Review 2025.01.007

Reviewers Note: It is the beginning of 2025 and one of the skills I desire to grow in is that of writing book reviews (having never done this before). I am doing this so I can better hone my writing (and reading) skills as I seek to think more critically about the books I am reading. I am sharing on Goodreads for my own personal development. I know this will be something I am always growing in so if you actually read these, please be patient with me as I develop this skill. I will also receive constructive criticism if you desire to help me become a better writer (and reader). I plan to use this disclaimer for the entire 2025 year.

A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith

448 Pages

This book was not exactly what I expected. I am honestly not sure what I expected when I added this to my wish list.  I enjoy reading about space and deep science things (even when I don’t understand the information on more than a surface level) so I figured it would be up my alley.  I was not disappointed.

This book was informative and surprisingly entertaining.  Early in the book, they talk about the vacuum of space and how we have to be protected from that vacuum.  They begin talking about a sealed bottle of Diet Pepsi.  I literally thought to myself, “Why Diet Pepsi? That is a strange choice.”  It will be better if you read it yourself.

But consider a soda. When you buy a sealed bottle of Diet Pepsi, you know it’s full of gas, but you don’t see a lot of bubbles. That’s because the bottle is held at about four times the surface air pressure of Earth, keeping carbon dioxide suspended sedately inside. When you open the top, you expose its contents to Earth’s relatively gentle atmosphere. All that dissolved gas rushes out in the familiar bubbling foam. If you want to avoid the sudden burst of gas, you can always open your bottle forty meters under the sea, where the pressure will keep the gas in place, and the seawater will make the Diet Pepsi taste no worse.

I laughed out loud and was like “Yeah it will taste no worse.”  I, of course, had to share that with my daughter the next time she came over.  The whole book was full of this humor.

The writing style was not difficult at all. Sometimes scientific type books can become hard to trudge through but I never had difficulty (the humor throughout definitely helped).

They talked about so many aspects of space that I had never even thought about. They talked about how space affects us physically and mentally, sex and space babies, and other biological functions in part one of the book.  They moved on to the difficulties of living in different parts of space including the moon, Mars, space stations, and other places in part two.  In part three they talked about creating human habitat.  In part four they discussed space law which was particularly interesting to me.  And parts five and six talked about paths forward for inhabiting space.

At the end they talked about several discussions they were forced to leave out of the book.  I would have probably enjoyed reading about those topics as well but the book was a good size and these other sections could have made it too long. Longer science books are sometimes intimidating to me.

If you are into space, this is a great book.  If you are not interested in space YET then this is a good book to start with.

By admin

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