Review-itas: Books for which I'm late to the party

Based on everyone 2014 Best Of lists, I am on the second half of the bell curve on reading these books.  Therefore, I'll just give you a quick recap of my thoughts, and maybe these will serve as reminder to you about them, in case you were thinking of checking one or the other or both of them out!

The Martian, by Andy Weir.  Thanks so much to Trisha at eclectic/eccentric for lending me her copy of this audiobook!  As she promised, the audiobook is really good!

The book is about Mark, an astronaut who accidentally gets left behind on Mars after a wind storm (Home Alone x bazillion, right?).  He is really quite upbeat about the whole situation, and when NASA understands what happened, the whole world works together to try and bring Mark home.

My favorite part of this book was the gallows humor that Mark displays through its entirety.  We get to know him through his log entries, and you can just tell that he has many frustrating, painful, weeping moments, but he does not share any of that on the log.  He's upbeat and positive and really, really funny, and it's just so heart-warming to hear.  And then all the people working to save him, too - also very heart-warming.

Sometimes, I felt like the language was a little too technical for my tastes, but at the same time, I thought that the technical aspects were really fascinating.  I don't think I fully comprehended just how inhospitable a place Mars is.  Mark went around wearing his space suit pretty much everywhere.  And I can't imagine that was very comfortable.

One thing really annoyed me about this audiobook (and I admit that it annoyed me a lot).  Pretty much everyone with a non-Anglo name got a foreign accent.  There was one German astronaut, so I understood giving him a German accent.  But there was a main character who was ethnically Indian and a side character who was ethnically Asian, and both of them had very stereotypical accents.  Even though there was nothing in the story that implied that they hadn't been born in America.  And, in fact, their phrasing and language made it pretty clear (to me, at least) that they were American and therefore would have had American accents.

To be fair, there were also stereotypical Texan accents for people from Houston.  But that's just as annoying!  Just because someone lives in Texas now doesn't mean they have a Texas accent!  And the Indian guy lives in Houston, too - why didn't he have a Texan accent?

So, yes, that frustrated me.  But truly, the narrator did a great job of capturing Mark's voice.  And the story is really fun and enjoyable to read.  So don't let that turn you off!

Bad Feminist, by Roxane Gay.  This collection of essays was very entertaining to read via audiobook.  My only problem with books like this one, in which strong feminist women speak their mind about the world-at-large and women's rights specifically is that I often think they are preaching to the choir.  Actually, calling that a problem with the books is wrong.  There's nothing wrong with the books.  It's more that I get so riled up and very, "Amen, sistah!"

But then I realize that probably the people whose minds I want to change and whose minds the author wants to change are not reading this book, and I feel quite sad.

Maybe I'm wrong, though!  In which case, I think Gay's collection is a good addition to any bookshelf.  I liked some essays more than others, which is only to be expected.  My favorite was about how people today expect to find characters in the books they read "likable," especially female characters, and how flawed that approach to reading is.  I took this essay to heart because I'll often finish a book and think - great writing, but GOSH, those characters were horrible!  And my enjoyment will be less than if I liked the characters.  But as Gay points out, the point of a story isn't only to write about you and your friends, it's to take you outside of your realm of experience.  And so we should not look only for likable characters, we should look for great characters and stories that move us.  I really took this advice to heart, and I plan to be much more aware of my reaction to stories and characters in future.

There were many other wonderful essays in this collection, and I'm sure if you read it, you might go home with very different takeaways than me.  But that's much more a positive than a negative!  If you've read this collection, what do you remember most vividly about it?