Book 11/52 Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
I actually liked this book even with my aversion to computer games. Well, to be fair, it’s more an aversion to computer games as an escape from real life. And this book showed some potential negative outcomes of a life lived online. I LOVED all the 80′s references even if they were sometimes just to mention the song/game/show and not to move the plot along in any way. I didn’t particularly enjoy the juvenile way the characters talked to each other. YES, they were juveniles, but do they REALLY have to swear so much? One of my favorite parts or issues in the whole book was how each character’s online persona/avatar was eventually revealed as similar or vastly different from their real life self. It showed the benefits and detriments of an anonymous second world with few consequences for lying or misleading until you have to own up to it in real life. I enjoyed the different facets of this book and would like to see a similar ‘grown-up’ story that explores more of a typical working and family life in the OASIS. This is the author’s first novel, so we’ll see!
