February Book Club: Ready Player One

Spoilers......
I had no idea Aech was a girl. Didn't even cross my mind. Although now as I think back about some of the dialogue between Aech and Wade it sorta makes sense.

The coin and the ending....okay, what do you all think about that? I'm okay with the coin and the part it played in the ending. I thought it was a neat little nod to old school gaming by giving Wade an extra life. HOWEVER, I feel like this was sort of a cop out ending for the writer. It was just to easy of an ending when this whole easter egg hunt was not easy. Also I get that the protagonist won the game and all, but I felt the Aeche and Artemis getting wiped out right at the door again was a cop out on the writers part. Maybe I'm just grumpy because if that happened to me in a video game I might throw the remote at the TV (heeheeheehee)

 

Spoilers:

I was okay with the coin at the end, but was heartbroken for the others. You had to guess through the whole book that you knew he would be the winner in the end anyway, so I guess it just made the ending less predictable since you thought at one point that all three of them would win.

 

Spoilers:

I wasn't aware any of that existed. However, I kinda related that to {late}Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. I bet they could tell you every minutia of computers starting in the beginning, even ones that didn't do more than word processing. When you are obsessed, you are obsessed! And the gunters were obsessed with a man who was obsessed, and had a lot of knowledge because of his career choice.

Sadly, this didn't strike me the same way. There wasn't enough backstory to show that he even liked anyone but the cat lady. And from the perspective of threat, I think the last thing I would be concerned about is people I knew if my life was on the line. I know the aunt was painted as a villain and very one dimensional, so you aren't supposed to care about her. It reminds me in a way of Grapes of Wrath. People dying everyday, but people too concerned about their own to worry overly about their neighbors.

I knew someone would not be as represented because of how often it was alluded to being anonymous online, but I didn't know who.

This was scary to me in a different way. It seemed too close to reality currently. I see articles so often about how kids are inside on video games instead of outside playing with each other. It kinds reminded me of Wall-E in that way.

I agreed with you at first. But, then I thought about the random part of how he stumbled upon the quarter. And how long it took him to play a perfect game in order to get the quarter. Plus, maybe it wasn't Halliday, but Morrow who put it there? Maybe he saw all the 6er stuff, and decided that one of the 4 was smart enough to play a perfect Pac-man game.

The part that fell like a cop-out for me wasn't the quarter. It was the oh so perfect introduction of Morrow into their lives. You need a place to play? I can help with that! To me, at that point, the 6ers should have had Morrow under lock and key trying to torture the secret to the gate out of him. Or at least under surveillance? Because if the #1 guy is gone, you turn to #2. Regardless of whether or not he claims to know anything.

In the "Did you know" category (cuz I didn't!) apparently the writer set up his own Easter Egg hunt, and gave away a Delorean.

 

(SPOILER)
i totally get your perfect logic but i was kind of expecting this - i felt Morrow was a bit like the Wizard in Wizard of Oz (i thought it was going to come out that he was the man behind the 'smoke-screen' of Haliday (with Haliday being like a public construct so that Morrow could be left to be a Hermit or whatever ..until that big DJ party...) Anyway, i figured he'd be playing God and interjecting on behalf of the Good Guys to make sure they won.

 

i thought it was going to turn out Aech was gay. I like the [indirect] social commentary that the internet interaction means you don't know who people really are ... (unless they digiscrap and all their family photos and details are on like every page in galleries everywhere...)

 

Sigh. I know. I love your wizard of Oz thought.

 

I have only made it to level 3 . . . this is not an easy read for me and I have no difficulty whatsoever in putting this book down. I'm sure I'll finish it this week, but my motivation to complete it is becoming so that I can move on to another book on my Kindle (library loan expired and I learned that lesson -- don't open another book even if you have wifi turned off).

I was never a gamer and I'm having a bit of difficulty creating this virtual reality in my mind -- if you read the Harry Potter books -- it was so easy to visualize and be "in the story" -- I just can't do that with this book.

 

argh! trying not to read spoilers. I have like 30 pages left. Thought I had it with me last night at my son's scout meeting, but i didn't. gggrrr. almost bought it on Kindle because I had an hour to read. LOL. Going to finish tonight! Then I can read all these spoilers

 

and meanwhile, i got to 50% on All the Light the other day and felt like cheering - we're all diverse readers by the sounds

 

This is me!! I really wanted to like this book, but every time I start reading it puts me to sleep. I will finish it though.

 

I think the younger generations would struggle with this. Only because maybe they don't have as much understanding of all the 1980s chatter. I mean I grew up in the 80s - and I didn't even know 30% of the things he was referencing. I was trying to explain the book to my almost 12 year old and he sounded interested, but I won't allow him because of some of the "other" stuff in the book. However, I told him he'd only understand like 15% of the book - and that's the parts where there's actually a STORY going on. LOL

 

the coin - I guess if you're going to have Sorrento able to get another life by simply taking over one of the other characters avatars, then you need to have him able to get another life as well. I did feel bad for Aech & Art3mis, but I figured the coin was going to be something important. I had actually thought it was going to be the only way to get into the last room, but requiring 3 people was a creative twist.

I personally think killing the other two was an easy way to end the story and not have there be 3 winners; or 3 individuals fighting against each other. They probably all would have had their own room, and making only 1 be able to go in to win made it super easy for him to just hand out the money and no one had to actually "fight" for the win. It was ultimately good versus bad instead of good friend versus good friend.

 

LOL - totally true. and totally why we feel so comfortable when we meet IRL. My husband doesn't get that.

 

i enjoyed this on the whole and i found the premise interesting. i guess i'm old enough to remember a lot of the 80's references but i did think the introduction of morrow as a bit of a cop out. i did smile at te ending though

 

I finally finished last night and I truly struggled with this one. I found myself skipping a TON of paragraphs that were too wordy. I had absolutely no desire to read a billion words on 1980s pop culture and video games. I think if you took away all of that, you'd have ended up with a 30 page book. When you dug down and got to the actual story, I liked it. But that took a lot of work in my opinion.

No one has brought up the indentured servitude yet. That was odd. Talk about cattle moving. Some of the thoughts in this book were so super depressing. the book really brought me down. Though it did allow me to have a great conversation with my son yesterday about virtual reality and video games and how important it is to know the people you interact with and to know that you can have fun with this stuff, but it shouldn't be your world.

I thought the ending was one of my favorite parts - you know, the whole 4 pages where they were actually talking to each other face to face. I guess it just shows that I'm not into the whole video game/online persona as much as I am a face to face person. I prefer dialouge over descriptions when I read, but there has to be enough description to give me a setting.

 

Yes, this is me. I finally finished. I really struggled to get through it. I was a young adult in the 80's and remember most of the computers and systems referenced, the movies, songs -- but really? I skipped over a lot of those words in the book -- they seemed unnecessary.

I hate to even think that our "world" could deteriorate to something like this over the next 30 years. It was depressing that the "virtual reality" seemed to be where everyone lived their lives.

I thought the indentured servitude was a bit odd, but I guess that was the only way to allow access into the big IOI in order to sabotage the "shield".

I guess from the beginning I was pretty sure that Wade would win and not too far in figured he'd be "sharing the prize" with his friends.