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Ready Player One: A Novel
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Now a major motion picture directed by Steven Spielberg. "Enchanting . . . Willy Wonka meets The Matrix."--USA Today - "As one adventure leads expertly to the next, time simply evaporates."--Entertainment Weekly A world at stake. A quest for the ultimate prize. Are you ready? In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the OASIS, a vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days. When the eccentric creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves behind a series of fiendish puzzles, based on his obsession with the pop culture of decades past. Whoever is first to solve them will inherit his vast fortune--and control of the OASIS itself. Then Wade cracks the first clue. Suddenly he's beset by rivals who'll kill to take this prize. The race is on--and the only way to survive is to win. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Entertainment Weekly - San Francisco Chronicle - Village Voice - Chicago Sun-Times - iO9 - The AV Club "Delightful . . . the grown-up's Harry Potter."--HuffPost "An addictive read . . . part intergalactic scavenger hunt, part romance, and all heart."--CNN "A most excellent ride . . . Cline stuffs his novel with a cornucopia of pop culture, as if to wink to the reader."--Boston Globe "Ridiculously fun and large-hearted . . . Cline is that rare writer who can translate his own dorky enthusiasms into prose that's both hilarious and compassionate."--NPR "[A] fantastic page-turner . . . starts out like a simple bit of fun and winds up feeling like a rich and plausible picture of future friendships in a world not too distant from our own."--iO9
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Community Reviews
I freaking love this book and can't wait to read it again.
The story is engaging and entertaining and I cared about Wade and his friends. The great pop culture from the 80s just made it even better.
The story is engaging and entertaining and I cared about Wade and his friends. The great pop culture from the 80s just made it even better.
I was pleasantly surprised by this book!
I'm not a gamer, nor am I familiar with 80s pop culture, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the book. I loved the OASIS and Parzival/Wade's adventure in it.
There was quite a bit of info dumping in the beginning, so the book starts out slowly, but the last half was great, action packed and fast paced!
If you read this after watching the movie, or will watch the movie after you read the book, please do yourself a favor and don't expect anything to be the same. I enjoyed both the movie and the book, but they're completely separate things in my opinion. Both good for different reasons.
I was, however, left feeling a little disappointed and with some of questions.
I think the book spent a little too much time developing the OASIS and not enough time on the real world. (Though that might well have been the point considering most spent nearly their entire day in the OASIS.) How did everything fall apart? Are things really so bad or did people just stop caring? Is the entire world so desolate and fallen to neglect? Or just America? I would have liked all of this explored a little bit more.
In the end, I enjoyed the book and it took me long a little over a week to finish it. And Wil Wheaton did a fantastic job with the narration! Was it just me, or does he sound like Zach Appelman, the narrator from All the Light We Cannot See?
I'm not a gamer, nor am I familiar with 80s pop culture, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the book. I loved the OASIS and Parzival/Wade's adventure in it.
There was quite a bit of info dumping in the beginning, so the book starts out slowly, but the last half was great, action packed and fast paced!
If you read this after watching the movie, or will watch the movie after you read the book, please do yourself a favor and don't expect anything to be the same. I enjoyed both the movie and the book, but they're completely separate things in my opinion. Both good for different reasons.
I was, however, left feeling a little disappointed and with some of questions.
I think the book spent a little too much time developing the OASIS and not enough time on the real world. (Though that might well have been the point considering most spent nearly their entire day in the OASIS.) How did everything fall apart? Are things really so bad or did people just stop caring? Is the entire world so desolate and fallen to neglect? Or just America? I would have liked all of this explored a little bit more.
In the end, I enjoyed the book and it took me long a little over a week to finish it. And Wil Wheaton did a fantastic job with the narration! Was it just me, or does he sound like Zach Appelman, the narrator from All the Light We Cannot See?
This book had me telling Alexa to key up the 80's station. I was barely more than a seed in 1980, but I grew up listening to the music on my Dad's ridiculously sized stereo speakers. I'd forgotten what an awesome decade it was.
The author did a good job describing the games, movies, and the virtual world â almost to the point of boredom. Despite the occasional pages of monotonous details, it was still enjoyable.
My only real gripe about the whole book was the occasional bad language. I'm a bit of a Puritan in that area, but I felt like it didn't add anything to the book. (It rarely ever does.) The atheistic views also soured my stomach and added no value to the book whatsoever. Leaving it out would've allowed me to hand it off to a young reader in good conscience.
The reason for 4 rather than 3 stars is because I know this will be one of those books that will poke its head into my sub-conscience for a long time. It also renewed a spark for the culture of that decade. That kind of reaction deserves an extra star.
