Ready Player One -- Take 2

This was an interesting one.

I am not a regular participant (or any kind of participant, really) in the world of video games or virtual reality, so it took me a while to understand this book.  In the first few chapters, I frequently wasn't sure if our main character, Wade Watts, was in the real world or in his gaming world.  It didn't help that I was listening to this on a new iPod, and it took a little while to figure out how to get all the tracks to play in order.  Eventually it required retitling all of the tracks in the first nine chapters to start with a "0".  That was annoying.

Once I figured out the tracks and my new technology, I did get into the story.  It's the tale of Wade, who lives in a dystopian future (yes, another one of those) in which nearly everyone's great escape is to play a giant multi-player interactive video game called the OASIS.  OASIS was created by a now-deceased developer, who buried in the game an Easter egg hunt, and Wade is one of the hunters.  The prize for winning the hunt is control of the OASIS.  With that much real money at stake (think the virtual-real world interaction in things like Farmville and bitcoin), obviously there are corporate baddies throwing considerable resources at the hunt.  Political commentary, yadda yadda.  You can pretty much imagine it for yourself, so I'll avoid it.

Things start to get serious for Wade when the virtual villains come after him in the real world.  Thus begins the true test of his gaming skill.

The part I found the most interesting, and this may have only been my lack of familiarity with the subject matter, was the blurring of the lines between Wade's online and real personas.  My feelings on Facebook are well-known (see here, here, or here for examples). This post in particular addresses my concerns about our inability to change ourselves because our pasts are recorded online for the world to see.  There's a lot of that mixing up of lives in Ready Player One.

This book, as I said, was not really my cup of tea.  I am, however, reminded why I love reading, even in the digital form.  It can transport you to somewhere you never expected, even a place you don't understand, and make it enjoyable.  So there's that.