{"id":137822,"date":"2015-12-16T10:00:52","date_gmt":"2015-12-16T15:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/?p=137822"},"modified":"2015-12-07T09:13:37","modified_gmt":"2015-12-07T14:13:37","slug":"rachel-reviews-the-martian-by-andy-weir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/?p=137822","title":{"rendered":"Rachel Reviews: The Martian by Andy Weir"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Martian\"<\/a>If it weren\u2019t for the big-budget movie starring Matt Damon that just came out*, I don\u2019t think Andy Weir\u2019s The Martian<\/em><\/a> would be flying off the shelves as much as it has \u2013 but that\u2019s kind of a shame, really, because it\u2019s super (ridiculously) good. And not just good in a hard sci-fi kind of way where you\u2019re already kind of enthralled by NASA and interested in Mars and always maybe wanted to be an astronaut when you grew up. It\u2019s good in the way a spy thriller is good or an adventure story is good \u2013 good where there\u2019s a clear good guy vs. bad guy thing going on and there\u2019s a nail-biting chase scene (or three) and you\u2019re not JUST rooting for the bad guy to fail, you\u2019re actually rooting for the good guy to win.<\/p>\n

For me, books like The Martian<\/em> don\u2019t come around very often: books that make me bark out peals of laughter, put off watching TV (admittedly, my favorite thing to do), and keep me up way past my bedtime so that I can finish just one more paragraph (okay, fifteen). A book that fills my mind so that the seconds tick by into minutes, fifteen minutes roll into thirty, and one hour somehow becomes four\u2026hours where I\u2019m sitting and then lounging and then stretching, all to feed the insatiable need of omg what is happening i need to know how this ends<\/em>. (If I could somehow read at the edge of my seat then that\u2019s what I was doing for, like, ninety percent of this book.) I knew that I would enjoy The Martian<\/em>, but I didn’t anticipate just how much this book was going to win me over. (Kind of how Netflix thinks I’ll rate a Gritty Crime Drama with an Engaging Female Lead four stars and I\u2019m like, \u201cWhy would I watch that, Netflix?\u201d and then I watch it and give it four stars. (Because Netflix just knows, okay??? So let\u2019s pretend that I\u2019m Netflix and I just know<\/em>.))<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t need to know a whole lot about this book before going in \u2013 namely because Weir\u2019s fearless protagonist Mark Watney spells it out in literally the first chapter of the book \u2013 but I suppose it\u2019s helpful to know that Watney is an astronaut presumed dead and, as a result, left stranded on Mars. So, basically, the entire book is various forms of \u201cWay to go, Mark!\u201d and \u201cHave fun, Mark!\u201d and \u201cSo glad you\u2019re not dead, Mark!\u201d except Mark is saying this all to himself because he\u2019s the only human being on an entire freaking planet and he doesn\u2019t even have a robot for company.<\/p>\n

Basically, The Martian<\/em> is sarcastic and smart and nail-biting and laugh-out-loud funny and I wish you would just read it already because this review is turning out useless. (You\u2019ll like it, though, I swear.)<\/p>\n

* Everybody\u2019s Favorite Scientist\u2122 Neil deGrasse Tyson actually shot a (real) promo<\/a> for the (real) film\u2019s (fake) Ares 3 mission, (theoretically) taped for his (real) program Star Talk. META.<\/p>\n

For another take on Weir’s The Martian<\/em>, read Chris’ review.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If it weren\u2019t for the big-budget movie starring Matt Damon that just came out*, I don\u2019t think Andy Weir\u2019s The Martian would be flying off the shelves as much as it has \u2013 but that\u2019s kind of a shame, really, because it\u2019s super (ridiculously) good. And not just good in a hard sci-fi kind of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":137823,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-rachel-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Martian.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6V6sR-zQW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=137822"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137827,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137822\/revisions\/137827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/137823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=137822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=137822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=137822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}