Adventure: The Martian

Author: Andy Weir

Title: The Martian

Genre: Adventure

Publication Date: 2014

Number of Pages: 369

Geographical Setting: Earth (NASA/ China) and Mars

Plot Summary:

This is an adventure gone wrong. Mark Watney has been left stranded with supplies and equipment only meant to last for about 31 sols (40 minutes longer then an Earth day). He’s also on Mars.

A forceful dust storm caused his NASA crew to abandon their mission on the surface of the red planet, unfortunately for Watney he doesn’t quite make it to the crew’s escape craft. Left alone on a barren planet, with no way of letting Earth know he’s alive, Watney has to find away to make materials for a short mission last years. That’s if human error doesn’t kill him first. As Watney overcomes one deadly scenario after another he relies on his ingenuity, skills as an engineer, and tons of humor. 

Appeal:

Overcoming challenges- Going along with Watney as he survives Mars is heart stopping at times and warming at others. When he does receive help, the reader can see all of mankind rally for one man’s life, and it’s amazing.

Hero with mad skills – Some of the ideas Watney comes up with are mind blowing. While some of the science can take away from the action, it still leaves the reader with wonder at how he came up with such an idea.

Exotic setting – Can't get much can be more exotic than a planet that man has never set foot on. Considering the very setting of the story appears as the protagonist, it’s rather ominous as well.

Similar Authors and Works:

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: Dangerous adventure (this time on the sea). Crusoe feels the call of the sea, despite his parents’ wishes, and takes on one danger after the next.

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson: The world bands together. Catastrophe makes Earth a ticking bomb and all the nations must come together in order to find hope—in outer space.

Packing for Mars by Mary Roach: Is living in space possible? For more of the concept of living in space, follow Roach as she explores questions of how one could live in “the void” and what makes us human.

Reviewing Books

I think the idea of only doing positive reviews and no negatives would cut down on the helpfulness of the review site or journal. I can see the publishers not wanting to hurt authors and also that some reviewers can be too negative, but if you only read positive reviews you wouldn’t get a whole view of a book. Collection development needs to know what’s being said about a book in order to know if it’s useful or a good read. If they can only find positive reviews then they may think it’s a good read, but actually be missing out on an important negative aspect.

Reviews of free e-books always make me hesitate, I’m not sure why. From the two over The Billionaire’s First Christmas, I would probably take the blog review over the Amazon review. The Amazon review is what I’ve come to expect from the site, not much information over the editing and very personal. While the blog does have some personal feelings in the review, I feel the author gave off a better evaluation. It wasn’t just about how the plot went and it actually had some drawbacks the author felt the book had. I don’t think I’d buy the book for my library, however, and I don’t believe that it’s romantic suspense. From these reviews I don’t have a sense of suspense at all, just a cozy, feel-good, romance. 

The reviews for Angela’s Ashes defiantly make the book sound extremely interesting. I’m not usually one for memoirs but I think I may check this one out. The difference in these reviews from the ones for The Billionaire’s First Christmas is mostly dealing with the delivery. These reviews over Angela’s Ashes defiantly have a professional feel and give a better delivery then the blog and Amazon review. I find it unfortunate that some books get little coverage while others are in just about every review magazine or site. However, if a book is very good it’s more likely to get more attention while if one is less liked or well-written it won’t get as many reviews. Sometimes the number of reviews can point to the likeliness of a book being a good buy or not, while sometimes a real gem can be hidden in obscurity.

 If I’m looking into reviews for a book, which I actually don’t do often for personal use, I usually go to professional places rather than Amazon or other such sites. I’ve bought books from Amazon reviews and regretted it, but usually the professional reviews give me a much better idea.  I usually go to places like School Library Journal and Booklists. I’ve also used Goodreads, but I’m carful of those since it acts a lot like Amazon. I’m actually more of a shelf browser, as I usually just go along the selves and pick books that sound interesting. If I hear about a book I’ll research it but otherwise I just go with what my gut says.

Kirkus Style Review- Cress by Marissa Meyer

Fairy tales with a modern twist make up Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles and the third installment, Cress, plays off the story of Rapunzel.

Meyer continues the fight against the Lunars with the story of Cress, a Lunar herself that has been imprisoned on a satellite orbiting Earth. With a knack for technology and hacking, Cress has been used by her guardians in order to keep an eye on the Commonwealth as well as keep Lunar ships and objectives secret. However, Cress has secretly gotten in contact with fugitive and Lunar enemy, Cinder, along with her crew of others looking to take down evil Lunar queen, Levana. The hacker sees her chance at freedom (and meeting the handsome Captain Thorne) and takes it whole-heartedly. Unfortunately, the team’s rescue attempt goes horribly wrong and causes them to be split, and Cress and Thorne to crash to Earth. On a planet after seven years in space, Cress is exposed to quite a shock as things are not as romanticized as she made them in her head. Many plots come to a cross in Meyer’s third book and readers of Cinder and Scarlet will enjoy the authors continued skill at weaving them all together. Not only introducing a new heroine as well as more details of Lunars, but Meyer’s is also weaving them into the previous stories— and doing it well. Readers need not worry about facts getting mixed and can also look forward to the book’s fairy tale base being used a bit more heavily than the previous books.

A wonderful addition to the story of Cinder, Cress will captivate reader’s attention and heart, not letting go till the very last page.

Secret Shopper: It could have gone better...

My experience as secret shopper was probably not the worst that will be read but it did leave much to be desired. The experience wasn’t a complete waste but I didn’t walk back out of the library feeling that I had been serviced very well. Some of the disappointments were because I had to go on a weekend instead of weekday, but really patrons should be able to receive good service whenever they visit a library.

When I first walked into the public library I didn’t see a reference desk but I did see the service desk so I assumed they’d be able to point me in the right direction. I asked the women behind the counter if there was a place I could get some advice on books to read and the look she gave me was immediately disappointing. In no way did I expect this worker to help me with my overall objective but I at least thought she could tell me who could help, however, she seemed lost as to where to send me so she pointed toward another area and said to ask the information desk where I could go to find the services I needed.

As I walked up to the librarian once he’d returned to this desk, I asked if there was a place I good get some advice on reading, I again received a look of confusion. Apparently, this library didn’t have such a designated place but he was willing to give it a go. I told him I was looking into getting into the horror genre but didn’t know much about it or what books to read (all true), but right off I got the feeling that this might be out of his area. I will say he gave it a good try, but he seemed to do everything against the book.

Instead of using Novelist, which I knew the library had access to, the librarian used his own profile on Goodreads and simply printed off a random list that was associated with a book he was interested in. The list he printed gave me titles but as I wanted more information I asked if he knew of any of the titles or could give any good recommendations. The Goodreads list only had titles and no descriptions, so I thought this was a good follow up question. He unfortunately didn’t and stated that the horror genre was not something he was an expert in, but he did give me a name of another librarian that could probably help me out, however she wasn’t in that day.

In this instance I felt that I was the one asking all the questions and was never asked the types of questions that may have helped the librarian find a book that would suit my interest. Even when he did offer up a suggestion I wasn’t given much information about the book, instead I had to do my own investigation to see if I thought the book would be a good read or not. All in all, while this wasn’t the worst experience I could imagine, it could most defiantly have gone better.