Ready Player One
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Remember the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Great flick.

This book is to gamers and geeks what Roger Rabbit was to animation and cartoons. While the book relies heavily on eighties pop culture, the core of the story rests solidly in the hearts and minds of thirty-plus year olds who remember the beginning of the electronic gaming age and continue (to this day) to enjoy the lifestyle.

It’s a geekgasm read – pure an simple.

The charm of Ernest Cline’s books isn’t just the fact that it’s written to a very specific demographic, but that it plays to that demographic without pandering to it. There are a number of mentions in pop culture that are thrown in with the expectation that the reader already knows the source. Each item mentioned in passing doesn’t need a paragraph to explain the source… the story just cites (occasionally) the source and moves on. This helps with the pacing of the story immensely.

Ready Player One swims in a pool of obscurity for the single purpose of professing the awesomeness of geek culture: from Advanced Dungeon & Dragons to Zork. From Apple computers of yesteryear to World of Warcraft. Star Wars. Atari. Knight Rider. Firefly. Voltron. The list goes on.

My one wish? For an online resource to exist with a complete list of EVERYTHING referenced in the book.

This weekend, I will be home bound after oral surgery. One of my planned time killers (thanks to this book) is to plug in my old Atari 2600 and find the classic Adventure Easter egg – something I never pulled off in my childhood.

Then maybe I’ll waste some time on a few other cartridges while it’s plugged in.

This is a MUST READ for 99% of my friends. Seriously. Stop reading my review and get the damn book already.

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