#145: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More by Roald Dahl: 2 stars. #146: Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins: 4 stars. #147-8: Lola and the Boy Next Door and Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephanie Perkins: 1 star each. #149: OCD, the Dude, and Me by Lauren Roedy Vaughn: 1 star. #150: The Martian by Andy Weir: 5 stars.
I love everything this book chooses to be.
Holy shit, this was good. Like, REALLY good. Instant favorite. Which is really funny because I had myself pre-convinced that it didn’t sound like something I’d be interested in when I first heard about it. Like, ugh. Who wants to read about an astronaut stranded on Mars who has to use his wits to MacGyver his way to survival and it’s all tense and smart and thrilling and stuff. Ugh, ugh. ugh. I’m not sure what drugs I was on when I formed that opinion, […]
Potatoes in Space: The Perfect Book for your Inner Astronaut
(I bought this because of alibaba77’s review.) This is a great book. If you’re at all into astronomy, stargazing, astronauts, science, or good books, you should read it. Mark Watney, our hero, is MacGyver on Mars. His Mars mission crew colleagues presumed him dead after an accident in a Martian storm. He has to figure out how to survive until the next Mars mission or until NASA figures out a way to save him sooner. He’s got a few potatoes, some duct tape, and a […]
Once you start, you can’t stop!
You know that feeling when you’re reading a book and it’s so good that you want to keep reading it all the time but you also don’t want to finish too soon because you want to keep enjoying it for a longer time yet you can’t help yourself. That’s this book. I wrote the above sentence in February when I finished reading this book. I don’t know if I can really say much more about how much I loved this book, other than I am […]
On Catastrophe, Martian Potatoes, and Displaying Adaptability
I’m a firm believer in the First Paragraph Test. If you’re on the fence about a book, reading the first paragraph can be a good indicator of whether or not you should actually take the time to read it. “Hey, isn’t that like judging a book by its cover?” you may ask. Well, no, since an author often has little if any control over the cover. But the first paragraph, that’s where a smart author puts his best foot forward in an attempt to suck […]