Talk of the Town discussion

How was your reading experience? Did you enjoy yourself? What parts do you enjoy the most?

I really expected (spoilers) because of the log format, that he wasn't going to make it in the end. I thought it would be like the crew reading his logs and that's how they find out what happened to him. So I was pleasantly surprised at the end.
There were times where I glazed over some passages because of how technical it was. I appreciate the work he put into the accuracy, but I just don't get that stuff. But the book definitely wouldn't have been as good if the detail weren't there.
There were sooooo many problems. It was like mini climaxes throughout the whole book but it wasn't a good thing really. It made the ultimate climax less exciting (if that could really be called a climax?)
Overall, I really liked this book. I only had 8 days to read it because I checked it out from the library but 8 days was enough because it was a quick read.

It was a really really fun read for me. I'm glad I was able to read just little bits of it at a time, so the fun was extended.
Like Caele said, I think some of the parts were too technical for me and I tried to stay but I ended up just reading over those parts... although I admire how the author was able to simplify it as much as he could. The chemistry stuff were a little easier to understand, than the engineering stuff (when he attaches or detaches all these little contraptions, he just loses me in the descriptions)

Overall, I really loved it. I actually decided to read this book because I saw that Matt Damon was playing it. I've been hearing about it on Reddit a lot and then one day I saw a poster of The Martian on the theaters so I looked it up to see if it was based on the book, and voila, it was! All throughout the book, I was picturing Matt Damon doing and saying all that stuff, and for me, the character was custom-made for him! I kept thinking that the author was thinking of Matt Damon when he was writing all of this.. hahaha.

I was so thrilled, and glad that the book club selected it. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have been able to make time for it.

After page 50 or so, the technical stuff did not bother me anymore - I guess that I got used to it!