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The audiobook edition of The Martian has drawn 100,000 fan ratings on the Audible website. The company released this audiobook back in March 2013.

Here’s more from the press release: “In addition to the 100,000 people who positively ‘rated’ the audiobook, it also enjoys a superb 4.8 out of 5-star average, and has had a continuous presence at the top of Audible.com’s bestsellers list. The Martian’s achievements demonstrate the burgeoning global popularity of audiobooks and their ascent as a rival to other entertainment mediums like books, television, and film.”

Andy Weir’s popular science-fiction novel was adapted into a critically acclaimed movie starring Matt Damon. Click on these links to watch the first trailer, the second trailer, and the third trailer.

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The Revenant, a film adaptation directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, has earned twelve academy Academy Award nominations. John Krasinski, an actor, joined Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, to make the announcement this morning.

The movie, based in part on Michael Punke’s 2015 novel, stars Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role of Hugh Glass. We’ve embedded the official trailer above–what did you think of the film?

The pieces recognized in the Best Picture category included a number of adapted books. Below, we’ve linked to free samples of books adapted into this year’s Best Picture-nominated films.

Free Samples of Books Adapted into Best Picture Nominees

The Revenant by Michael Punke

The Big Short by Michael Lewis

Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín

The Martian by Andy Weir

Room by Emma Donoghue

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What were the most popular books at the Google Play store this year? The data team crunched the numbers and announced that E.L. James claimed the number one spot.

In total, James captured five slots on this year’s list. Some of the other titles on the list include Paper Towns by John Green, Allegiant by Veronica Roth, and The Giver by Lois Lowry.

James, Green, and Roth were all featured on the 2014 list. Below, we’ve collected free samples of all the books from the 2015 top ten for your reading pleasure.

1. Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James

2. Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian by E.L. James

3. Fifty Shades Darker by E.L. James

4. Fifty Shades Freed by E.L. James

5. American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History by Chris Kyle, Scott McEwen, and Jim DeFelice

6. The Girl on the Train: A Novel by by Paula Hawkins

7. Gone Girl: A Novel by Gillian Flynn

8. The Martian: A Novel by Andy Weir

9. Fifty Shades Trilogy Bundle by E.L. James

10. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

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The Martian by Andy Weir has a fabulous back story. Initially published chapter by chapter and made available for free on the author’s website, readers soon fell in love with the story. First, they asked him to make it available as an ebook, so they could enjoy it on their e-readers rather than having to read it […]

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So yesterday I started composing in my head what I wanted to say about Andy Weir’s The Martian and I was working up a good post too until I realized I had homework to attend to! Poof went all my mental work. Crud. The homework was writing and submitting my Library Journal review on Frida Kahlo’s Garden. I can only submit reviews between 175-200 words and they have very specific requirements. Every word counts. It isn’t so very hard to write it now that I’ve gotten good practice at it. However, it doesn’t leave time to write that blog post either. Having begun writing that blog post in my head and getting on with it pretty well, do you think I might remember any of it? Ha! Ha! Ha! Of course not! That’s why there’s this excuse of an introduction. And unfortunately I had no mental dreaming time at work today to begin again so I begin now and we’ll see where this goes.

The Martian. Loved it. Laugh out loud funny at times. Mark Watney’s smartass humor is what helps him survive alone on Mars and that’s saying something because I don’t think many of us would find any kind of humor in being left for dead on Mars by your crewmates in an emergency evacuation during a major dust storm. And he doesn’t even have a radio with which to contact NASA. Talk about being completely and utterly alone. So he begins recording a log of his days and the things he has to do to survive. He is a botanist and an engineer, two skill sets that turn out to be really helpful as he has to repair things that break and jury-rig other equipment to make them do things they were not designed to do. He also has to figure out how to grow food because there is not enough astronaut food for him to survive the four years he is going to be there.

The book is Watney’s log but it also jumps around a bit so we get the story told through the perspective of NASA as well as the crew who left him behind. Here is an example of some of the humor. NASA has just realized Watney is alive and given a news conference. Two of the people in charge of the program are talking and we get this:

‘I wonder what he’s thinking right now.’

