Ready Player One

Cline, Ernest. Ready Player One. New York: Crown. 2011. Print.

First Sentences:

Everyone my age remembers where they were and what they were doing when they first heard about the contest.

Description:

When you are a hungry reader like me, you look for interesting books from a wide variety of sources. Recently, my 11 and 13-year-old nephews recommended Ernest Cline's Ready Player One, as one of their favorites. I'd never heard of it, but plunged in and was captivated enough to binge read it in a couple of days.

It is an especially interesting book for those of us who lived in the 1980s and played coin-operated video games in arcades, watched TV sitcoms like Family Ties, and lapped up movies like War Games. In Ready Player One, knowing details about these social icons is key to understanding and solving the ultimate game that forms the basis of the plot. And playing is definitely worth your while as the final prize is over $250 billion dollars.

The game and the prize fortune are hidden within the online simulation world of OASIS. And what is OASIS, you ask?

[The Oasis was] a malleable online universe that anyone could access via the Internet, using their existing home computer or videogame console. You could log in and instantly escape the drudgery of your day-to-day life. You could create an entirely new persona for yourself, with complete control over how you looked and sounded to others....You could become whomever and whatever you wanted to be, without ever revealing your true identity because your anonymity was guaranteed.

James Halliday, the creator of OASIS, had just died. Having no living heirs, he decided to create a game within OASIS with his massive fortune as the winner's prize. A video message was posted after his death introducing the game, its prize, and an opening riddle about three keys to open three gates to find the fortune. 

But after five years, no one in the entire world had discovered even the first key (and definitely everyone was looking) . Then one name appeared on the online scoreboard signifying the first key had been found -- by Parzival, alias teenage Wade, the narrator of the story. 

We follow him as he struggles with the puzzle riddles and exploring the worlds of OASIS and Halliday's life. Because the game's creator was a lover of everything from the 1980s, Parzival/Wade has to master television dialogue and film trivia as well as game-playing skills of ancient video consoles to have any hope of finding the treasure.

Almost immediately, Parzival sees on the scoreboard that four other avatars also have found the first key and are competing against him to solve the next riddles and get to the billion dollar prize first. But also in the running are representatives from the gigantic IOI corporation who wants to control the OASIS worlds and make it into a for-profit operation. The race to the prize is on.

I'm a non-gamer and have only played a few ancient games in arcades in the '80s. But this book dusted off plenty of memories for me (including the phrase "Ready Player One" which appeared before the start of a video game) and introduced me to a boatload of potential technology likely to be commonplace in the future. 

It's a fantastic, page-turning affair of avatars, robots, games, combat, human interactions and mental struggles that I dare you to put down once you are in Parzival/Wade's mind, trying to answer to coded questions and perform the complex tasks required.

(Soon to be a movie in 2018. Can't wait.)

Happy reading. 

Fred

(See more recommended books)
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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Card, Orson Scott. Ender's Game

In the future, children are recruited to be trained as military commanders to thwart the expected attack of powerful aliens. One young student, Ender, must learn the battle strategies as well as leadership skills to survive the complex training and mock skirmishes during his training.

The Puzzler

Jacobs, A.J. The Puzzler: One Man's Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life. New York: Crown. 2022. Print.

First Sentences:

One winter morning several years ago, I got an email with some ridiculously exciting news. Or so I thought.

Description:

 

The newest immersive living and exploration book from A.J. Jacobs is The Puzzler: One Man's Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life. 

 

He's one of my regular go-to authors whenever I need to read something interesting, humorous, off-beat, and uplifting. He always writes about his full-bore immersions into lifestyles and topics such as health (Drop Dead Healthy), reading the entire encyclopedia (The Know-It-All), self-improvement (My Life As An Experiment), and even following religious edicts (The Year of Living Biblically). Each of these quirky tales of inquiry and pursuit is highly recommended.

The Puzzler follows Jacobs' personal tried-and-true writing pattern: 

• pick a lifestyle or question that interests him;
• research the history, quirks, important people, and current state of that topic;
• interview the major figures in this field;
• challenge himself to incorporate their suggestions and immerse himself, with the goal to understand and hopefully become a better person and solve the toughest problems.

The Puzzler explores the intriguing facets of a wide variety of puzzles, including crosswords, anagrams, mazes, secret codes, Sodoku, chess, riddles, puzzle hunts, and many more. Some of these you may not have even heard of much less have an interest in. But in Jacobs' capable hands, he gently guides you so wittily and thoroughly to new challenges and experiences that by the end of each chapter you may want to tackle more of these puzzles for yourself. Fortunately, he includes examples of each puzzle at the end of chapters for you to try, with answers in the back of the book.

 

For an example, in one section he decides to explore crossword puzzles. He is already a fanatacal New York Times crossword puzzle solver, setting his alarm nightly for 10:01pm when the next day's puzzle is posted online so he can complete it before going to sleep. He feels proud that his name was famous enough to be an answer to a Times crossword puzzle. That glow lasted briefly until he learned that, as a Saturday puzzle, only the more obscure references are used and therefore his fame really was not so widespread. He interviews Peter Gordon, puzzle maker "known for his creativitiy and deviousness," who shows him the first crossword puzzle from 1913 (reprinted in this book for you to solve). Armed with solving tips from Gordon, Jacobs gets to work on and eventually solves Fireball #9, Gordon's toughest crossword.

