SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion
This topic is about
Ready Player One
Group Reads Discussions 2011
>
"Ready Player One" Player One - Ready?(No Spoilers)
I enjoyed Ready Player One a whole bunch. There were a few raised-eyebrow moments, but I thought it overall a great romp for anyone involved in gaming culture.
I liked it too. Got a bit soggy in the last third and I'm such an old nerd that I got some of the clues before the hero, but a good read ne'er the less.
Is it December already? Holy crap.I'll be reading soonish.
I have it. I have two copies actually, one of them autographed because Cline just so happened to be at a Rothfuss signing I went to. I want to read it.. I really do... But I just haven't been able to read anything lately! I'm still going to try though.. I'm already reading five books at once and getting no where in any of them, what's one more? :P
It's a pretty quick read though, so maybe you'll get through this one?
I read most of it over a couple days last weekend sitting in airports and on planes. It's a quickie.
I have to finish 'Way of Shadows' first, and then, ya know, wait for the damn library to get me the book. (I think someone gave it to me in ebook format, but I prefer DTBs.)Oh, crap, I have to squeeze in 'Night Circus', too, and get it all done by the 15th.
Ala wrote: "It's a pretty quick read though, so maybe you'll get through this one?"Yeah, but like... I'd feel so unfaithful to the other five books I've started, teased and left hanging, unread and depressed. If I can finish one of them.. Just one... I'll start this. Five is my max :P
How does a 12 month postponement work for you?
Pfft, 2013 is going to be the best year ever! Fuck 2011. I fucking hate 2011.
There can be no delay! The glorious group of the people must move ever forward! Do your part!
Or prepare to freeze in the wilds of Siberia
Or prepare to freeze in the wilds of Siberia
Well, technically I read it in November, so that balances out at least one person.
Noooo, don't threaten me with the cold. It's soooo cold today. I hate winter. Fucking Michigan.
There's already snow on the ground. It's less than an inch... But it's there. I hate it. Hate it!
That's just because MI is butt-ugly. (I have cousins in Dearborn and Sterling Heights.) Here in NH winter makes you weep for joy because it's so damn Currier & Ives-ish. I love NH.
Whatever! MI is pretty! I'm close to Dearborn.... MI is pretty in the winter. Dearborn and Sterling Heights maybe not so much... But it is pretty. Especially the UP, but I don't dare go there in the winter. It's awesome in the fall though.
Hold up your right hand with your palm facing you.. I'm in the thumb pad part of the palm. LOL. Metro Detroit for the win :)
Did you get a pasty?!?!? You have to eat pasties if you're in the UP.
And wait, no, we can talk about MI and relate it to the book! I met Cline at a book signing he did with Patrick Rothfuss is Petosky, MI, which is way up at the top of the state, close to the UP. Cline drove his DeLorean up from Texas (I think?) to be there for the signing. He was super nice and geeky. It was geek love at first sight :)
So this book we have here...
ಠ_ಠ
ಠ_ಠ
Dawn wrote: "And wait, no, we can talk about MI and relate it to the book! "I actually pictured parts of Detroit in my head when he was describing the decay of urban areas. Except for the part where he said people were flocking to it instead of fleeing away.
Well yeah, Detroit isn't so pretty. It's very depressing for me to drive through it. You can see that at one point it must have been awesome.. But it's just sad and beyond run down... I'd love to have been able to see it in its better days..Kind of like Flint. I went to college there.. And it's just sad. Sad sad sad :(
So the setting of the book is realistic? At least, the real world portion that is.
Detroit was pretty cool back in the 70s. Crime, yes, but the place was jumpin'. Detroit now actually reminds me quite a bit of NYC from the 70s. I know people are still grousing about the "Disneyfication" of Times Square, but that place was a scary-as-hell shithole back in the day. I was there in February to see Spider-man: Turn Off the Dark after going to Westminster and I was struck by how different it was from when I was a kid. Detroit can do that, too, if they put their minds to it.
Detroit should probably pattern itself after what Youngstown is doing today and what the Bronx did back in the 90s, bulldozing blighted neighborhoods and making them parks and green spaces. I hear both Flint and Dayton are thinking of doing that, as well.
Definitely reading this one, but probably not getting started until the weekend.
No rush. We got the whole month ahead :)
Not sure exactly when, but I'll be listening to this one this month. Probably start soonish.
I have already read this one. I loved it. You're in for a fun ride, looking forward to seeing what you think?
I'm about halfway done and would probably be finished already if not for the other 6 books I'm reading as well. It really flies by. The 80's references are like a sugar high. He really nailed the decade. I'm loving this book so far.
So I picked this book to read it for the group read. But then I started reading it last week, because I was already reading other three books, and I wanted to give it a head start, so I could finish it in time. I read the first chapters and I could not stop, so I decided to read the all thing. I felt really addicted, although I recognize that it got a little predictable at times, but I could not drop it till I finished with it. It was a good-addicting-helluva-retro-geek read.
this book was an odd one for me because even though i thought the protagonist was a total larry stu or whatever the male mary sue is, the supporting characters were one-dimensional, the plot was extremely predictable, the puzzles were too easy and repetitive, and the writing was full of terrible expository infodumps, i really liked it anyway.
