Editor’s Note: In this occasional series, the Catholic Star Herald asks known book lovers around the Diocese to recommend their favorite reads and explain what makes these not-to-miss tales.
Dr. Bill Watson’s favorite book is an out-of-world-experience.
One, he admits happily, he didn’t take alone.
“Three years ago, my [then 13-year-old] son Owen saw an ad for the movie ‘The Martian’ with Matt Damon and wanted to see it,” said Dr. Watson, superintendent of Catholic schools for the Diocese of Camden.
Since science was Dr. Watson’s favorite class in school, he agreed, but only if they read the movie’s source material. “I suggested to Owen, ‘Let’s read the book together first, because the book is almost always better.’”
With Owen borrowing the 2011 book by Andy Weir from the local library, and Dr. Watson downloading it onto his Kindle, father and son immersed themselves in the humorous and harrowing tale of Mark Watney – the botanist, engineer and resourceful protagonist.
Abandoned on Mars by his NASA Ares III crew after a dust storm – and thought dead – Watney uses his skills as a botanist and engineer to survive, giving himself a chance to get back home.
Watney’s journal entries and his mantra to “work the problem” step-by-step create an example for anyone, Martian or Earthling alike.
The main character’s “level of possession, discipline, self-control, confidence and commitment” to finding food, water and transportation, Dr. Watson said, teach readers that “when we’re overwhelmed by the quantity or depth of the things we’re facing, it’s good to focus on the long game, solving one problem at a time, and then moving on to the next. Watney’s teaching us perseverance.”
A lifelong reader, Dr. Watson credits his love of the written word to his mother, “who planted this seed of the value of reading.”
Good fiction like “The Martian,” said Dr. Watson, “develops the imagination of the possibilities [and] expands your mind, gives you different views of what it means to be human in different situations, makes you think a little bit and broadens your viewpoint.”
At the same time, nonfiction books, such as historical biographies and the lives of the saints, “are incredible stories about real people that give you a better sense of who and what went in to making the world the place it is today. Nonfiction provides a deep dive into the way somebody thinks, or how the world works,” he said.
Dr. Watson and his wife, Fran, have instilled in all of their children – Owen, 15; Noah, 13; Anna, 10; and twins Grace and Joseph, 9 – a love of reading. Just as the parents read to their own children as they grew up, now each of the five can read to mom and dad.
“Reading is like traveling, but never leaving your chair. It builds creativity,” said Dr. Watson, whose pre-superintendent days included time in key positions at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C, and the Gulf Coast Exploreum Science Center in Mobile, Ala.
Both father and son gave “The Martian” five stars, but not just because of its content, he said. “Reading the book was a great moment for Owen and I. We both experienced it together for the first time, and sharing a passion for the story allowed my son and I to have a conversation on equal terms.”
Book Recommendations by Dr. Bill Watson
• “The Martian,” by Andy Weir
• “In a Sunburned Country,” by Bill Bryson
• “Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball,” by John Feinstein
• “Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster,” by Jon Krakauer
• “Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War,” by Nathaniel Philbrick
at the bottom and then tap “Add to Home Screen”
