The Martian

 I was at lunch with a friend last weekend and we were discussing something and all of a sudden a joke from a movie popped into my head and my friend's husband knew what I was talking about.

It had to do with The Martian by Andy Weir. I’d seen the movie but hadn’t read the book. Luckily we are the sort of nerds that go to bookstores often, and I found a copy of the book.

I mentioned in an early post that the story of how The Martian was published was kind of amazing and very inspiring to me. He was a computer programmer for twenty-five years but always wanted to be a writer. So, he wrote a book as a hobby and people liked it. The liked it so much that it got the attention of an agent and a publisher. It's a modern day Cinderella story.

It’s a fun book to read. When I first started reading the book, I intended to review the first few chapters, but I read over 120 pages in one sitting.

The thing that strikes me most about this book is that I don’t want to leave the universe that Andy Weir created and I love the voice of the main character. To me, that’s what makes this such a compelling story.

I could care less about the science or if it could happen. I’m most certainly not a huge fan of science fiction and under normal circumstances wouldn’t have given this book a chance.

I think that’s a lesson I need to take to heart when creating my characters. It’s not the story, because I won’t be the first writer to write a coming of age story, but if people can root for my protagonist, then I have something.

Also, I found some of his earlier writing online. He’s written Doctor Who Fan Fiction and some other stuff. It was like his training ground.

Currently, there’s some fan fiction about The Martian. I wonder how that feels as an author: for someone who wrote fan fiction to now have fan fiction written about the characters they created.

The Life We Bury

                                                 
I've had a very long week, and haven’t felt much like writing or reading. It doesn’t happen a lot, but sometimes the children run me ragged and my only desire at the end of the day is to sit in a quiet room away from other humans.

I was thinking about a book I read recently called “The Life We Bury” By Allen Eskens. It's one of those that sticks with you long after the last page.

This is the Synopsis from Goodreads:

College student Joe Talbert has the modest goal of completing a writing assignment for an English class. His task is to interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject. There he meets Carl Iverson, and soon nothing in Joe's life is ever the same.

Carl is a dying Vietnam veteran--and a convicted murderer. With only a few months to live, he has been medically paroled to a nursing home, after spending thirty years in prison for the crimes of rape and murder.

As Joe writes about Carl's life, especially Carl's valor in Vietnam, he cannot reconcile the heroism of the soldier with the despicable acts of the convict. Joe, along with his skeptical female neighbor, throws himself into uncovering the truth, but he is hamstrung in his efforts by having to deal with his dangerously dysfunctional mother, the guilt of leaving his autistic brother vulnerable, and a haunting childhood memory. 

Thread by thread, Joe unravels the tapestry of Carl’s conviction. But as he and Lila dig deeper into the circumstances of the crime, the stakes grow higher. Will Joe discover the truth before it’s too late to escape the fallout?

I normally don’t like murder mystery stories. However, the few I’ve read and finished, I’ve enjoyed.

I loved the way this story was told and I loved Joe. He was a hard-working kid who was trying to escape his alcoholic mother. Joe has always had to take care of his family and is now running from his mother and autistic brother.

The main plot points of the novel are interesting. Carl's life was tragic, but not an uncommon story. To be honest, it wasn’t the mystery that had me so intrigued, it was the B plot that had me up past my bedtime reading. It was so true to life, one day Joe is a college student writing a paper, the next he’s bailing his mother out of jail on DUI charges or taking his brother home to live with him.

Joe’s brother is autistic. I absolutely LOVED this plot point. I loved the honest portrayal of a sibling with autism and the way Joe was protective of him in the way a brother would be protective of his younger brother. I also liked that for Joe, having an autistic brother was just apart of his life and most importantly, Jeremy wasn't his autistic brother, he was his brother.

 I really really liked his neighbor turned loved interest, Lila Nash. I hope she's in the sequel because I wanted more of them. I also loved that Lila made instant friends with Jeremy.

The author Allen Eskens, was working as an attorney when he wrote this. He even went as far as taking writing classes, his website says that: after law school, he studied creative writing in the M.F.A. program at Minnesota State University-Mankato, as well as the Loft Literary Center and the Iowa Summer Writer’s Festival. Okay, my bucket list begins and ends with attending the Iowa Summer Writer’s Festival.

I had a book hangover after this one. I didn’t want it to end, a fact I tweeted (using an old account) to the author, and he retweeted me and followed me. I’m going to send Mr. Eskins this blog. If he reads it, he should know that he is an inspiration to me. I can’t wait to read the sequel (it’s pre-ordered at Barnes and Noble), and I am trying very hard to get my hands on your other books.