Review written by Diana Iozzia
I read this book last summer, 2016, during my lunch breaks at work and when my preschool students were sleeping. For a book to read while eating a sandwich, it wasn't too bad. I enjoyed the plot, I'm always interested in reading about a rescue mission. The idea that it was on Mars added to the appeal. The story starts out with Mark Watney being left for dead by his team, as they head back to Earth. Luckily so, he is alive. Mark finds himself hurt, but not hurt enough to be in complete danger.
Mark uses his botany skills to assess how he can conserve his food and survive on Mars in his HAB unit, which is the leftover hut that they used during their mission. He plants potatoes, conserves food, works out, repairs the HAB, and tries to restore communication to NASA.
This book is interesting, because it paints a seemingly realistic portrait of what it would be like to be lost on Mars. Each diary entry of his is told, keeping tracks of the days as "sols" rather than Earth days, which makes sense. I personally enjoyed this book also, because the public relations team on Earth and the NASA unit on Earth are very funny. This book is very comedic and charming.
The most important part of the book is unfortunately the most boring part. Him learning to survive! Planting lots and lots of potatoes. Oh, no. That's broken. Gotta go fix that. Oh, no, the potatoes are in danger. Oh, no, something else broke. I feel like a solid half of the book is literally just about broken space parts and potatoes.
I would personally just recommend watching the film. I read the book before the film, and I felt that all of the important prose in the book was in the film. All of the nonimportant prose was shown in montage sequences and talked about in Mark's short diary entries onscreen.
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