Ready Player One by Ernest Cline – Audiobook Review

Sep 302011

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, narrated by Wil Wheaton
Published in audio by Random House Audio, published in print by Crown, both imprints of Random House

Synopsis:

In 2044 people are going hungry and electricity is unreliable at best. To serve as a distraction from the constant misery, most people barely even live in the real world any more anyway. Instead, they are plugged almost constantly into the virtual reality called the OASIS. For Wade Watts, the OASIS is basically the only thing he has going. In the real world he is an orphan living with his mildly abusive aunt who steals all his food vouchers. After the death of the OASIS’s creator James Halliday, Wade finally seems a glimpse of hope for his future in the Easter Egg Halliday left for whichever game can solve his puzzles. Somehow, Wade is the first among the millions of Gunters (Egg Hunters) to solve the first riddle and locate the first key, but he can’t rest on his laurels, because the Sixers are right behind him. The Sixers will stop at nothing to find the Egg, and if they do the idyll of the OASIS will be lost forever.

Thoughts on the story:

If you lived through the 80s, were born in the 80s, or have ever watched VH1′s I Love the 80s you are probably going to want to read this book. It is a bit heavy on video games, but the cultural references are accessible to anyone who has ever seen a John Hughes movie, and explained well enough that readers will get the gist of anything they weren’t already aware of, without being annoyed by excessive exposition on things they are well aware of.

Cultural references are all well and good, but what is really important to know about Ready Player One is that it is a really good story. Wade is a wonderful protagonist, extremely kind-hearted, but also flawed and driven. His surrounding cast of characters is diverse and easy to relate to, but epic quest on which they find themselves is the real star of the book. Halliday’s Easter Egg quest is fun, suspenseful, and just complicated enough to really capture the imagination.

Thoughts on the audio production:

Wil Wheaton did a magnificent job narrating Ready Player One. Really just phenomenal. His young American characters didn’t have a huge differentiation in voice, but it was never a problem to tell who was speaking, and he did include accents for some other characters. The best part about Wheaton’s narration was his unending enthusiasm, which made an already fun book an absolutely joy to listen to.

soundbytes picture Overall:

Ready Player One is really great, and I’m sure it would be marvelous in print, but Wil Wheaton’s narration lends it that extra oomph, so get ahold of it in audio if you can!

Buy this book from:
Powells: Audio/Print*
Indiebound: Audio/Print*

I’m launching a brand-new meme every Friday! I encourage you to review any audiobooks you review on Fridays and include the link here. If you have reviewed an audiobook earlier in the week, please feel free to link that review as well. Thanks to Pam for creating the button.

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

If Jack’s In Love by Stephen Wetta – Book Review

Sep 292011

If Jack’s In Love by Stephen Wetta
Published by Amy Einhorn Books, an imprint of Penguin

If there’s anything worse than being a 12-year old boy, it is being a brilliant 12-year old boy born into the family that the whole town shuns. Oh, and even worse than that is having your brother suspected in the disappearance of one of the town’s most popular young men, who just happens to be the older brother of the girl you have a crush on. Actually, life as Jack Witcher is just sort of crummy in general.

If Jack’s In Love is a wonderful coming-of-age story. Jack is a compelling young man with a very interesting voice. His character was consistent with that of a 12-year old, without falling into the trap of being particularly obnoxious in an effort on Wetta’s part to prove that Jack is indeed 12.

The storyline Wetta has created is very interesting, looking at the incidents between Jack’s brother Stan and the missing boy, wondering whether or not Stan really did something dire and irreversible. The real heart of the story, however, is Jack and his reactions to the world around him, his fight to be accepted without giving up who he is at heart.

There is much discussion these days about what constitutes a young adult book, and what an adult book. Many people would likely classify If Jack’s In Love immediately as young adult, due to the age of its main character. It seems, however, that Wetta is coming at this from a distinctly more adult point of view, while still staying true to Jack. Although there is certainly cross-over appeal for teenagers, If Jack’s In Love is a bildungsroman written for an adult audience – and a good one, at that.

Recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Paradise Lust by Brook Wilensky-Lanford – Book Review

Sep 282011

Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden by Brook Wilensky-Lanford
Published by Grove Press, an imprint of Grove/Atlantic

When Brook Wilensky-Lanford learned that a relative of hers had, in his younger days, searched for the Garden of Eden on Earth, she was a bit perplexed. After all, her family definitely did not subscribe to Biblical literalism. As she began to dig a little further into his motivations, however, she found an entire subculture – both religious and secular – dedicated to the discovery of the Garden of Eden. Soon Wilensky-Lanford was on a quest of her own, to discover the breadth of the mania for Eden.

