u/Equivalent_Bank_5845

After having watched Project: Hail Mary in cinemas a few months ago, I, like most people, loved it to bits. I knew it was based off a book written by Andy Weir, and I remember watching The Martian (the movie based off of the other really popular Andy Weir book of the same name) a few years back but don't really recall what exactly happened in it, so The Martian (as well as project hail mary) quickly found their way onto my TBR.

So, I recently read The Martian and I loved it!

There's something about Watney's indomitable will to survive using his own scientific rigour and knowledge of botany, mechanical engineering, and chemistry, as well as his human ingenuity, resourcefulness and perseverance, that makes the couple hundred pages solely focusing on a single man stranded on Mars so intensely satisfying. Even when things can suddenly go wrong that he didn't plan for (e.g., when the airlock door blasted off from the Hab, or when his rover and trailer contraption fall off a ridge at the beginning of the Schiaparelli crater), he never gives up and always shows determination til the very end.

It's impossible not to feel awe and wonder as Mark takes time using science to solve the multitude of problems that arise when you're alone on an entire planet: combusting hydrogen to make water for crops, using smoke to see where the leaks are in an airlock, using a spare EVA camera to log wattage of Solar panels to deduce the direction of a dust storm, using ASCII text at regular degree intervals around a camera so NASA can communicate with him, using radiation to warm up the air in his rovers and so, so much more.

The heart of this book, however, is about the innate, human desire to help each other out, no matter the cost, or the risk, and I adored how the book ended with an explanation of why the world would spend 100s of millions of dollars and why people would sacrifice hundreds of hours round the clock just for the chance to maybe save a single botanist on Mars.

I will say, the structure of Mars problem ----> potential solution -------> new mars problem -------> new potential solution did get repetitive at times, and some of the science was just too complicated for me to understand so I had to just trust that whatever was happening actually made sense. But I did like how there were breaks from Mars where we see how scientists back on Earth approached the situation (I particularly loved the debate in how they should use Taiyang Shen to save Watney), as well as getting more context on how his original crew unfortunately left him behind, how they react to news of his survival, and seeing how they worked together to pick him up from the Ares 4 MAV.

The humour was hit or miss, but I wasn't too bothered by it. It was a reasonable way for Mark to cope with the stress of his terrifying predicament.

8.8/10, I really want to read project Hail Mary now!

I just read one of the most popular American novellas ever, John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, because weirdly enough I never read it in school (instead, our class read Fight Club lmao).

This book is very short and fast paced, but equally powerful and thought provoking. Of Mice and Men is about how the brutal, unrelenting pressures of society in the 1930s (and maybe even todays) can threaten the strongest of friendships.

Lennie's kind-hearted, but clueless, naive and misunderstood nature, and his relationship to his most trusted companion, George, is such a gripping emotional heart for this ~100 page story. Despite the trouble and pain and distress of living with a mentally handicapped man like Lennie (especially one so strong), George tries his absolute best to give Lennie a happy, simple life on their own patch of land.

George acts how society should to those as mentally challenged as Lennie, understanding his kind-hearted nature, trying to show patience and restraint when he screws up, and helping him to build a better future for himself.

But, especially in the 1930s, life is not so accepting and fair to people like Lennie (as well as other people in the novel, like Crooks, Candy, or even George himself). Despite not meaning any harm, Lennie's condition makes it frighteningly easy for him to unintentionally hurt others, and therefore his strength becomes a curse. This is the tragedy of the novella, and this curse follows Lennie wherever he goes.

And tragedy indeed does strike when he accidentally kills Curley's wife, when only trying to stroke her hair.

Thus, George is faced with an impossible decision. He has to find and confront Lennie as soon as possible, near that lake from the very beginning. If he doesn't, and forgets this ever happened, Lennie will either get lost and potentially starve or die of illness with nobody to look after him, or be successfully hunted by Curley's mob and face a painful execution that terrifies him.

George then decides to do the deed himself. That scene where he reluctantly, and with much restraint and difficulty, gives him a painless death while Lennie only innocently thinks of petting rabbits whilst living off the land comfortably with his best friend was so heartbreaking, and will stay with me for a long time.

8/10, I am eager to read more Steinbeck.

