Ready Player OneThis isn’t a full book review but it’s a part one. The reason being that I just heard a few days ago that Nerdist is doing a readalong book club of Ready Player One starting this very week. I’ve already read the book but had fancied reading it again anyway and thought this would be a great chance to join the readalong. So if you haven’t read Ready Player One this is a great chance to jump aboard and give it a go. You’ll have to play catch up slightly because the first discussion about the first few chapters is actually happening tomorrow.

As I mentioned, I’ve already read the book and thoroughly enjoyed it. There are a few slightly illogical leaps of narrative and a few predictable and too convenient plot turns, but to be honest I didn’t mind a bit because I found it a really fun adventure. And the bottom line is that it is a book about retro gaming and other 80s pop culture. That in itself is pretty great. For a while I was wondering how we could have a book or movie about geeky retro 80s stuff but I could never work out how it could be done without being too twee or sentimental and only of interest to a really niche audience. What Ernest Cline has done very cleverly is actually set it in the future and made it about a new generation becoming enraptured by the historic 80s by means of a competition set by a billionaire game developer. The author not only of course has some great 80s references in there but he also paints a fascinating picture of the future where Virtual Reality is taken to a whole new level. I thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to reading it again, at the same time as hundreds of other geeks online. Particularly because a lot of the hidden easter eggs are going to be discussed, many of which I might not be aware of yet.

You can get Ready Player One from the Amazon store here.