1) Ready Player One: A Novel by Ernest Cline / YA / ***
Favorite line: “I watched a lot of YouTube videos of cute geeky girls playing '80s cover tunes on ukuleles. Technically, this wasn't part of my research, but I had a serious cute-geeky-girls-playing-ukuleles fetish that I can neither explain nor defend.”
This book CRACKED ME UP. The plot was not terribly original or even really engaging, but the cultural references were wonderful. It is the story set in the future when video gamers all over the world are trying to solve a gaming puzzle left by the deceased mastermind James Halliday. Whomever wins the game will also win fortune and freedom from the abject poverty of a world suffering from the economic collapse following the depletion of fossil fuels. Each riddle in the game is based in the pop-culture of the 1980's. While I got a big kick out of the references I knew and understood, it was fun to ask Darren if he remembered certain things. He is older than me and has always been a video-game junky so he knew a lot more than I did. It was a lot of fun. It brought back an OLD memory I didn't even know I had.... being in a laundromat somewhere with my mom and so wishing she would give me a quarter to play Pac-Man. Kids these days don't even get how crazy it was to have to pay money to play and then to only have a few chances before you died and had to put in more money.
2) The Unseen by Zilpha Keatley Snyder / JF / 0
This author is a three time Newbery Honor Winner. I expected more. Much more. This book had a lackluster plot and flat unlikable characters. I thought it was terribly written. The only reason I even finished it is because I had nothing else to read.
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