Hey, guys! Since I last reveiwed, I've just been sitting here in shock over how incredible The Martian is. This is now one of my favorite books. Ever. I'm going to go ahead and say that I recommend it times about a trillion. But, I know you guys need to be convinced, like I was, so stick around for my review.
I'm sure by now, most of you have seen something about the film adaptation of The Martian (the one with Matt Damon as an astronaut). Over the last three weeks, I've had a girl in my Creative Writing class, Hank Green, and like six other people recommend this book to me. I was eventually convinced and requested it at the library... where there was a 150 person wait. I looked through a bunch of other libraries before I finally found a copy without a wait and snatched it. And, man, am I glad that I did!
The Cover:
The Cover:
It shows an astronaut, Mark Watney, in a dust cloud of Mars. Trust me, you'll get the significance after reading the book. It's nice and clean cut. The cover simply shows Watney all alone and shows Mars as well. Solid A cover.
Official Description:
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him & forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded & completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—& even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to kill him first. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills—& a relentless, dogged refusal to quit—he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?
My Review:
This book was basically Mark Watney struggling to survive alone on a deserted planet for 4 years with the supplies to last a crew of six only a month. Not only does he have to deal with the constant threat of machine failure, which could lead to almost immediate death, but he also has to deal with dwindling rations and his only source of entertainment being disco music. Prepare to have your heart pound in your chest while you frantically read to discover how Watney possible will manage to engineer his way out of multitudes of problems.
This book was just fantastic. I can't express to you how invested I got into the story of Watney's unlikely survival. It was all I could do to avoid ranting about The Martian to everyone I encountered, as I'm sure any reader of this book will agree with.
The plot was fast-moving and organic. The problems arose in a way that flowed and was not at all forced. Watney's solutions to early problems led to the next potentially fatal disaster.
The story was told through mission logs from Watney's point of view, with an occasional point of view from NASA as they deal with Watney's death on Mars and their eventual attempts at his rescue. I loved the writing style. It was light and very conversational while still placing us directly where the action was.
Watney was an amazing character. He was brilliant, constantly out-thinking the reader, and also completely sarcastic and human. From the very first sentence, I could tell that I would love this guy, "I'm pretty much fucked. That's my considered opinion. Fucked." (Oh, I should also warn you that there is slight cursing. Nothing ridiculous, but it happens.) If that doesn't get you at least interested, I'm not sure what will. He was also very relatable and was quick with a sly comment. There wasn't much focus of the other characters in this book, just because of the subject matter, but from what little we saw of them, they still were all unique and interesting characters.
I can't find a single complaint about this book. It was phenomenal. The only thing that I can think of someone disliking is the scientific explanations. Watney would explain how and why he was doing something with scientific reasoning that was clear for me to follow with only a basic covering in chemistry/biology but sometimes went on for a page or two. It isn't a significant portion of the book, and it builds authentic, so I'm glad it was included but some people might not enjoy that part.
Cool things I've heard about this book after finishing it:
All of the science in the book is correct. How cool is that? The Martian was originally published online for free, Andy Weir put in on Amazon so that people could read it on their Kindles for 99 cents, it became a bestseller in Sci-fi and a publisher came up to him to sell it in print. Next thing he knew The Martian was a NYT Bestseller and being made into a movie. Wow.
Phrase:
Disco and Duct Tape
Quotes:
"Remember those old math questions you had in algebra class? Where water is entering a container at a certain rate and leaving at a different rate and you need to figure out when it'll be empty? Well, that concept is critical to the 'Mark Watney doesn't die' project I'm working on." - page 18
"I have duct tape. Ordinary duct tape, like you buy at a hardware store. Turns out even NASA can't improve on duct tape." - page 32
"But no amount of careful design by NASA can get around a determined arsonist with a tank of pure oxygen" - page 160
I'm planning on dragging a friend to see the movie so I'll let you know how that compares in the next week or so.
Happy Reading!
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BookshelfSecret
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BookshelfSecret
I'm sure by now, most of you have seen something about the film adaptation of The Martian (the one with Matt Damon as an astronaut). Over the last three weeks, I've had a girl in my Creative Writing class, Hank Green, and like six other people recommend this book to me. I was eventually convinced and requested it at the library... where there was a 150 person wait. I looked through a bunch of other libraries before I finally found a copy without a wait and snatched it. And, man, am I glad that I did!
The Cover:
It shows an astronaut, Mark Watney, in a dust cloud of Mars. Trust me, you'll get the significance after reading the book. It's nice and clean cut. The cover simply shows Watney all alone and shows Mars as well. Solid A cover.
Official Description:
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him & forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded & completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—& even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to kill him first. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills—& a relentless, dogged refusal to quit—he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?
My Review:
This book was basically Mark Watney struggling to survive alone on a deserted planet for 4 years with the supplies to last a crew of six only a month. Not only does he have to deal with the constant threat of machine failure, which could lead to almost immediate death, but he also has to deal with dwindling rations and his only source of entertainment being disco music. Prepare to have your heart pound in your chest while you frantically read to discover how Watney possible will manage to engineer his way out of multitudes of problems.
This book was just fantastic. I can't express to you how invested I got into the story of Watney's unlikely survival. It was all I could do to avoid ranting about The Martian to everyone I encountered, as I'm sure any reader of this book will agree with.
The plot was fast-moving and organic. The problems arose in a way that flowed and was not at all forced. Watney's solutions to early problems led to the next potentially fatal disaster.
The story was told through mission logs from Watney's point of view, with an occasional point of view from NASA as they deal with Watney's death on Mars and their eventual attempts at his rescue. I loved the writing style. It was light and very conversational while still placing us directly where the action was.
Watney was an amazing character. He was brilliant, constantly out-thinking the reader, and also completely sarcastic and human. From the very first sentence, I could tell that I would love this guy, "I'm pretty much fucked. That's my considered opinion. Fucked." (Oh, I should also warn you that there is slight cursing. Nothing ridiculous, but it happens.) If that doesn't get you at least interested, I'm not sure what will. He was also very relatable and was quick with a sly comment. There wasn't much focus of the other characters in this book, just because of the subject matter, but from what little we saw of them, they still were all unique and interesting characters.
I can't find a single complaint about this book. It was phenomenal. The only thing that I can think of someone disliking is the scientific explanations. Watney would explain how and why he was doing something with scientific reasoning that was clear for me to follow with only a basic covering in chemistry/biology but sometimes went on for a page or two. It isn't a significant portion of the book, and it builds authentic, so I'm glad it was included but some people might not enjoy that part.
Cool things I've heard about this book after finishing it:
All of the science in the book is correct. How cool is that? The Martian was originally published online for free, Andy Weir put in on Amazon so that people could read it on their Kindles for 99 cents, it became a bestseller in Sci-fi and a publisher came up to him to sell it in print. Next thing he knew The Martian was a NYT Bestseller and being made into a movie. Wow.
Phrase:
Disco and Duct Tape
Quotes:
"Remember those old math questions you had in algebra class? Where water is entering a container at a certain rate and leaving at a different rate and you need to figure out when it'll be empty? Well, that concept is critical to the 'Mark Watney doesn't die' project I'm working on." - page 18
"I have duct tape. Ordinary duct tape, like you buy at a hardware store. Turns out even NASA can't improve on duct tape." - page 32
"But no amount of careful design by NASA can get around a determined arsonist with a tank of pure oxygen" - page 160
I'm planning on dragging a friend to see the movie so I'll let you know how that compares in the next week or so.
Happy Reading!
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BookshelfSecret
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BookshelfSecret
