By Andy Weir
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?
This book was recommended to me by two different people and they were so different, I figured I had to read this book if they both liked it. I thought I had more time to read it before the movie came out, but I found myself scrambling. I ended up finding a copy at Target and trying to power-read.
Luckily, this is an easy book to power-read. Fairly short, lots and lots of actions and twists, and lots of places you can skim (I’ll get to that)
Talk about finding the perfect narrator for this book. This plot wouldn’t have worked with a less engaging character. It simply would have asked too much to carry a book on a lesser character since that character is alone for pretty much the whole book.
I loved that The Martian had tons of action. Mark Watney is a super resourceful character and it was really fun to watch him deal with near-constant challenges to stay alive. Despite all the nail-biting, I would classify this as a pretty fun read. This book is definitely humorous and keeps you turning the pages. The action quite literally doesn’t let up until the very last pages. I ripped through this book very quickly.
This book has a lot of technical science, chemistry, and physics. Super technical. I haven’t done much math, science, or physics since I left high school, but I think it would be hard to follow for most people. However, it’s pretty easy to skim over that text and get to the result: did it work or didn’t it work.
I’m exciting to watch the movie, especially since it’s getting such good reviews. While I was reading the book, I could hear Matt Damon’s voice in my head. I feel like he was well-cast to play this character, so I’m looking forward to seeing the space adventure on the big screen.