Paradise Lust is a comprehensively researched look at humankind’s desire to return to an Edenic paradise – whether that paradise represents unity, civilization, or progress to any given supplicant – mixed with just a hint of humor and sarcasm. The subjectivity of humor could be a problem in a nonfiction book such as this, but Wilensky-Lanford does a fabulous job of separating the historical record from her own opinions.

It is simply fascinating how many different motivations have driven people to search for the Garden of Eden, particularly the fact that there were secular, not only religious ones. Similarly fascinating is the number of Eden-seekers who have placed paradise in the New World. Columbus, for example, believed he located the Garden in Venezuela, and more than one group has claimed its existence in middle America.

Wilensky-Lanford is an engaging writer, and brings a great deal of clarity to the profusion of quests for Eden. That people continue to search for the Garden on Earth is not an idea that would have ever occurred to me, but regardless, Paradise Lust makes for an intriguing read. Recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher, via NetGalley.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

BOOK CLUB – The True Memoirs of Little K by Adrienne Sharp

Sep 272011

5256159881 7ba9c432e6 m picture Welcome to BOOK CLUB, which I run with co-conspirator Nicole from Linus’s Blanket. Today we will be chatting about The True Memoirs of Little K by Adrienne Sharp, which is being released in paperback by Picador on October 25th (website | twitter | facebook). For those of you reading this post, please remember that this discussion is likely to contain spoilers.

Here is the synopsis of the book I wrote for my review:

Little K was a prima ballerina, the lover of the last Russian tsar. A woman whose determination brought her into the beds of many members of the imperial family, but whose brilliant future was derailed when Russia as she knew it began to disappear, along with her beloved Tsar Nicholas II, and something where the concubine of the Romanovs was a dangerous thing to be. But perhaps it would be best to let Little K introduce herself in her own words, as this is a story she has been endlessly remembering for the past 50 years:

My name is Mathilde Kschessinska, and I was the greatest Russian ballerina on the imperial stages. But the world I was born to, the world I was bred for, is gone, and all the players in it are also gone – dead, murdered, exiled, walking ghosts. -p. 3

littlek picture Before we get started, here are some of the reviews of readers who will be participating today:

Beachreader
Devourer of Books
Reviews by Lola

If you plan on participating in today’s BOOK CLUB, please consider subscribing to comments at the bottom of the page (please use the TOP subscription option, the second option will subscribe you only to replies of your own comments). I will be updating this post with new questions and ideas over the course of the day.

Here we go…

First off, what were your general impressions of the book?
Is this a book you would have read had you not been reading it for a book club?
Near the beginning of the book, Little K makes this somewhat provocative statement about Nicki’s marriage to Alix. Do you think, based on the events of the book, that she was correct about this?
And what kind of wife would I have made him? Could I have stood his future – imprisonment and
a martyr’s death? I can assure you this: if I had been his wife, that would not have been his future. -p. 23
What do you think was the root of Little K’s determination to be part of the tsar’s life? How did you feel about the way she positioned her son?
Do you think that Little K fully understood the causes of the revolution? What helped or hindered her in this?
Do you think that Sharp made the causes of the revolution clear to the reader?

12 review copies of The True Memoirs of Little K were provided by Picador in order to facilitate this discussion. Thank you!

Skating Over the Line by Joelle Charbonneau – Book Review

Sep 262011

Skating Over the Line by Joelle Charbonneau
Published by Minotaur Books, an imprint of Macmillan

This is the second book in the Rebecca Robbins series. I have previously reviewed the first book, Skating Around the Law.

It seems like Rebecca’s dreams may finally have come true. Her real estate agent may finally have found a buyer for her mother’s roller rink. Of course, her boyfriend Lionel isn’t crazy about the idea of her selling the rink and heading back to Chicago, but as much as Rebecca enjoys their time together, getting back to her life in Chicago is all that Rebecca has wanted since she came home to Indian Falls. Still, the Lionel thing aside, things seem to be heading in the right direction – until Rebecca’s deadbeat father shows up in town and people’s cars start going missing.

As in Skating Around the Law, Rebecca is a very strong, entertaining character. She is flawed, but still confident in her own skin, even when she isn’t sure what on earth she is actually doing. The secondary cast of characters is equally good. Lionel gets relatively little face time, but is still very well developed, and Pop has to be the sweetest, funniest grandfather in literature. In addition, Skating Over the Line is well-plotted. It makes sense for Rebecca to get pulled into things when and how she does, and the conclusion makes perfect sense while still managing to be somewhat surprising.

