Often for Chanukah, I spend hours scouring book lists to find books I can get for Chris as gifts. I found The Martian in some such way either last year or the year before (honestly, I can’t remember). I was excited about giving him this one because it seemed it was a good blend of actual science and story which I thought he’d enjoy. Yet, he didn’t read it right away, seeming uninterested. He’ll admit now that was his mistake.
I, on the other hand, really had no interest in reading it until I found out that the movie was coming out. Then it occurred to me, I should read it so then we could go to the movie together (without anyone at a disadvantage of not reading the book). I’m glad I did.
While the book was a bit more technically/scientifically oriented than I like (I skimmed through some of these parts), I really appreciated the author’s research and detail by including these parts. For the most part, I found the pacing good too (though maybe one stumbling block too many) and liked the bouncing back between Mark Watney’s (aka the Martian) journal entries and the people on Earth focused on getting him home. My only real complaint about the book was that I found the end … lacking.
Which brings me to the movie. You will often here that movies don’t do the book justice and most of the time I agree with that statement. Not this time though. The movie, like the book was well paced, but because it was a movie, they naturally skimmed some of those technical details that bogged me down in the book, abbreviated the obstacles and were able to fill out the ending in a way I found incredibly satisfying. As a matter of fact, there were only one or two details missing from the movie that were mentioned in the book, that I thought the movie would have benefitted by including.
Either way, I can recommend both the book and the movie. Read and then watch.