LOG ENTRY: SOL 61
How come Aquaman can control whales? They’re mammals! Makes no sense.

The pacing is great. There are many tense moments especially getting towards the end when something really bad happens. I was reading that part on the plane Sunday afternoon and I had a momentary mental fit: dammit! He better not die! If he dies I’m going to be really pissed! Weir wouldn’t do that would he? Take him so far just to kill him? He’s not George R.R. Martin. Please don’t be like George R.R. Martin!

There was actually another event so very close to the end that precipitated another similar outburst. These outbursts had to be mental you see because I was already in trouble for attempting to bring some very dangerous hummus onto the plane. I didn’t want to give them any reason to escort me somewhere when the plane landed.

I don’t think it is spoiler to say the book has a “happy” ending. If it is, I’m sorry to have just given it away.

Weir originally published the book chapter by chapter on his blog. He is one of those uber-geeks who spends his free time learning about relativistic physics and orbital mechanics. But in this case it is good because he began daydreaming about what-if Mars scenarios and it turned into a book with very accurate science. The book was so popular his readers asked him to make it available as an ebook. So Weir formatted it and published it on Amazon for .99 cents because Amazon wouldn’t let him give it away for free. It became such a success that he was approached by a publisher and the rest, as they say, is history. But between the Amazon publication and the print publication Weir received numerous letters from scientists kindly correcting his errors and Weir made corrections to the book accordingly before print publication. While we have not gone to Mars yet, NASA has a Mars program plan called Mars Direct and Weir used this as the basis for his book.

The book touched all kinds of buttons in my geeky heart; space travel, real science that not once relies on some made up magical science to save the day, funny, suspenseful, surprising and unabashedly entertaining. Also, if it were me stuck on Mars, I’d be so dead. Therefore, when the day arrives when humans do actually go to Mars, you will not find me standing in line for a chance to go. I’ll keep my feet firmly planted here on Earth, thank you very much.

Filed under: Books, Reviews Tagged: Andy Weir, Mars

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Can you believe it’s July already? I can’t. I was just getting used to June, just starting to feel like I was in the June groove, and now it’s time to move on. I am not ready. Can we turn the calendar back to June 15th please? That should be enough for me to get my fill of June and then when July 1st rolls around again I will be ready. Not going to happen you say? Where’s Marty McFly or the TARDIS when you need them?

Well, let’s barrel into July then. What will the month hold for reading? I get a 3-day holiday weekend coming up for Independence Day. Groovy, some extra reading time.

Even though I have been (mostly) good about keeping my library hold requests down to a manageable number, two books I have been looking forward to reading that have long waiting lines have, of course, both arrived for me at once. I now have to either a) rush through The Buried Giant and Get in Trouble in three weeks, or b) choose one to focus on and not worry about the other and get in line for it again if I run out of time. Choice “b” seems the most likely one I will go with which means Ishiguro’s Buried Giant will get my attention first. I am looking forward to it.

Carried over from last month, I am still reading Elif Shafak’s The Architect’s Apprentice. I am enjoying it much more than I was before even though I am making my way through it rather slowly.

In June I began reading Portrait of a Lady by Henry James and The Martian by Andy Weir. Two very different books and I am enjoying each of them quite a lot. James manages to be funny and ironic and ominous and can he ever write! I know people make fun of his long sentences but I get so involved in the reading I don’t even notice the length of the sentences. I do notice sometimes the paragraphs are very long, but that is only when I am nearing my train stop or the end of my lunch break and I am looking for a place to stop reading. And The Martian, is it ever a funny book. The book itself isn’t funny I guess, there is nothing very funny about being left for dead on Mars, the character, Mark Watney is funny; humor as survival tool. Weir, I must say, does a most excellent job of writing about complex science in such a way that is compelling and interesting and makes me feel smart.

I have a review copy of a new book called Miss Emily by Nuala O’Connor on its way to me. The Emily in question is Emily Dickinson. It’s a novel from Penguin Random House and they are kindly going to provide a second copy for a giveaway. Something to look forward to!

