THIS BOOK!!!

I have to admit, I went into this book with crazy high expectations. It seemed that everyone was reading it and LOVING it because of all the references to the 80's, gaming, and -- of course -- the narration by Wil Wheaton. I bought the book and was a little wary of the length and the fact that it was a science fiction book, but I had a huge drive ahead of me, so I started it up. I did not expect to get into it as quickly as I did, nor did I expect to love it as much as I did!

Now, I'm not a gamer. I remember my brother always fiddling around on his computer, doing actual things on it, whereas I would just go on it to play Alley Katz, a game on a 3.5-inch floppy disc. Then, the internet came out and I would spend hours going to fan pages for my favourite musician, Tori Amos. It was all so new and fascinating! These days, I love my Macs and using them for blogging, photo editing, and music-making. It's awesome.

But gaming? I really wasn't into that. So to enter a book where the whole premise not only rests on gaming, but living an entire life online like a hermit -- I just didn't expect that I would get half of what was going on, let alone like it.

The thing is, though, Wade is such a likeable character -- as are all of the other characters, even the bad guys. There are so many references to things in the 80's that I even understood, and the ones that went over my head were still easy enough to figure out. The only ones I really didn't get were ones to different models of computers.

The whole "hunt for the Easter egg" was such a fun thing! It's funny because I had been searching for Google Easter eggs just a few months ago. I definitely couldn't do anything like Wade and his friends were doing, but it was so much fun to read. I especially loved the idea that when you're online you can make yourself whoever you want to be -- it's true now and I can imagine how much truer it would be when you live your whole life online, never actually going out in the real world.

And Wil Wheaton as the narrator? AWESOME. It was just so wonderful to listen to him to read -- he has such a great voice for it and I really hope to listen to more books narrated by him in the future. His voice was clear and his pace was perfect. I especially loved the build-up in his voice, the urgency, when something exciting was going on. I also really loved the sounds he made for certain video games.

This is an audiobook I could listen to again and again. It was a lot of fun and I'm sure I'll hear new things with each and every listen. Highly recommended!

Read more reviews on my blog, Reading In Winter: