Bona Fide Bookworm

The Life Impossible by Matt Haig is one of the best books I have read this year. It was about a student who grew up and emailed one of his favorite teachers about a hard time in his life. The teacher wrote back with an entire book attached to her email. The teacher, Grace Winters, was a retired math teacher from the US who inherited a house in Ibiza. When she travels to Ibiza, she is immediately introduced to the mysteries that had caused the death of her friend. She meets many different people, one of whom is a scuba diver, Alberto. Alberto knew her friend and was hiding something from Grace. This leads to many adventures and new information. At the end of the story, we see more emails from the student, which I thought was a really nice touch. I really liked the entire system of magic that Matt Haig established. He does a great job blending reality with magical ideals. It's a concept that is found in a lot of Latin American literature , notably in Gabriel García Márquez 's nov...

 The Martian is a science fiction novel by Andy Weir. It follows an astronaut stuck on Mars. Mark Watney, the astronaut, was left behind by his team and presumed dead. Watney has to figure out how to survive on an inhospitable planet without any assistance. He must figure out how to send a message to NASA so they know he's alive.  In other sci-fi and dystopian books I've read, the characters seem to be a part of a different world. There is never a big relation between the newest world and our world. On the other hand, in The Martian, there was a basis in reality. Mark Watney is probably one of the most relatable characters I have read. He gets mad, he hates disco, and he is, overall, a very human person. Weir did an excellent job writing him as a person, rather than a character. This made the whole book a lot easier to digest. Andy Weir also included POV changes, bringing the reader back to Earth. The conversations on Earth sounded highly plausible, making it even more believa...