The Martian, Andy Weir

I started reading this after my boyfriend raced through it on holiday this summer. The Martian of the title is Mark Watney, who has been left behind on Mars (his crewmates think they saw him die). His challenge is to survive (possibly until the next mission comes to Mars, in around 4 years time) and try to get back to Earth.

It's compelling, Watney is an entertainer and it's his well written sense of humour which makes you keep reading. The novel also moves quickly, essentially only giving us updates when something changes, rather than an in-depth, blow by blow account (though saying that, things change pretty often). The science is in-depth however, you get the lovely impression that Weir set the novel as a puzzle for himself, he relishes fixing unfixable problems and explaining how they were fixed, and why the solution works. This got too in-depth for me at times, a couple of passages went right over my head but I was quite happy to accept what I was being told.

In all it's a brilliant read, my only criticism is that you don't get a sense of the time. Without spoiling anything Mark is on Mars, on his own, for a pretty long time. There isn't really any sense of that time passing, or of the psychological affects or moments of madness that might happen to someone in that time and under that much stress. Watney is written as an american hero, but it might have been a little more interesting if the circumstances had cracked his shell just a little.

I have just started another adventure; Eric Newby's A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

Wanderlust, Rebecca Solnit

Wanderlust is a history of walking, it is hugely varied, covering pilgrimages, poets and writers, protesters, ordinary hikers, urban wandering, treadmills, walking as art and the theories as to why we stood on two legs in the first place.

I was worried this might be a little heavy going, and at times it felt a little slow; but Solnit has a knack of tying in the everyday and incidental to relate the themes back to the present. There are enough stories to balance out the explanations & theories It is a brilliant book, it explained to me the things I felt about walking but couldn't quite put my finger on, or put into words. Reasons why we walk; for recreation, to see, to think or to travel. What walking does to us, shapes the way we think and the rhythms we think in. As well as the spaces we walk in and how they came about. The book was very centred on an American and British history of walking, it would have been good to open up the conversation to other cultures. Though I'm not sure you could fit the whole world's experience of walking into 300 pages.

There were a couple of chapters I didn't necessarily agree with and I felt she was generalising in some places. In one chapter Solnit was talking of the 'Landed gentry' blocking access to footpaths and rights of way and the poor trying to get access, and I would argue things aren't as clear cut as that. Certainly in my experience it is some ordinary farmers (who certainly aren't rich or 'gentry', though they may be landed) who restrict, block or verbally assault those walking on footpaths. Later there is a whole chapter on the death of walking, centred around the suburbia of America. It seems insane that anyone would suggest people will stop walking, in British suburbia there's usually a pub, corner shop & chippy, people walk to these and walk their dogs, they move to suburbia to be nearer the country and the outside spaces and footpaths it offers; not to be locked up in their houses, as Solnit seems to suggest the Americans do. 

However I concede that both these 'flaws' are down to the differences in my and Solnit's personal experiences, and perhaps in a book charting the history of walking you have to consider the future of it. A brilliantly written and explained chapter on walking as art redeemed the book for me. The ideas behind and reasons for the artworks were beautifully explained and that chapter should be given to anyone who has ever scorned a piece of contemporary art. 

Wanderlust is certainly worth the read, Solnit both informs & provokes conversation, the best sort of a history book.