Hello everybody, and welcome to Wednesday (If you don't have time for chit-chat, just skip down to where it says (the martian: my "all-important" opinion). Ah, the old book report. Something every single child in your English class dreaded. Who would want to read a boring old book, and after that have to WRITE ABOUT IT? WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?
Me, actually.
Ha. Ha.
*awkward silence*
No kidding though, I actually like book reviews. I can't be the only person who spends hours on Amazon scrolling through the little summaries beside each book and reading endless blurbs, can I?
Really? Okaaaayyyy then. Well, I'm just going to go ahead and presume that you don't like book reports. You don't like reading millions of reviews on one book before you read it. A bit of advice: just read the book. But... in case you're going somewhere and can't bring many books with you, or your time is limited and you can't be wasting it on a bad book ... this review is for you.
Hmm. Where to begin.
At the beginning I suppose.
THE MARTIAN: MY "ALL-IMPORTANT" OPINION
Let me just get something straight. Like it states above, this is purely my OPINION.
Now let's get started.
'The Martian' was written by Andy Weir. It was self-published in 2011 and re-released in 2014. It is now a 'major motion picture' staring Matt Damon, which is pretty impressive seeing as it was Weil's first ever novel. It is set in 2035 on Mars, where the main character - Mark Watney - is an astronaut on the Ares 3 mission. The crew come into difficulty as a storm approaches and when it hits, they accidentally leave him behind on the surface, believing him to be dead after he was hit by debris. *Sarcastic Spoiler Alert* He's not dead. The book is about his survival and attempt to get back home to Earth.
Now normally I would rarely watch a movie without having read the book first, but I just love Matt Damon so how could I NOT watch it?! Anyways, SURPRISE! There's a book. And I'm warning you now, it's a lot more technical than the movie. Weir was a computer programmer and did a lot of research before writing the book so that it would be as accurate as possible. I'm not hugely into science, but if you just skim (not skip!) the 'technical' bits then you'll be alright. The good thing is that the character Watney is actually quite funny, and often explains things in a simpler way so that the audience (his log) can understand him.
I would recommend this book. I definitely would. It's uplifting, sometimes funny and you really get to explore Mars (or Weir's version of it anyway). It may take a while to read and can be slow at times, but I found that I got invested in it very quickly and was rooting for Watney constantly. Really, when you spend that much time with one character, he's got to be interesting. And Watney certainly is. Of course you get glimpses of other characters too - the people at NASA and his crew on their ship (the Hermes) but old Wat really steals the show.
So give it a go. Dare you.
See you next Wednesday,
Moo.