Recommendations you can check.
by Samantha Harvey
Who uses, recommends or left Orbital, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.
2 people
One of the most perfectly crafted pieces of prose I've ever read; short, basically plotless, almost unbearably intense.
Batson's annual round-up of the most memorable books he read that year, split into fiction and nonfiction.
2025-12-16·andrewbatson.com ↗
This is going to be an odd post, just a too-long passage from a book I’m reading: Orbital, by Samantha Harvey. But hey, it’s the holidays. Harvey describes Orbital as a “space pastoral.” It is set on the International Space Station, inhabited by six astronauts whose thoughts Harvey dips into from time to time, but mostly the book is reflections on earth and humanity from the collective perspective of orbit. There are so many beautiful passages worth sharing, but this one about politics seems particularly appropriate.
Newsletter post built around a long passage from the book she was reading over the holidays
2024-12-27·eatingpolicy.com ↗
Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.
The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.
What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:
Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.