliver of the text:
She finds she often struggles for things to tell people at home, because the small things are too mundane, and the rest is too astounding and there seems to be nothing in between, none of the usual gossip, the he-said-she-said, the ups and downs; there is a lot of round and round. There's a lot of contemplation of how it's possible to get nowhere very fast.
This is so exactly, remarkably, what I often feel when I try to write to you! If you need a different kind of introduction to Orbital, the internet will provide elsewhere; and in the meantime, I am going to continue to try to get you to read this book without telling you 'what it is about.'
