"The Martian" by Andy Weir was a very quick read, lots of action. I didn't find it particularly suspenseful, as you got a pretty good idea early on that everything was going to turn out OK, which kinda' makes the "superheroics" seem a little forced.
The book does rekindle some of the awe that was felt towards the Apollo astronauts (Mercury and Gemini for older folks than me), and reminded me of the Apollo 13 story (should have died, managed to scavenge enough to survive, had to re-purpose existing equipment). As the timeline was longer, there were more engineering challenges that Apollo 13 (which suffered from the handicap of being non-fiction).
The book did seem to rely on science - ideas of growing enough food to survive, working to keep the atmosphere breathable, making ramps and levers to overload vehicles, doing the math to figure out how long a trip would take, how much food/water would be required, how much time per day travel could be done using exisiting batteries, given the higher loads and re-charging times.
The "wind storm" is likely not reasonable - a NASA expert discussed how weak the atmosphere on Mars is, so even a very high wind storm would not carry much force, and would be noticeable much more by instruments than by damage or noise.
I have recommended it to my 13 year old son - nice pace and storyline to (maybe) kindle the dreams I had at his age.
Movie should be good.
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