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Ready Player One
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Aug 2024 BOTM (2011 throwback): Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
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I read this several years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. Perfect for a nostalgia nut like me.
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A video game billionaire, James Donovan Halliday, dies a bachelor with no heirs, and leaves his $240B empire to whoever can solve his VR treasure hunt first. Channels a wee bit of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, though it wasn’t clear Charlie would inherit the factory until the end of that book.
His first clue video shows Halliday in corduroy pants, at age 8 in 1980, standing in his childhood home, with burnt orange carpet, playing his Atari 2600.
I was 8 in 1980.
We had burnt orange carpet … shag carpet.
I didn’t have an Atari but frequented the houses of friends who did. It was a cultural sensation not unlike the first iPod with a color touch screen in 2004, then the first iPhone in 2007, and the first iPad in 2010, with the game Angry Birds, and so on. Every kids was dying to play Atari games and couldn’t get enough.
Eventually, my brother and I got an Intellivision game system, the primary competitor of Atari. It had better sports games, and my brother and I were major sports fans. Anyway, the nostalgia is dead center on my own timeline. Halliday lives a rich, well-stocked life with all the classic 80’s things. I didn’t have such luck, but the 80’s were generally go-go years, after the interest rates came down from oil crisis imposed heights, and people began to spend money like they hadn’t in many years, and personal computers became a thing. A plethora of electronic 80’s gadgets were about. Someone in the neighborhood or from school usually had one of whatever it was and a play date ensued to have fun with it. It was a magical era of emerging new possibility in all aspects of culture.
Ready Player One by Earnest Cline
I wrote that title in merely to test the write-in capability on the poll … it happened to be the first thing that came to mind at the moment. Didn’t expect it to win. It is a great book, especially if you grew up in the 1980s. Great audiobook. Good movie adaptation. It was written in 2011 and I remember it was one of few books I went out of my way to recommend to friends. Most of you have probably seen the movie. The book is better if you ask me. I suppose it should be on the list, and now it will be.
Publisher's Summary
IN THE YEAR 2044, 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.