I will also begin reading Elizabeth Bishop this month. I’m still reading Keats letters and biography and poetry but he will get a bit less attention as I start to focus on Bishop. Much as I wanted to like Keats, it seems I like the idea of Keats more than the actuality; enjoy his letters more than his poetry. Not that his poetry isn’t very good, it is, at least some of it because there is quite a bit of mediocre stuff he wrote to/for friends that makes me wonder why I decided to read the collected rather than the selected. Hindsight and all that. But even the really good Keats poetry left me with mixed feelings. I mean, I appreciate it and sometimes I have a wow moment, but it generally doesn’t give me poetry stomach (the stomach flutters I get when I read a poem I really connect with). We’ll see how it goes with Bishop. I have her collected as well as her letters to work my way through over the coming months.

Without a doubt there will be other books that pop up through the month, there always are! The unexpected is all part of the fun.

Filed under: Books, In Progress Tagged: Andy Weir, Elif Shafak, Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, John Keats, Nuala O'Connor

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The Martian by Andy Weir has debuted on the iBooks bestsellers list this week at No. 3.

Apple has released its top selling books list for paid books from iBooks in the U.S. for the week ending on June 15, 2015. Grey by E. L. James is No. 1 on the list and The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins is No. 2.

We’ve included Apple’s entire list after the jump.

iBooks U.S. Bestseller List – Paid Books 6/15/15

1. Grey by E L James – 9781101946350 – (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group) 2. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins – 9780698185395 – (Penguin Publishing Group) 3. The Martian by Andy Weir – 9780804139038 – (Crown/Archetype) 4. Paper Towns by John Green – 9781101010938 – (Penguin Young Readers Group) 5. Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll – 9781476789651 – (Simon & Schuster) 6. Just Say When by Kaylee Ryan – 9780986180026 – (Kaylee Ryan) 7. The Substitute by Denise Grover Swank – 9781939996237 – (DGS) 8. The Fixer by Joseph Finder – 9780698190849 – (Penguin Publishing Group) 9. Radiant Angel by Nelson DeMille – 9781455582310 – (Grand Central Publishing) 10. Finders Keepers by Stephen King – 9781501100130 – (Scribner) 11. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr – 9781476746609 – (Scribner) 12. Memory Man by David Baldacci – 9781455586387 – (Grand Central Publishing) 13. Fifty Shades Darker by E L James – 9781612130590 – (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group) 14. In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume – 9781101875056 – (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group) 15. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah – 9781466850606 – (St. Martin’s Press) 16. Fifty Shades Freed by E L James – 9781612130613 – (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group) 17. 14th Deadly Sin by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro – 9780316408769 – (Little, Brown and Company) 18. Fifty Shades of Grey by E L James – 9781612130293 – (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group) 19. Forever by Chanda Hahn – 9780996104821 – (Chanda Hahn) 20. Alpha by Jasinda Wilder – 9781941098110 – (Seth Clarke)

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20th Century Fox has unveiled a new trailer for The Martian. The story for this film adaptation came from Andy Weir’s popular science fiction novel. According to Deadline.com, filmmaker Drew Goddard adapted the book for the screenplay.

The video embedded above offers glimpses of Matt Damon in the lead role of Mark Watney. Other members of the cast include Jessica Chastain, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jeff Daniels, Donald Glover, Kate Mara, and Kristen Wiig. The theatrical release date has been set for November 25th. (via Wired.com)

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Few topics are more contentious at Powell's than agreeing on the "best" works of fiction. Our tastes run the gamut from experimental tragicomedies to multi-generational sagas to offbeat coming-of-age tales to surreal character studies... and so on. As such, rather than present selections from one perspective, we thought it wise to get a more representative [...]

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Here are the books that knocked my socks off in 2014. All of them would make great gifts; each of them was truly something that evoked that inexpressible delight of finding an author you are excited about. ÷ ÷ ÷ Prince of Fools (Red Queen's War #1) by Mark Lawrence Prince of Fools is essentially [...]

