Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1) in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge

Oct 04, 2012 Nadine in NY Jones rated it liked it

Shelves: lotsa-buzz, fantasy-and-sci-fi, cyberpunk, dystopian-and-post-apocalyptic, coming-of-age

By page 2 I was irritated: according to the dust jacket, this is set in 2044. James Halliday dies at age 67. That means he was born in 1977. Then I read: "a famous eccentric, Halliday had harbored a lifelong obsession with the 1980s, the decade during which he'd been a teenager ..." That math doesn't add up. I guess it is not 2044. Maybe he died in 2034, at 67, then he would have been born in 1967 (like me!) and a teenager in the 80s. ... Reading on, I learn he was 8 in 1980, therefore born in 1 By page 2 I was irritated: according to the dust jacket, this is set in 2044. James Halliday dies at age 67. That means he was born in 1977. Then I read: "a famous eccentric, Halliday had harbored a lifelong obsession with the 1980s, the decade during which he'd been a teenager ..." That math doesn't add up. I guess it is not 2044. Maybe he died in 2034, at 67, then he would have been born in 1967 (like me!) and a teenager in the 80s. ... Reading on, I learn he was 8 in 1980, therefore born in 1972, therefore this book opens in 2039. For a book that is so full of details, I'm wondering why they didn't spell that one out.

Overall, this book felt like a slog. Too. Many. Details. The idea is fun: a puzzle solved in the future involves knowing minutiae about the past (and for some readers, this really IS the past, but for many of us it is just our youth). And the first few mentions WERE fun. I guess. Actually, the first mentions irritated me, because he was supposedly listing off favorite authors & directors from the 80s (and really, why bother listing them? what was the point??) but they weren't all big in the 80s. If you're going to go into the details like that, please get the details right (makes me wonder if other details were wrong too). Not to even mention, the details about favorite authors, directors, etc .... never play a role in the plot. Why were they included?? Plus, it was too ... too smug, I guess. Too wink-wink, heh-heh, do you know the esoteric crap that *I* know? - and I suppose my problem is, no, I do NOT know all the esoteric crap! I'm just not enough of a geek?

So, the idea is fun, and the characters were likeable enough, and I enjoy stories about solving puzzles. But this one just got bogged down in the details. I didn't really need to read about each video game Wade played (I say this as a non-gamer - perhaps all the gamers out there LOVED reading about each video game he played - that is the point, after all!)

Also, this book suffers from the Good/Evil separation: the good guys were 100% good, the bad guys were 100% bad. BORING. There were no surprise twists, (view spoiler). Plus, I think it was a mistake on the part of Mr Cline to OPEN the book by telling us that Wade is the one who wins the contest. That REALLY took away any suspense - whenever he was in a tight spot, I would think: "well, I know this works out, since he's the winner in the end!" It was really only the last 20% of this book that I found exciting, when he has to pull off the Hail Mary pass to win the game.

ETA (4/8/18): I saw the movie last night and I really enjoyed it, a lot more than I enjoyed the book! The movie (as movies do) eliminated a lot of the extraneous details that irritated me so much in the book, and it changed the story enough that I often didn't know what was going to happen next, which made it fun for me. Two thumbs up for the movie! ...more

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Jun 05, 2012 Julianne Dunn rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Second listen: July 25 - August 4, 2016 - I love this book even more this time.

First listen: June 7-10, 2012 This book is absolutely fantastic! I loved the constant 80s references, the fun riddles, and the excellent story telling. I listened to the audio version with Wil Wheaton who read it superbly. I wish I could start all over again to enjoy it. Read it!

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Nov 19, 2012 Cathy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I ignored everyone on Thanksgiving to finish the last two chapters of this book, and I couldn't be happier. This book is good, clean fun all the way through. It's the archetypal underdog-teenager-searching-for-elusive-gold story. Combine Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with The Matrix, WarGames and Hunger Games. Then pepper the result with loads of obscure 80s trivia to fill you with nostalgia, and a grim futuristic setting to scare you witless. Then you have Ready Player One. It's not literar ...more

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Sep 26, 2011 Lori rated it liked it

Shelves: audio, sci-fi

This was tough to rate. I almost stopped at the beginning. It was a little too preachy sci-fi (the world is existing in virtual reality, blah, blah...) but then it hooked me and I started looking forward to car rides to listen some more. I'm torn. I don't know if I would recommend it or not. Definitely good for video game nerds and people nostalgic for the eighties, but that could be a limited audience! ...more

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Apr 27, 2014 Nic rated it liked it

Shelves: 2014

If we could give it half-stars I'd go with 3 1/2. I loved and hated all the pop culture references because some of them were just paragraphs of info dumps and some of the writing was clumsy. But it was a fun read for sure. ...more

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Jun 27, 2015 Adriel rated it it was ok

Shelves: ya, sf, did-not-finish

nope. too much long explanations of 80s pop culture. the main characters were not super likable and were a bit too self congratulatory about their nerd. Also, racist Japanese stereotypes.

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Aug 18, 2013 Alaina rated it it was ok

This was a clever idea, but it really relied A LOT on the reader having as much fondness for 80s pop culture as the author. The second half picked up, but really didn't make up for the abundance of references in the beginning that went nowhere. ...more

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