Welcome to Litsy!

60/150 An informative look at man's fascination with and exploration of the Red Planet, Mars. The author has real passion for discovery, and you can feel it in her writing. Each mission to Mars was an intense moment, on the brink of failure or success, you feel apart of each triumph. If you're not into science, some of this might seem a bit dry and text bookish when the astronomy and geology lingo gets heavy. 3.75/5

Even with the miracle of modern travel, it takes days for me to reach the edge of Nullarbor Plain: three or four flights, a quick shower in Perth, then a night or two backtracking east in a rented truck.

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

This was a read along for SciFri book club. I didn‘t know what to expect from this book, but the science is easily understood and adds to the narrative. A retrospective of our obsession with the planet Mars, it ends before our most recent rover launch/landing. Back and forth between Earth and Mars, the book details humanity‘s search for life among the stars. The future is out there. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Sirens of Mars interweaves the memoir of planetary scientist Sarah Stewart Johnson with the history of our search for life on Mars, charting the great leaps in our knowledge of the planet, both thrilling and devastating.

It‘s brief, and I didn‘t learn as much as I wanted to about our red neighbor, but I did enjoy the rather poetic peek at why planetary scientists have for so long devoted themselves to studying places they could never reach.

I've dug straight into this one since getting it yesterday -- it's basically a history of our scientific understanding of Mars, with lots of anecdotes and personal detail about the giants of the field. (I had no idea about Sagan's chronic issues with achalasia!)

Also huh, I seem to have a colour scheme here in my currently reading pile...

It's my birthday on Friday and the books are rolling in! This stack is the books my wife got me; I've started right in on the tagged book.

Lali from Portal Bookshop also sent me two books -- Jeremy Szal's Stormblood, and C.L. Polk's Witchmark. I already read Witchmark as an ARC, and liked but didn't love it... But it's stuck on my head and I want to try it again.

This #JulyARC will be released 7/7.