Rating: 
 First off, let's warn you: This will probably be an unpopular review, but will I play down my disappointment with this best-selling novel here? When I read a book that popular and it doesn't manage to impress me at all, I just can't give it more than two stars. 
 Review: 
 Before deciding to give "The Martian" a chance, I had already heard a lot about this book. Nearly every day, a review about it popped up on my newsfeed, and my local book store even arranged one huge bookshelf in its entrance area with approximately twenty copies of it. Combined with all this hype surrounding the cine film (which I haven't watched so far, but intend to do), I couldn't resist the urge to jump on the bandwagon and start reading the novel. I have to admit, it was the first experience I've ever had with science fiction in literature, and it only convinced me to keep away from this genre in future. While I did enjoy the 'Alien' movies with the amazing Sigourney Weaver (well, at least the second and the third one of them), nearly everything else out of the sci-fi genre has managed to disappoint me, so it has become the only genre I usually try to avoid. 
 To begin with, kudos to Andy Weir for the research in regard to mathematical and physical aspects. However, there has been so much math, I wanted to quit reading every time the book started to babble about chemical formulas and whatever else there has been (which was a lot!). I have nothing against math, I essentially even like it, but I have to endure so much of it in university, I don't want to be confronted with it in books I'm reading for enjoyment as well. And as to physics and chemistry ... well, I deselected those two school subjects as soon as I was able to, so I didn't understand a lot of it, to be honest (it sounded plausible, though, and judging from several other reviews, they seem to be well-researched as well, so I'll claim to be able to praise Andy Weir for doing it the right way). 
 The main protagonist, Mark Watney, was a funny character, perhaps one of the funniest characters I've ever encountered in literature. So many of his remarks resulted in me nearly dying of laughter, and only with their help was I able to get to the very end of the novel without skipping anything because I always feared to miss another funny comment by Watney. Apart from that, he was characterized merely by his sense of humor and his courage, and maybe this was the reason why I never really warmed up to him. I would have liked to read about him thinking of his family, yet unfortunately we only got to know about their existence, nothing about the characters themselves. (And now I hope I didn't skip any section broaching this issue ... because, well, yes, I did indeed skip some minor sections which were boring as hell, though never more than one page at once). On the other hand, the NASA employees and the people who were involved in the attempt to rescue Watney's life were well-developed characters and all had their own interesting stories and scenes, but I had several problems with trying to distinguish them from each other, so I never really grew attached to any of the characters - which should be necessary in a story dealing with survival and danger to life, in my opinion. 
 In addition, the plot was constructed of two major elements which have been repeated as if Andy Weir wrote the story while in a continuous loop - first the problem, then the solution, then a problem again, then - surprise! - a solution, and so on. Sometimes some minor problems with getting to the solution, but it always came up in the right moment. It got exhausting after about thirty repetitions. But let's say something positive: I caught myself paying attention because I wanted to have something I can try to remember if I will somehow end up stranded alone on Mars myself at some point in future. Okay, fun aside: I would not be able to survive three days up there, certainly not as long as Watney did. But I doubt I'll ever get to Mars or any other planet, so I hope am sure I'll never need to remember how Mark Watney dealt with being stranded on Mars. 
 Conclusion: 
 I have kind of a guilty conscience because of my low rating of this novel. 74% of my Goodreads friends have added the book (most of them reading it as well) with an average rating of 4.27. That's pretty high, I guess, especially since only one of those reviews, Steph's, agrees with my opinion. I think I'll lay the blame for my dislike of "The Martian" on my overall antipathy against the genre. And the book can be recommended nevertheless, because if you enjoy sci-fi, it will probably be the perfect reading experience for you.