Chapters 1-9

The Martian by Andy Weir is about NASA launching an Ares 3 mission on Mars, which, however, quickly turns into a terrible disaster when a dust storm with strong winds hits, which almost topples the launch vehicle. One of the crew members, Mark Watney, the protagonist and narrator, during the storm, is blown away by the wind, stabbed by an antenna and deemed dead by the rest of the crew, who leave him behind. Turns out that he isn't dead, however, far from it. The environment on Mars, though, leaves him with a lot of problems threatening death, including a shortage of food and water. Mark isn't fully ready to give up and perish, though, and uses his botany skills to try to grow food(potatoes) and a dangerous plan to produce water to survive for the next four years, until the Ares 4 mission is supposed to arrive. He drives a long distance in a rover to find Pathfinder, a broken radio, and the old rover Sojourner to establish communication with Earth. Meanwhile, back on Earth, Mindy Park from SatCon finds through some imagery evidence of human activity, suggesting that Mark Watney is still alive. The news spreads quickly to the rest of the world. NASA begins to make plans for a rescue mission to save him.

The story is told in two points of view. When the scenes are with Mark Watney on Mars, the story is told in the first person because it is divided into log entries made by Mark himself. Back on Earth, the story is told in limited omniscient point of view, only showing what the characters are saying, except for a couple of times when we are able to read Venkat Kapoor's thoughts. (Venkat Kapoor is NASA's director of Mars missions. Mindy Park first tells him about Mark Watney being alive before anyone else knows.) He seems to feel depressed after Mark's death and is always stressed out.
So far, it is a wonderful book. It is definitely perfect for those who are strong at chemistry, just like me. For instance, Mark Watney needs to use chemistry to produce water (H₂O) using H₂ and O₂ gases. For those who also like to look at the periodic table all day, the book also mentions plutonium, one of the radioactive elements. Mark puts himself in a rover with a box of plutonium-238, but I'd hate to be in an area where I could be vulnerable to extreme radiation. The last thing I'd want would be to be bombarded by alpha particles as the plutonium decays into uranium-234. Mark takes a lot of risks that I would never attempt. But after just reading the first few chapters, I now know that Mars is a very, very dangerous place (with just about no oxygen in the air whatsoever) and I should never go there at all costs.