The author did a good job describing the games, movies, and the virtual world â almost to the point of boredom. Despite the occasional pages of monotonous details, it was still enjoyable.
My only real gripe about the whole book was the occasional bad language. I'm a bit of a Puritan in that area, but I felt like it didn't add anything to the book. (It rarely ever does.) The atheistic views also soured my stomach and added no value to the book whatsoever. Leaving it out would've allowed me to hand it off to a young reader in good conscience.
The reason for 4 rather than 3 stars is because I know this will be one of those books that will poke its head into my sub-conscience for a long time. It also renewed a spark for the culture of that decade. That kind of reaction deserves an extra star.
Sometimes an audiobook narrator makes all the difference. Thanks, Wil Wheaton. I'm not sure I would have gotten into this book on its own merit (silly me, I know). My husband read it last summer, and the way he described it (all about video games and the 80s) made it seem like it wasn't my bag. I don't care for video games and I really don't care for much of the 80s (Star Trek, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Back to the Future aside). It wasn't my time and I don't much care for it in hindsight. You can take your John Hughes films and shove off. So I wasn't interested in reading Ready Player One.
Then I read Armada, mostly because it was short, we needed an audiobook to read on the drive to and from Phoenix, and it was narrated by Wil Wheaton. I got so into it, I finished it within a few days. That made me reconsider Ready Player One, and I'm glad this was one of those times when I was wrong (sorry Cursed Child, I was totally right about you). Ready Player One was fun, interesting, and not so into the 80s references that I wanted to poke my own eyes out.
The concept is actually pretty interesting. The world has gone so far to pot that most people are sad, desperate, and depressed, and spend most of their time in an immersive video game world called "The Oasis," where they can live out any manner of fantasy lives. In fact, because the world is so terrible, most kids go to school in the Oasis, much of business is conducted in the Oasis, and most people only know each other through the Oasis. The plot centers around the Oasis's creator, James Halliday, dying and leaving his billions of dollars hidden as an Easter Egg somewhere inside the game, with clues, keys, and challenges to help players find it. The story then revolves around several main characters' attempts to find the Egg.
That's all well and good, but fortunately this story does a little more. There's some pretty villainous bad guys, and there's lots of discussion of cyber-safety and how people are supposed to negotiate relationships in a fantasy video game. As more and more people are meeting and playing out relationships in the virtual world, it's a fair question.
This story did have some drawbacks. There were several "deus ex machina" moments, and some of the plots I thought were a little too on-point, but it was pretty enjoyable. I'm not sure if I liked it quite as much as Armada because I got a little more caught up in that story, but it still was a fun little sci-fi romp. Plus, they're making it into a movie, so make sure you read the book first like a good little doobie!
And thanks again, Wil Wheaton, for lending your voice to the audiobook. I would listen to you read the dictionary.
Then I read Armada, mostly because it was short, we needed an audiobook to read on the drive to and from Phoenix, and it was narrated by Wil Wheaton. I got so into it, I finished it within a few days. That made me reconsider Ready Player One, and I'm glad this was one of those times when I was wrong (sorry Cursed Child, I was totally right about you). Ready Player One was fun, interesting, and not so into the 80s references that I wanted to poke my own eyes out.
The concept is actually pretty interesting. The world has gone so far to pot that most people are sad, desperate, and depressed, and spend most of their time in an immersive video game world called "The Oasis," where they can live out any manner of fantasy lives. In fact, because the world is so terrible, most kids go to school in the Oasis, much of business is conducted in the Oasis, and most people only know each other through the Oasis. The plot centers around the Oasis's creator, James Halliday, dying and leaving his billions of dollars hidden as an Easter Egg somewhere inside the game, with clues, keys, and challenges to help players find it. The story then revolves around several main characters' attempts to find the Egg.
That's all well and good, but fortunately this story does a little more. There's some pretty villainous bad guys, and there's lots of discussion of cyber-safety and how people are supposed to negotiate relationships in a fantasy video game. As more and more people are meeting and playing out relationships in the virtual world, it's a fair question.
This story did have some drawbacks. There were several "deus ex machina" moments, and some of the plots I thought were a little too on-point, but it was pretty enjoyable. I'm not sure if I liked it quite as much as Armada because I got a little more caught up in that story, but it still was a fun little sci-fi romp. Plus, they're making it into a movie, so make sure you read the book first like a good little doobie!
And thanks again, Wil Wheaton, for lending your voice to the audiobook. I would listen to you read the dictionary.
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