Book Review: The Martian

"Well beggars can't be choosers. Three's Company it is." 

The Martian by Andy Weir depicts one man's lone fight to survive the most hostile odds against all odds. 

The story is told mostly from the logs of stranded astronaut, Mark Watney, as he fights to survive on Mars after a freak accident leaves him stranded. Intermittently, we see blips from both the people of earth and Watney’s crewmates as they desperately seek to save him. 

Watney must use his botany, engineering skills, and just simple ingenuity to devise ways to live in complete isolation on a planet literally not fit for human survival. He does it with the best of attitudes, humoring himself with his logs, and old 70's TV, despite his dire circumstances.

After discovering he's alive, the entire world watches in horrified wonder as the brilliant minds at NASA race to save Mark. 

Personally, I enjoyed The Martian. It explores a man's ingenuity and the culture that bands us together, forgetting budgets, fame, and even our own safety to rescue a fellow man. It is a more modern take on Robinson Caruso told with sarcasm and wit. The story moves quickly enough to keep you interested. It isn't weighed down with super scientific information, which considering the subject matter, it could have been. The switch between Mark's point of view, what's happening on earth, and the occasional third person narrator gives a 360 degree view of everything allowing the reader to really immerse himself in the story. 

I would rate it PG-13 for language, but nothing else.  It's a great story I would recommend it for anyone looking to go on an amazing adventure. 

In Search Of. . . Written Words: As I Lay Dying

In Search Of. . . Written Words: As I Lay Dying

My Mother is a fish.

~Vardaman Bundren

Addie Bundren was dying, that started everything. Her dying wish was to be buried miles away in her home town, and she placed the burden of taking her there on her family.

However, life preoccupied the family more than their mother's death. Jewel and Darl leave the day she dies to sell lumber. Cash can only think of making his mother's coffin. Their father, Anse, can only think of getting his new teeth.

Dragging Addie's coffin containing her decaying body in a wagon, the family treks to the burial ground. They rescue the body from a flood and from a fire to get it there. Finally, after nine days in the hot, humid Mississippi summer, the Bundrens bury their mother.

Before they leave the next day, Anse Bundren introduces his children to the new Mrs. Bundren.

 

Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying completely in stream of conscious, which basically means that the reader experiences the characters thoughts as they have them. Unfortunately, it's not just the thoughts of one character. It's the entire Bundren family, including Addie, and some of their neighbors as well.

Each chapter or section tells the events from a different character's point of view. In a way, having so many narrators gives a more complete view of the story. The problem comes from the execution.

In using stream of conscious, the reader basically sees the characters jumbled half-thoughts put down on paper. At times it was confusing, especially when Faulkner would use a pronoun without an antecedent. He would say he, she, or it and never tell the reader what or who he was referring to.

 

The stream of conscious isn't the only problem. The characters in the book for the most part are unlikable. To begin with, most of them, Addie included are taking the trip for selfish reasons. Addie's lack of connection to her family compels them to bury her far away from home in her family grave; however, it works to many of their advantages. There's an undertone about the book that sounds like the family saying "if we didn't need to go to town, you'd be buried here."

Also, the Bundren's seem to be emotionally and maybe a little mentally stunted. After Addie dies, Vardaman correlates his mother with the fish he caught and killed earlier. He also drills holes in the coffin so she can breathe, inadvertently drilling holes into her face. Darl rationalizes that he "is not" because his mother changed from "is" to "was" leaving him entirely motherless. He also tells Vardaman that Jewel's mother is a horse. Cash doesn't seem to have any emotional involvement and neither do Anse and Dewey Dell.

 

Obviously, I didn't like this book. I can't stand stream of conscious or pointless actions. However, it did win the Pulitzer Prize, so what do I know, right? Now, before you take this review to heart, remember, this is just one person's opinion. Some people like this book.
For me, from a writer's stand point, it's not very well written. The stream of conscious in it reads like actual thoughts, interrupting themselves and making wide, looping circles around to the original thought. It made it hard to read and comprehend.

I will say this though, I blazed through the book, so I could get it over with faster.

In Search Of. . . Written Words: Miss Peregrine's home for Peculiar Children

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
by Ransom Riggs
We cling to our fairy tales until the price of believing them becomes too high.
~Jacob

Jacob Portman grew up devouring the bizarre stories his grandfather told him about growing up with peculiar children and fighting monsters. As a worshiping child, Jacob believed him. Then, finding that his grandfather had created a fairy tale life to explain the horrors of WWII to himself, Jacob stopped believing. Besides, stories about super strong children, floating girls, and invisible boys just couldn't be true, could they?

When his grandfather calls him in a panic, 16 year old Jacob goes to calm him down. He finds Grandpa Portman dying in the woods with a cryptic message. Then he sees it—the monster from his grandfather’s stories.

The trauma triggers night terrors and anxiety that prompts Jacob’s parents to take him to a psychiatrist, Dr. Golan. He urges Jacob to seek out his grandfather’s past, so that he can confront reality. His search leads him to the Welsh island of Cairnholm. Then Jacob must separate the truth from the lies. 

Allow Ransom Riggs to haunt you with his tale of monsters and peculiar children. He intertwines the story with actual photographs from the past, giving it a three dimensional feel of reality. The eerie Tim Burton-esque quality enthralls readers, scintillating them with the answers to the unexplained oddities we find in sepia-toned snapshots.

I rarely read any book more than once and enjoy it. This proved to be an exception. I read it a second time to refresh myself on the story before I dove into the Hollow City. I love this book just as much the second time if not more. This time instead of watching the story unfold, I could pick up on the small details that foreshadowed what was to come.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is definitely worth a read or twenty.

Here's the Book Trailer:

As always,