/lit/ - Literature

Just purchased pic related. What should I expect?

>>8272421

What was a book with a really interesting premise that was in the end ruined by the poor story telling of the author.

Pic related.

Just watched the movie and it was amazing. Is the book as good? Thoughts on people who watched both? I'm thinking of buying it but if it's not that much better I don't want to buy it since it might be pretty redundant.

The Martian probably. The premise kept me reading just to see how it ended really, but in terms of writing it was probably the single worst published work I have ever read.

The characters are entirely one-dimensional, the prose is awful, the dialogue is banal and completely unengrossing, and the """"humour"""" is so cringe worthy it hurts. Weir very clearly isn't a writer and equally as clearly didn't have an editor, yet he somehow has a book published. I don't know what's more depressing: the obvious shallowness and pandering of the industry, the people who actually buy the shit they shove out, or how apparently nobody has given the book a bad review, indicating that 'critics' evidently like it as a good work of literature. It's mind-boggling really.

I understand that publishers need to make money to survive so they have to publish what's popular, not what's good, it's just a shame seeing it happen in reality.

It also pisses me off that it has a really nice cover considering how bad of a book it is.

My Dad asked for the martian for christmas. What's a better book similar to the martian i can get him instead?

What do you guys think about The Martian? Is it any good or is it just a waste of time?

I just picked this up at the store and really enjoyed the first chapter. How pleb am I?

What are some good, simple stories or thrillers you love?

Ok, I've looked at the recommendations and it wasn't all that much help. I'm looking for decent scifi to read. Stuff I've already enjoyed:

The Martian
Wool
All you need is Kill
Diaspora (and pretty much everything else Greg Egan wrote)
The Dresden Files
Ender's Game

Anyone know of anything as enjoyable as those? Also no Philip K. Dick please, for some reason I find him tiring.

>Ender's Game movie coming out
>people say the book is good
>can't be bothered to wait for movie, read book, it's glorious
>movie comes out I go through a dozen vomit bags
>Edge of Tomorrow movie coming out
>people say the book is good
>can't be bothered to wait for movie, read book, it's glorious
>movie comes out it's ok, but not quite as good as book
>The Martian movie coming out
>people say the book is good

And that's how I just finished The Martian. So worth it.

Two that instantly spring to mind, that aren't drawn from the font of the popular go-tos, are Permutation City and The Martian.

Permutation City by Greg Egan is hard sci-fi, a rather dark and haunting take on uploading your brain to a server so you can live forever. This book sticks with me years afterwards due to it really getting into what sci-fi is all about: Not lasers or spaceships, but the big "what if?" questions.

The Martian is a new book by a new author, and is really hard sci-fi. As in it could all happen with current technology (as far as I understand it). It's about a man who gets stranded on Mars. The story is told as a series of diary entries, by a sarcastic and witty mission specialist who's trying to survive on Mars and figure out a way to get home alive. It delves into measurements and numbers and builds tension by explaining how many liters of oxygen is left and how many hours the battery will last and approaching everything with an engineering mindset. It really shows that the author did his homework on this one.

It's not necessarily one of my favourites, but it's great in that way some of Michael Crichton's best work is, except it actually has likable characters! And it's my most recent sc-fi read so there's that. Apparently there's talks of a movie, and I'd love to see the main guy out of Moon playing the lead. He seems like he could pull off an endearing, witty, NASA engineer character.