I really enjoyed the book despite some of its problems. I couldn't tell at times whether Cline intended for Wade to be an unreliable narrator or he just went way overboard listing the number of things he watched/saw/read in the last 5 years.
I tried counting the number of books Wade supposedly studied and stopped at 350.
don't forget all the tv shows he watched all the way through multiple times, to the point that he knew and could quote from every episode.
Yea, there were times I couldn't tell whether Wade was supposed to have an eidetic memory, be an unreliable narrator or just no one bothered to calculate the amount of time it would take to consume that much content.
OK, I've started 4 books at the same time but I'm optimistic that I'll finish on time so.....ready, player one? Goooooo
Joel wrote: "this book was an odd one for me because even though i thought the protagonist was a total larry stu or whatever the male mary sue is..."I use "Marty Stu" (in fact, used that in my review), but as long as the point gets across, I think whatever version you use is fine.
Craig wrote: "I couldn't tell at times whether Cline intended for Wade to be an unreliable narrator or he just went way overboard listing the number of things he watched/saw/read in the last 5 years.I tried counting the number of books Wade supposedly studied and stopped at 350."
At some point Wade did mention he was doing nothing else for 12 hours a day or something. Is that enough time to read, watch and play everything mentioned in the book multiple times?
It wasn't all strictly related to the '80s, either, as he has a replica of Serenity and the Atari game Adventure is constantly referred to (including as Wade's calling card), which is a 1970's game.
One glaring omission was that of the movies by James Cameron, like Aliens and Terminator. I mean, come on, those were HUGE in the 80s.
Trike wrote: "It wasn't all strictly related to the '80s, either, as he has a replica of Serenity and the Atari game Adventure is constantly referred to (including as Wade's calling card), which is a 1970's game."Also, some of the music was from the 70s and Kevin Smith films are 90s-current. That was one of the things that I wasn't clear on. When he says something like "I read every Stephen King book" Does he mean only those written during the 80s or everyone written up to whenever King's death is.
Wade mentions watching all the Simpsons, and Star Trek episodes. There are about 730 episodes of Star Trek and 464 episodes of Simpsons as of right now. Watching just those nonstop 12 hours a day would take about 3 months.
I just don't think there are enough hours in the day to watch/read/listen/play everything he claims to.
especially considering he's only been obsessed with the '80s for five years.
Plus Ultraman, who is actually a product of *my* generation back in the 1960s. The Ultraman remakes of the 1980s were few and far between (1980 and 1987 were the only two I found) and would be *really* obscure for a 1980s-centric trivia contest.One of my cousins is in his mid-20s, and he's repeatedly watched every single episode of every Star Trek, TMNT and Power Rangers, plus all the DC animated TV shows, but it's taken him years to do that. I suppose if you sat down and just watched Trek stuff, it's got to be somewhere in the 500-hour range. There's only 2080 hours in a year full of 52 40-hour work-weeks, so that's 3 months of watching just Trek. So if you watched everything 4 times, that's one year. Just for Star Trek. And for the purposes of the contest within Ready Player One, you'd probably have to watch ancillary stuff such as interviews and documentaries. Trekkies, Trekkies 2, The Captains, plus the other 40 or so.
Yeah, once you lay it out like that, it starts becoming silly.
I take back my earlier statement -- he does reference Cameron in a long list of the stuff he's watched.But also The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Matrix, and everything by Monty Python.
It's really a huge list.
Makes me wonder how much I could accomplish if I didn't watch all that stuff.
i was born in 1981 and i have a lot of ultraman memories. i think it came back into afternoon syndication around that time.
I started this late last night when I was already tired and told myself I'd read just one chapter, then go to bed. I had just started chapter three before I realized I already passed chapter one. So yeah, the chapters are short, and it's a quick read. I'm really into it so far. I haven't gotten to where he tries to figure out the clues and stuff yet. The 80's are before my time, so hopefully I'll still like it and be able to follow along once it picks up more.I didn't like the side notes in the beginning. I don't like side notes in general because it's hard for me to keep a look out for the little numbers, or in this case symbols. I hope that was the last of them.
I plan to read this. I borrowed it from the library today. As soon as I finish the bio I'm half-done with I'll start reading Ready Player One.
I'm looking forward to reading this but I'm going to hold off til I go on a 16 hour flight later this month and will need someone to keep me enthralled.
I think it might actually be able to be read in a 16 hour flight.
Take something else too, just in case.
Take something else too, just in case.
I've got a Kindle, I'll be taking a lot to read :P I'm heading to your neck of the woods Ala
Do.. do you want our rain or something?
No I have plenty here. I want your snow :D
Gonna read this? Check in here.
Started already? What are your initial thoughts?