Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Ready Player One: a very short review

One of my summer relaxations this year was Ernest Cline's Ready Player One.

Ready Player One is somewhere at the intersection of science fantasy, nerd humor, and romance. It's full of jokes and puzzles and references to classic elements of the 80's.

It's kinda weird and hard to describe, but it was a lot of fun and I flew through it, which is just want you want from your summer reading, right? A sample:

"It's not really up for debate, Homer," I said. "Ladyhawke is an eighties classic."

"It's fucking lame, is what it is! The swords look like they were made out of tinfoil. And that soundtrack is epically lame. Full of synthesizers and shit. By the motherfucking Alan Parsons Project! Lame-o-rama! Beyond lame. Highlander II lame."

"Hey!" I feigned hurling my Intellivision controller at him. "Now you're just being insulting! Ladyhawke's cast alone makes the film canon! Roy Batty! Ferris Bueller! And the dude who played Professor Falken in WarGames!" I searched my memory for the actor's name. "John Wood! Reunited with Matthew Broderick!"

By the way, this was a book I wanted to read on the Kindle, and it was available on the Kindle. But, at least at the time I bought it, the paperback edition was $8.99 and the Kindle edition was $9.99 (it's now changed so that the paperback edition is $0.50 more than the Kindle edition). So I bought the paperback. Now I will give it to somebody else to read. It's completely unclear to me why the prices are set in this fashion.

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