Try This! - Alternate Reality

Student Review: The Martian by Andy Wier

Andy Weir The Martian Crow Publishers 2014 369p 25.00$ ISBN 978-0-8041-3902-1

The Martian is a very intellectual book filled with scientific evidence and lingo surrounding a sarcastic good hearted astronaut with a degree in botany and chemical engineering. His name is Mark Watney and he gets stranded on mars after a severe stand storm hit him and his crew while doing a routine Mars expedition. Due to the weather and extreme conditions the crew was forced to do an emergency evacuation, leaving Mark Watney behind. With only a meager amount of supplies, the stranded visitor must utilize his wits and spirit to find a way to survive on the hostile planet. Meanwhile, back on Earth, members of NASA and a team of international scientists work tirelessly to bring him home, while his crewmates hatch their own plan. He must ration his food, become the first person to grow a plant on Mars and manage his oxygen level until help arrives.

Overall the book is great, the first couple chapters were a little slow due to the fact that it was a lot of math and things I didn’t understand. But if you’re into chemistry, botany and a lot of references to the periodic table then this book is for you. The book is modern and funny as well as suspenseful and exciting. I was anticipating every next page because I was so intrigued on how a human would somehow survive on Mars. The book is edgy, and by that I mean it had a lot of curse words, which is understandable considering he was stranded on Mars. I loved how even though all odds were against him, he still managed to keep his spirits up and make light of a bad situation.

I saw the movie and quite frankly, it wasn’t as good as the book at all. It skipped a lot of important parts and it wasn’t as edgy, due to the fact it was a family movie rated PG-13 and the book was more or less rated R. The movie skips through every single bit of math that was dragged on in the book. At first I was bored by all of the math that was in the book. Then I saw the movie and noticed that there was no math in it, and really appreciated it. In the movie he makes contact with Earth in the first 5 minutes and in the book it look about 5 chapters. So all in all, the movie was good, just majorly shortened so they wouldn’t bore the audience. At the end of the movie, Mark Watney gets to hermes rather fast. Which is not how the book was. In the book they calculated exactly how he would meet up with Hermes and what it would take to make his ship lighter in weight. I really loved this book though, I wish it wouldn’t have ended.

Try This!

Try this!

Adaptation by Malinda Lo

Release Date: 18 September 2012

Publisher: Little Brown BFYR

Goodreads description:

Reese can’t remember anything from the time between the accident and the day she woke up almost a month later. She only knows one thing: She’s different now.

Across North America, flocks of birds hurl themselves into airplanes, causing at least a dozen to crash. Thousands of people die. Fearing terrorism, the United States government grounds all flights, and millions of travelers are stranded.

Reese and her debate team partner and longtime crush David are in Arizona when it happens. Everyone knows the world will never be the same. On their drive home to San Francisco, along a stretch of empty highway at night in the middle of Nevada, a bird flies into their headlights. The car flips over. When they wake up in a military hospital, the doctor won’t tell them what happened, where they are—or how they’ve been miraculously healed.

Things become even stranger when Reese returns home. San Francisco feels like a different place with police enforcing curfew, hazmat teams collecting dead birds, and a strange presence that seems to be following her. When Reese unexpectedly collides with the beautiful Amber Gray, her search for the truth is forced in an entirely new direction—and threatens to expose a vast global conspiracy that the government has worked for decades to keep secret.

Mrs. Menold's Thoughts...

What it's about: Adaptation takes government conspiracy and the possibilities of modern medicine/science to terrifying levels in a story that pulls you in from the beginning and had me finding every spare moment to keep reading.

Who it's about: Reese is one of those characters that I simply liked and connected with from the very start.  From her crush on her debate partner to her relationship with her parents, her life and world (well, before everything goes crazy...and even a little after) is relateable.  She came alive on the pages for me as a reader. David and Amber with equally interesting secondary characters.  I found them both intriguing and would sometimes wish I could just spend a few moments in their heads to get more info on what they were thinking.

What I liked: Really...pretty much everything.  Reese's vulnerability, the storytelling, the story, the conspiracies, the friends, the enemies, the family.

The bottom line:  If you're already a fan of Malinda Lo's writing, then I think this is a must read.  If you are fascinated by science fiction and conspiracy theories, than this is a must read.  Really, if anything about the premise catches your attention, give it a try.  This was, for me, a truly awesome read and I enjoyed every minute.