For each puzzle, Jacobs follows a similar pattern of description and immersion, ending with his tackling the toughest version of that puzzle. He buys a 48,000-piece jigsaw puzzle (since it is the world's largest); competes with his family in the international jigsaw puzzle tournament (as representatives of the United States since no one else had entered); and learns that the normal Rubik's cube has 43 quintillion combinations, while the 33 x 33-block version, the Octahedon Starmix, has "2-followed-by-137-zeroes combinations." Of course, he has to buy a Starmix, but after recognizing the time involved and his own limitations, farms it out to be solved for him by a Super Cuber, someone who can solve a Rubic's cube in mere seconds.

There are many other puzzles, riddles, and posers to challenge readers. All are presented in Jacobs' witty style full of information and humor. For example, here's one of the tough rebus symbol puzzle he offers for readers to try:

                    B

 

(Sorry, the answer is not "A Bee" - the real answer is below) 

 

Puzzles, to Jacobs, provide the concept of a single solution which is highly satisfying to all of us facing a myriad of problems and answers in our daily lives. A clear-cut right answer is deeply reassuring. Jacobs shares that even Barak Obama fantacized about "opening a T-shirt shop on the beach that only that sold only one item: a plain, white T-shirt, size medium. Freedom from choice."

 

Highly engaging, challenging, fun, and humorous. I just love every adventure Jacobs takes me on. The Puzzler is a fine addition to his immersion lifestyle writings.

 

       [Rebus Answer:   ABOLONE - (a "b" alone). Told you it was a toughie.

 

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

 

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Cline, Ernest. Ready Player One.   

When the eccentric, incredibly rich developer of a virtual reality world dies, he leave his fortune to whomever can solve his mysterious puzzle clues that lead to his treasure. Of course, there are good as well as bad people trying to decrypt his obscure hints, and the chase is on.   (previously reviewed here)

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

Green, Hank. An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. New York: Dutton 2018. Print

First Sentences:

Look. I am aware that you're here for an epic tale of intrigue and mystery and adventure and near death and actual death, but in order to get to that (unless you want to skip to chapter 13 -- I'm not your boss), you're going to have to deal with the fact that I, April May, in addition to being one of the most important things that has ever happened to the human race, am also a woman in her twenties who had made some mistakes. 

Description:

Here's an intriguingly wild modern-day sci-fi scenario:

Late one night on a well-traveled sidewalk in New York City, out of nowhere a 10-foot statue appears. It is clad in armor with a fierce expression. A curious woman, April May, (yes, a silly name for the 23-year-old protagonist of Hank Green's debut novel, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing) passes by, notices the statue, and calls her best friend, Andy, to come immediately to make a video of the statue they nickname "Carl" and post it online as young people do with every experience and picture.

Overnight the video, April and Andy, and of course the statue go viral - mainly because dozens of other statues exactly like Carl have suddenly appeared in major cities worldwide. All are equal to Carl in warrior attire, fierce appearance, and unknown origin. At first the Carls are thought to be the work of some artistic team making a statement, but the composition of the statues' materials and their inability to be moved by any person or crane  challenge the people and governments of the world to try to make sense of them. Art work? Aliens? If so, what is the purpose of either option?

Clues begin to emerge. Just before the Carls appeared, all security cameras around the statues blanked out to static. But underneath the recorded camera static a faint audio track was picked up that turns out to be the song "Don't Stop Me Now" by Queen. Huh? Equally odd is that after the statues' appearance, every person in the world begins to dream the same dream: a game-like scenario in an unknown city where puzzles have to be solved to enter different areas or understand the elements of this fantasy environment. As everyone worldwide tries to solve the various puzzles and share their findings, April discovers she sees something in the dream that no one else can. What makes her so special?

Meanwhile, April and Andy are finding that their new fame and the wealth that comes with that fame have both good and nasty sites. Interviews, blogs, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, television and every other media clamor for interviews to comment on the Carls and their discoverers. April is "a digital girl in a digital world" who instinctively knows how to perform in front of a camera and online, so relishes in the attention and wealth, but risks the relationships in her life.

It's a roller coaster of a life as April and her friends try to figure out what the Carls are and what they want, as well as find some semblance of peace in their own lives. As might be imagined, their team provides much commentary about the power and pitfalls of social media, television, interviewers, and being an international online presence. Using a very hip, snarky voice for the narrative, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is a fun, modern and, yes, absolutely remarkable book.

Happy reading.


Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Neuvel, Sylvain. Sleeping Giants.   

A gigantic hand is found buried in an isolated field turns out to be part of a huge figure. Pieces of the robot were buried hundreds of years ago all over the world. Once assembled, what is its purpose? Peaceful or warlike? It is up to two people to figure out how to make this being come to life and free it for its purpose. There are currently two other books in this series. Highly recommended (previously reviewed here)

Cline, Ernest Ready Player One  

A fabulously wealthy game-maker who created a fantasy world that all people enjoy escaping into, has created a puzzle and clues that lead to his fortune. The winner of his game must be able to de-code the riddles to collect the fortune.  (previously reviewed here)