(I figured you might think I made the whole book up unless I included a picture of it.)
The book has been aptly described as "Apollo 13" meets "Cast Away". (Sadly, the movie adaptation set to come out next year doesn't have Tom Hanks.) Basically, astronaut Mark Watney gets left behind on Mars when a mission is aborted and he is presumed dead. He has no way to contact anyone, and enough food to last 300 days. The good news is that another manned mission to Mars is planned. Bad news: it's not for 4 years and they'll be landing 2000 miles away. Mark is a resourceful and surprisingly chipper guy who sets about figuring out how to not starve to death, how to contact Earth and how he's ever going to survive as the sole inhabitant of an entire planet.
The book is written by a nerd who does a good job of addressing nerdy things like calorie consumption, heat generation, solar power collection and things like that. The book is set in the not-so-distant future (a few decades from now perhaps) and doesn't resort to any sort of magical technology break through to explain anything, which I appreciated. Sure, we have to take for granted that NASA has invented the best super glue in the galaxy, but that's a small leap to take.
So, it entertained me, and made me want to keep reading. There is some language in there that I wouldn't repeat in front of my grandmother or anyone else, but considering it's a book about someone stranded on a planet a hundred million miles from home, I didn't think the language was excessive.
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