I picked up White Nights a few days ago, and finished It in a couple of days, given how short it was, and I really liked it!

It was my first Dostoevsky read, because I heard it was a good introduction to his writing style. It can be so elegant and gorgeous, but sometimes sentences and paragraphs can be so, so long, causing me to re-read every few sentences more than I usually do! This book had a paragraph that lasted 7 and a half (small, albeit) pages!

I adored learning about our protagonist, a loner with no friends or partner, who's slowly losing the only engagement he ever has : there are fewer and fewer strangers for him to greet as he walks through St Petersburg since they're all leaving to go to their dachas (which I recently learnt is a name to describe Russian holiday homes), with their family and friends, something our protagonist unfortunately lacks.

The companionship and connection he shares with the sweet young stranger he meets, Nastenka, is so human, so heartwarming: there's something so relatable at how he interacts with this woman he's never met before. It was heartbreaking when he opens up to her, revealing that the only real relationships he forms are those in his own dreams and fantasies, causing him to fumble real life acquaintanceship as he's lost in his dreams, and yet this makes the moments he shares with Nastenka so much more special, as it might be the first moments of genuine connection he's experienced in a long, long time.

And it is because these moments are so precious to him personally, that the ending of the novel hits you right in the gut. Despite them both falling in love with each other, Nastenka goes on to marry the man she has been waiting for, for over a year, and she's basically lost to our protagonist forever (she says in her letter that they will still always be friends, but the friend-zone is not some place anyone particularly would want to be in).

However, at the very end of the story, he doesn't feel anger at Nastenka for leaving him behind, he doesn't feel jealousy for the guy marrying her, and he doesn't feel despair for the lonely life he will lead in the future. Instead he feels grateful that in his entire life of solitude, Nastenka, this sweet human being, had given him a moment of real, true, happiness, as potentially his only genuine, close companion. And it ends with the famous, bittersweet quote "My god! A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole of a man's life?"

7.5/10, I want to read more Dostoevsky now.

I recently finished reading Dune and I loved it way way more than I expected to! I saw the first movie when it came out in cinemas, and contrary to the public and critics I really didn't like it: I thought it was boring, confusing and dull.

I figured that reading the book would help me understand Frank Herbert's world and lore in a way that would allow me to appreciate the story more than I did 4.5 years ago. And I was right, this book rocks!

Dune is a book that explores politics, culture, religion, prophecy, ecology in a way that never felt too jarring or philosophically incomprehensible, always strengthening the enjoyment of the experience of the narrative. The glossary was also an excellent edition to this book allowing me to actually understand what all the terms unique to it actually meant: without it I would never have enjoyed this novel nearly as much as I did.

Arrakis is such an interesting setting for the vast majority of the book, such that it feels like its own character. A desert world with no running water, filled with enormous sandworms, devastating coriolis storms, mostly uninhabitable for regular humans, but at the same time is the only area to find the universe's most rare, most valuable resource, melange: an intriguing juxtaposition.

Fremen culture, in a world where water is so, so much more unattainable and thus valuable was so well explored in this book. Every drop of moisture, of sweat, of tears, has to be conserved. When a matter is of dire importance it is a "water matter", when you pledge your allegiance to a tribe you pledge your "water" to it, when a member of a tribe dies they give their own water back to the tribe since they do not require it anymore. Their extreme religious philosophy and psychology surrounding Maud'Dib was visceral and even frightening at times.

There are so many striking moments in this book, from the death of Duke Leto and of Liet-Kynes, the duel against Jamis and later his funeral, when Paul first rides a shai-hulud, Feyd-Rautha's duel against the slave in the colosseum (and later against Paul himself), or even Gurney Halleck easing the last moments of Mattai, one of his men, with a beautiful song.

The Sci-Fi aspect of it was also intriguing, with body shields only allowing slow moving objects to pass through, and lasguns causing mini nukes when intercepting a shield but otherwise able to penetrate everything else (thus causing interesting dynamics in combat and warfare), but it felt more like a fantasy book with all the Bene Gesserit mysticism, prescience, and Fremen religion and radicalism.

Solid, high 9/10, I cannot wait to read Dune: Messiah!