Reviews and Comments

Probably boring if you're not interested in the technical problems involved in being stranded on Mars as those make up most of the book but for someone like me who is interested in the exploration of Mars and everything to do with space in general this is a great hard Sci-Fi story set in the near future.

The writing could be much better, I wish there was more of backstory to how Watney became a person able to survive so well in a situation like this (nothing really explains it to me) and not everything is beliveable to me but the overall concept and most of the details are solid. Wil Wheaton's narration of the audiobook edition was good but not perfect.

I didn't read this all the way through. I agree with his overall premise that western culture has made people excessively self-centered but the author is a christian and I found him to be ignorant and quick to lump together everything else ranging from other types of #spirituality to Dan Brown's novels as inferior and just another symptom of this. #books

Making good progress, around 2/3 of the way through now. There's even more questions to be answered now, the world seems interesting and there hasn't been too much of magic for now... Guess how much I'll like this will depend on how satisfying the answers are.

Going through this quite slowly because I can't really fall asleep listening to anything extremely gripping.

Can't wait for House of the Dragon to continue so I decided to listen to parts of this while waiting. The approach this book takes is so different from the series that I expect even reading those parts will keep my interest.

I'm around 1926 in the timeline now. Goebbels' adulation, declarations of love and comparisons to John the Baptist or Christ for Hitler in his diaries sure are something... According to Kershaw the Nazi party became purely a leader party around this time after the Bamberg meeting where Hitler basically made it clear the party program won't be needing any changes and shortly later in a small update it was declared "immutable". This was because Hitler was not going to be bound by anything like that, Nazi policy was to be whatever he decided. It seems more like a cult than a political party in general (but of course there are other examples of this in the political sphere).

This also underlines how pointless it is to try to argue (as has become popular in some right-wing circles online) that the Nazis were "socialists" because the name of the party or anything written in the program of the party. I don't think Hitler's priority ever was to implement a specific economic policy beyond what gave power to him personally.

This is a long one and I've been working through it for a while now already but only got around to marking it as being read on BookWyrm now.

Currently at Chapter 8 of part one and still 7-8 hours (audiobook) to go... Can tell it's not hard sci-fi at this point. There's a mystery to be solved so this is keeping me engaged. Xe Sands is doing a great job narrating. There was a reference to the "dark side of the moon" which isn't really a thing.

Slow start but I'm enjoying it already and the science seems reasonably plausible. I can tell the author knows cats.

"Old Sparky" by Anthony Galvin offers a well-researched and informative look at capital punishment throughout history. It starts off strong but the later parts of the book may feel a bit repetitive with its listing of case descriptions. There's also perhaps too much focus on just electrocution. The final chapters provide reasonably good analysis of the problems with execution as a form of punishment but he seemed to dismiss methods similar to those used in euthanasia as a possible way to at least avoid the executions being a form of torture on shaky grounds and only mentions it in passing.

The book isn't for everyone but for those interested in true crime and the history of capital punishment, "Old Sparky" can be worth going through. While it may not be the most engaging or entertaining piece of nonfiction, it provides a solid overview of its subject matter.