The Martian
Selected for common reading at North Lake College Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read 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 and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive--and 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--and 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?
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Community Reviews
As a person who likes to read the book before I see the film, I really enjoyed this read. I like knowing the source material before seeing what Hollywood does to either improve upon or utterly destroy the story that millions of readers fell in love with (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban anyone?).
The fascination of manned travel to Mars can quickly lead to romanticizing it to the point that you forget how dangerous and life threatening our first manned ventures to the Red Planet will be. The thing I enjoyed about this book was how grounded in reality the story is. It feels enough like sci-fi to have you hopeful for the future, but the technology is still close enough to our current techonolgy that the progression isn't completely far fetched. Mark Watney was by far the strongest character in the story. I had to continuously try to place myself in his situation and ask if I would have the same reaction that he had to the many issues that he dealt with, mainly because I felt some of the dialogue was weak and immature. Not that the writing was poor, especially for a first time author, but I do believe with some minor editing this novel could easily transition into the Hard Sci-Fi category.
If you're easily insulted by rough languange, then this is not the book for you. However, if you are looking for a fast-paced, nail biting, sci-fi adventure then check this one out. Also, if you're planning to see the movie when it comes out in October, do the author a favor and at least read the book first.
The fascination of manned travel to Mars can quickly lead to romanticizing it to the point that you forget how dangerous and life threatening our first manned ventures to the Red Planet will be. The thing I enjoyed about this book was how grounded in reality the story is. It feels enough like sci-fi to have you hopeful for the future, but the technology is still close enough to our current techonolgy that the progression isn't completely far fetched. Mark Watney was by far the strongest character in the story. I had to continuously try to place myself in his situation and ask if I would have the same reaction that he had to the many issues that he dealt with, mainly because I felt some of the dialogue was weak and immature. Not that the writing was poor, especially for a first time author, but I do believe with some minor editing this novel could easily transition into the Hard Sci-Fi category.
If you're easily insulted by rough languange, then this is not the book for you. However, if you are looking for a fast-paced, nail biting, sci-fi adventure then check this one out. Also, if you're planning to see the movie when it comes out in October, do the author a favor and at least read the book first.
Yes, I know, I gave this the same rating as Jane Eyre, but it's a completely different system for genre fiction. If this were classical literature I'd rate it much lower. As an adventure and science fiction book, it's solidly entertaining. I was rooting for the plucky main character, Mark Watney. Am I to believe such an ingenious astronaut would really have been single back on Earth? No, I don't buy that. But all the crazy space shenanigans and the techno-babble were totally believable.
The story was nice and uplifting. demonstrated the will of the world to preserve humanity at great cost. anyone can get behind a single named human.
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