Friday 6 November 2015

The Martian

Being such an on the ball happening person it has taken me four years to get around to reading Andy Weir's The Martian.  I'll keep my review short.  I really enjoyed reading the book.

Are there quibbles.  Yes, sure there are.  The weather scene.

My critical observation;  the hero would've lost a lot of weight after 18 months on a 1200 calorie a day diet.  Like the former criticism it's really not that big a deal because stories are more than putting squicky details into the description because sometime it can be too much.  Of course, if this had been a body horror story then it would be different.

So I'm looking forward to getting the movie on disc soon.

This week I've been acting as a Beta reader for a friend of mine, going through his short story and being very critical.  In the process I've learnt some stuff about my own writing and the quirks and foibles I fall into.  Having Beta readers and acting as one for others is one way of upping one's game.

No boring word counts this time, so that's it for another week.

4 comments:

  1. Agreed, The Martian was a fun and easy read. The movie is supposed to be good too--albeit without any "Three's Company" references.

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    Replies
    1. I'm going to have to Google Three's Company. I know it's an old TV show but anything else is lost on me.

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    2. Well, the gag in the book is that it's a very sitcom-y sitcom, where the plots always follow the same pattern and nothing ever changes. I think the movie replaced all the '70s and '80s TV and music references with more generic (or maybe more modern) stuff.

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    3. Sounds reasonable to me as I thought the gags were referencing stuff that was a bit old for the time frame of the book. It's one of those things that I wrestle with in my own work. My solution is too mix old classics that contemporary readers will get and then make up stuff to hang on the coat tails to create future past nostalgia. I just hope it works.

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