Name: Alexandra Sklar's review of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Item: Ready Player One
Rating: 4
Author: Alexandra Sklar

Ernest Cline

Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read The worldwide bestseller--now a major motion picture directed by Steven Spielberg. In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade's devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world's digital confines--puzzles that are based on their creator's obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them. But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade's going to survive, he'll have to win--and confront the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.

Ready Player One

Alexandra Sklar

One of my husband's all time favorites. Our reading lists don't overlap much, and it was great to talk about this one after I was done.

Vanessa Arenas

What a fun read! I am not a hardcore gamer but even so, I really enjoyed all the references the author made. You could really imagine the story being told and live the egg hunt. If you are in the mood to read something that is fast-paced and fun, I definitely recommend this book.

Bob Wassermann

Really like the overal concept of folks living in a VR world. The story itself tough feels from time to time tedious and adolescent.

Elisa Bieg

Oh Holy Anorak, it’s finished. Thank you, universe. 

Let me just summarize this quickly in one simple concept: have you ever wanted to climb into the mind of a teenage boy, and get stuck there? Let your whole world revolve around his obsessions, passions, cockiness, bad jokes and just general boyishness?

If the answer is yes, then you might enjoy this. 

Other people who might enjoy it are gamers and people who love random 80s trivia. Because make no mistake, this book is a never-ending series of 80s references and talk about gaming universes and rigs. When you remove that, the story is quite simple, and the writing isn’t great. 

(I don’t fall into any of the above categories — I’m not a gamer, I’m not 80s-obsessed and I most definitely didn’t count taking a trip through the mind of a teen boy as one of my bucket list items.)

Wil Wheaton did a fantastic job narrating the audiobook, and is literally the only reason I got through it. I don’t even like audiobooks usually, but in this case it made the book more interesting. 
And it can definitely use that. 

Wade is a frustrating MC. On one hand I knew he was one of the good guys and wanted him to win; on the other hand he is really annoying at times and gets more and more arrogant as the story progresses, so I kind of wanted to smack him quite a few times. 

He is also the narrator, so when the author went on and on (and on and on and on) about rig details, and when he tried to cram in a bunch of world-building at once, etc — Wade was the one I got impatient with.
I am a professional eye-roller, but I felt like I was training for the eye-rolling olympics while reading/listening to this. 

And talking about the world-building: very often during the book I felt like the story had kind of “ran away” from Cline and he realized he hadn’t done enough world building to make the rest of the plot happen, so he crammed a whole bunch of descriptions in, trying to make up for it — succeeding only in breaking the rhythm of the narrative, boring me almost to tears and causing a major attack of the aforementioned eye-rolling. 
And unfortunately Wade, as the narrator and MC, caught the brunt of that, sounding like an obsessed, egocentric teen geek with a (un)healthy dose of cockiness. 

All that said, despite its many faults, the story did manage to grip my attention in a way — thought I’m not sure if it’s a credit to the book or to my stubbornness that I stuck with it till the end. It will make a good movie though. (Do you ever read a book and think: this isn’t a great book, but it would make a good movie? This is one of those books.)

All in all, this falls just below 3 stars for me, but let’s just say it was 
  ok
, slap 3 stars on it and call it a day, so I can get the hell out of dodge, as our MC is fond of saying.

Mehmet Ali Ertürk

An excellent novel linking future and the past with computer games.

Tony Scida

Ready Player One is packed to the brim with geeky references to classic video games and allusions to William Gibson and other titans of the genre. Oh, and there's a pretty good story in there, too. One of a few dystopian novels I read in 2012, which might say something about my state of mind. Highly recommended.

Cams Campbell

I listened to this on the school run with my 9-year-old boy and it was an amazing experience. I'd listened to it before when it came out and enjoyed simply for the fact that I'm an 80s gaming nerd and got pretty much all the references. But listening with my son was a real bonding experience. He loves his consoles and PC games, so the basic frame of reference for him was there. The pacing was just right as were the characters and I imagine it's something that he'll remember fondly and probably listen to again on his own (he goes to sleep at nights with an audiobook playing). 

The audio production was great too so, for that reason and the positive experience of sharing it with my son, I'm giving this four stars over the three that I gave to it the first time around. 

I wonder if he'd get Snow Crash? Hmmm. Maybe we'll try that in the new year.

Alexandra Sklar &
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

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Alexandra Sklar &Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

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Alexandra Sklar &
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline