30 Day Book Challenge, Day 8

Today’s challenge — Most overrated book.

Jeez — SO many to choose from. But I’m going to go with one that sets me apart from Geek Orthodoxy: a book that is lauded in geek circles, and popular enough in the mainstream view to have had a film made of it: THE MARTIAN by Andy Weir.

I started reading the book because of the raves, and gave up on it about 1/3 of the way in, because the main character’s “voice” in narration annoyed the ever-living fuck out of me. It struck me as just too Joss-Whedon-ish-ly self-consciously “clever.” You know– the sort of way that “smartest-guy-in-the-room” geeks always imagine themselves talking, but seldom ever do?

It read, to me, like a marginally-well-plotted self-published novel, which, in fact, is what it began as before being picked up by a traditional house, and then turned into a movie. I honestly do NOT get the love for this book. It serves, mostly, as my reminder that not every geek-lauded thing is for EVERY geek, which is always good to keep in mind. A chacun son goût, and all that.

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