I've had this on my shelf a long time, and was reluctant to read it in case it didn't live up to my expectations. Sci fi is my faveourite genre and this being so highly rated I was expecting great things. Not only is this a great book, it's probably the best book I've ever read. It's incredibly well paced, putting this book down at work was a challenge, which I failed multiple times. The next Andy Weir book I read will have to be on vacation to avoid being fired. Like in the Martian the humour is spot on and the characters are exceptionally well written.

To manage to get the reader so emotionally invested in the survival of am alien spider and his home world is incredible.

I went into this with lofty expectations and it surpassed them, right now for me, this is the perfect book.

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2nd Read

After a year and a half, and 150 books, I decided to re-read this one. I've been saying it's my favorite book since I read it, at the time I'd only been reading a lot for a few months and only about 80 books, mainly sci-fi. Now I've got a lot more reading under my belt, expanded my reading to cover dozens of classics, fantasy, non-fiction and general novels how does it compare? It's still the best book I've read, and I pray the movie is at least half as good as the book. The writing itself is less complex or poetic when compared to a lot that I've read, and the structure / plot is simple, but those limitations have made the characters so easy to empathise with, to love, and to understand. It excels so much in that regard it still makes me feel more than any other book I've read.