Ready Player One

This is seriously one of the best books that I've read since I read Gone Girl. I literally could not put it down. I read it while walking and all through my classes this week and pretty much just everywhere. It really read like an action movie, since that was pretty much what it was styled after (well, it was styled after a video game, but similar idea), but it was much more than that. It dealt with issues like people spending their lives immersed in technology and never coming out into the real world, although it was much more severe in the book than in real life currently, and it was a dystopia that wasn't "in your face" like a lot of other dystopian books. In this book, the dystopia was created by a large corporation that had its claws all over the world and connections to everyone and everything, and that was a nice refreshing change of pace from the normal evil government deal (not that I don't love evil governments!)

I also really enjoyed all the characters. The main character, Wade, starts off kind of pathetic, and he really grows into himself. The fact that Aech/Helen turned out to be an African-American girl was awesome because he/she was a super powerful character in the game and the stereotype is that girl gamers aren't "legit," and it turns out that Aech was actually a girl gamer all along. I also really loved that Art3mis/Samantha was not just a love interest. Wade's obsession with Art3mis eventually grew into a friendship (and real life romance), and Wade's friendships with Aech and Art3mis gets into the idea of internet friendships being real and transcending physical traits; when Wade and Aech finally met, everything was the same between them despite Aech not being anything like what Wade expected. Although this book is a warning against letting technology take over your entire life and never going out into the real world, through these friendships, it also shows the positive side of technology/the internet and the possibilities that technology can bring, such as online friendships.

The world that Cline created was simply amazing. Because most of the story took place in a futuristic video game, he could create whatever worlds, weapons, challenges, puzzles, and so on that he wanted, and it was so fun just to get a glimpse into the OAISIS and how it might work. I'm incredibly excited for the movie to come out so that I can see it in front of me. But the battle scenes were written really well and I could see them in my mind's eye, and all the different worlds were imaginative and different and unique. Creating a new world is difficult to do as an author, but Cline pulled it off.

I knew even before I finished this book that I would rate it 5 stars, and as I kept reading, I never changed my mind. It's definitely one of my favorite books and I would recommend it to anyone who loves action/adventure, video games, 80s pop culture references, thriller, or just wants a fun read that will suck you in. I could spend forever flailing about this book, but I don't even know where to start, so I'll stop writing now because it's already long enough already.

Absolutely loved this book. I immersed myself completely!

I loved this book! But I grew up in the 80s, so listening to this book was like reminiscing about my teen years. Ernst Cline creates a fantastic world of the future 2044 and reality is a nasty place to live so many escape to the Oasis, a virtual reality world where you can be any avatar you choose and experience things in augmented reality.
I decided to listen to this book, originally published in 2011 since Cline just came out with the sequel in 2021 so I wanted to listen to the two books back to back. I enjoyed the movie a long time ago produced by Spielberg so I wanted to check out the book.

I'm not a gamer, nor am I a programmer but thought that Cline captured the essence of someone who can become so absorbed in the gaming and computer programming world. It's a dystopian view of the future having seen what social networking has done to some people coupled with recent announcements about the Metaverse being developed by tech giants Facebook, excuse me, META, Microsoft, Nvidia, and others, Cline's OASIS doesn't seem so far off from reality these days.

The protagonist is an atheist and that may bother some people, however, it did not bother me. I read some reviews where people were really put off by this. I also read so reviews that some people purchased this book for their children to listen to, probably because they simply were naive enough to think its a book about a bunch of nerds and gamers. This is not a book for 9 year olds but it is a great book for high school aged kids and above.

Ultimately this book is about the importance of human interaction - face to face interaction and how important that is to have in our world.

I liked Will Wheaton as the narrator, he seemed a perfect choice to me. I give this book a 4.5 rating