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Goodreads has announced the winners of this year’s Goodreads Choice Awards. With 46,154 votes, Landline by Rainbow Rowell has won in the Best Fiction category.

We’ve linked to samples of all the winning titles below. Did your favorite writer make it to the end?

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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Every week, we gather together a small pile of newly released titles that we agree should be on everyone's radar. We deem these titles our New Favorites (check out our recent picks here). Now that the year is winding down, we thought we'd take a look back at some of the standouts, in case you [...]

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The Martian
Andy Weir
Science Fiction - Adult

Pop quiz:
1) Do you ever stare at the night sky wondering if there is life out there?
2) Ever tried to levitate something with your mind?
3) Have you ever secretly (or not so secretly) watch Star Trek?

Houston, we have lift off. You like science fiction!

Science fiction has been fascinating readers from the moment Mary Shelley brought Frankenstein's monster to life. And writers of science fiction have been working to keep their edge ever since that first breath of life into their genre. Today, they're getting a little help from actual, real life physicists. Science fiction has become your basic rocket science.

How can this be? Some brilliant people at Tor had the great idea to pair up science fiction writers with NASA scientists. The result is a new list of science fiction titles, headed up by Andy Weir's, The Martian.

Basic premise: Robinson Crusoe on Mars.

More details: Mark Watney, a member of the Ares 3 Mars crew, accidentally gets left on Mars during the middle of a sandstorm. He has a habitat. He has oxygen and water. He has some food. But he doesn't have enough to last until the next Ares mission arrives. Cue creativity. How will Mark survive? Will NASA be able to help?

Weir's characters are wonderfully diverse and wickedly smart without being so smart they become inaccessible. The plot is scary believable. Accidents can happen, especially on a mission to a place as far away and foreign as Mars. The scientific does not way down the story, but rather, enhance it. Admittedly, there were moments when I did zone a little. Then again, that could have been the elliptical machine getting the better of me. I have books I "save" for work outs only. This was one. But I found myself sneaking more of The Martian whenever I could, like a secret stash of chocolate. And more than once that I had to remind myself this is NOT REAL. It's "just" a story (so stop crying!).

Tor has more books in the line up. One is about an elevator from earth to the international space station. Finally, a true fix for my science fiction addiction. I can't wait to see what they imagine up next. And...um...if it's not too much to ask, does anyone know how to get in the super secret society of writers who get to work with these amazing scientists?

For more April fling reads, check out Barrie Summy's website!

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This was of the funnest books I can remember reading in a long time. Gripping, funny and told in a totally original and authentic voice you can’t help but be hooked in by this part-Apollo 13, part-Castaway survival story.

Mark Watney is an astronaut, part of the third manned mission to Mars. Six days after landing on Mars a fierce dust storm forces Mark and his crewmates to abandon the planet. However during the evacuation Mark is left behind. Now he must work out how is going to survive on Mars until the next resupply mission. In two years time.

The majority of the book is told via Mark’s log entries detailing his survival. The log is written in a beautifully sarcastic tone where outright panic is only a hair’s breath away. There is plenty of self-deprecating humour and the log format works perfectly in detailing Mark’s day-to-day survival.

Mark is completely stranded. He has no way of communicating with his crewmates or NASA. He only has enough food and water to last half the time he needs. Mark puts to work his skills as an engineer and botanist to figure out if he can survive. The how is one of the most entertaining reads you will come across. Full of insane (but practical) problem solving you are glued to the book wanting to find out how Mark gets himself out of each new predicament he finds himself in. I defy anyone to be able to put this down once they start!

Buy the book here…

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Sean Platt and David Wright led our first science fiction self-published bestsellers list with the serialized post-apocalyptic novel, Yesterday’s Gone.

Our weekly self-published bestsellers list is often dominated by the popular genres of romance and erotica. In an effort to help GalleyCat readers find other kinds of independent authors, we will offer regular genre-focused bestseller lists for other kinds of indie writers.

What other genres would you like us to analyze in future lists?

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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