Orbital, Samantha Harvey

I’m not entirely sure if this is the best or the worst thing to read if you’re feeling depressed, but it is a remarkable book. If you’ve ever had that feeling, when looking out on airplane window, or from the top of a very very tall building, or a mountain, of a simultaneous detachment and immense tenderness for the little houses or twinkling lights below — this book does that, but on a planetary scale.

It narrates the experiences of a group of astronauts orbiting the moon, and there’s just something incredible about the way it plays with your sense of scale, relativizing without trivializing. We are so infinitesimal, a brief flash, but so deeply felt.