Charbonneau is a fairly new voice in the mystery scene, but she is a talented one. Highly recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

TSS: Red Books

Sunday Salon 12 Responses »

Sep 252011

Hubby traveling all last week = me reading a lot. I had a lot of other work to do this week, but I have a tendency to stay up too late when he’s gone, so I still got a ton read. And, as an aside, at least he came back before we had the fun of Daniel learning how to climb out of his crib (and fall down and freak himself out).

Anyway, here’s what I read this week:

littlek picture practicaljean 1 picture margaretmitchellgwtw picture

kitchencountercookingschool picture galegumbo picture birdsofparadise 2 picture

So many red books! It always amuses/confuses me when that sort of thing happens with covers. Anyway, here’s what I reviewed this week:

Teach Your Buffalo to Play Drums – Saturday Story Spotlight

Sep 242011

Welcome to Saturday Story Spotlight, my feature where I discuss books my husband and I are reading with our son, Daniel. These are books that he, we, or all of us particularly enjoy.

Teach Your Buffalo to Play Drums by Audrey Vernick, illustrated by Daniel Jennewein
Published by Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins

In 2010, the world’s cutest buffalo ever made his debut in Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten?. The only thing I didn’t like about the book was the fact that Daniel was only one, and we wouldn’t have any need for it for a long time. Enter the second buffalo book, Teach Your Buffalo to Play Drums.

In Teach Your Buffalo to Play Drums, the buffalo is still the most adorable thing ever, but now he’s trying to free his inner-musician and play drums. It isn’t easy to get a buffalo to hold drum sticks, but if you help him out, he can find a way to do it.

Okay, admittedly I bought Teach Your Buffalo to Play Drums more for me than for Daniel. It is a really cute book, one that a parent could read multiple times without getting sick of it. It is, however, a bit more than Daniel’s two year old attention span can handle; we have yet to actually get through the whole thing. He loves the part we have read, though, and it is a book that can continue to grow with him.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Personal copy
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos – Audiobook Review

Sep 232011

Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos, narrated by Jack Gantos
Published in audio by Macmillan Audio, published in print by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux (BYR), both imprints of Macmillan

Synopsis:

Growing up can be difficult, especially when you live in an exceedingly quirky town called Norvelt that was originally founded by Eleanor Roosevelt that consists mostly of elderly people. It is even harder when you’re Jack Gantos and you’re grounded for the summer thanks to conflicting directions from your mom who loves Norvelt and your father who hates it. It looks like it might be a boring summer for Jack, until he is apprenticed to the town’s arthritic obit writer and medical examiner. Suddenly, being grounded has never been so interesting.

Thoughts on the story:

Quirkiness abounds! Gantos seems to have a great love for the absurd, but at times while listening, I felt that the goal was absurdity for its own sake, which I did not find particularly endearing. In fact, I was nearly halfway into Dead End in Norvelt before I determined that I would, indeed, continue through to the end and not simply abandon the book. Eventually, though, the town of Norvelt and its inhabitants grew on me and, by the end, I was even a bit sad that the book had ended.

One interesting thing about Dead End in Norvelt is the way it blends events from Gantos’s own life with those that occurred only in his imagination. I often wondered exactly where that line was.

Thoughts on the audio production:

Like the story, Gantos’s narration took some time to grow on me. He came across initially as a somewhat less funny David Sedaris. In general, though, I do think he was the best person to tell his own story, as he was able to perfectly give voice to some of the oddness contained therein.

soundbytes picture Overall:

Although I am not overly enthusiastic about Dead End in Norvelt, I do think it is worth picking up if the synopsis interests you, or if you are in the mood for a quirky listen.

Buy this book from:
Powells: Audio/Print*
Indiebound: Audio/Print*

Source: .
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Never the Hope Itself by Gerry Hadden – Book Review

Sep 222011

Never the Hope Itself by Gerry Hadden
Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins

Before the call came, Gerry Hadden had every intention of becoming a Buddhist monk, but then his phone rang, and he was offered the position of NPR’s Latin American correspondent, a position he simply could not turn down. Never the Hope Itself is the story of Hadden’s time reporting on Latin America: from Haiti’s election, to drug trafficking in Colombia, to illegal immigration.

In Never the Hope Itself, Hadden mixes both personal and professional memoir. Unfortunately the proportion of life and work seems somewhat off. Hadden’s life in his home in Mexico is not as well developed as it might have been, causing those sections to feel oddly unfinished and lacking. This ends up not being a huge detriment to the memoir, however, because the really fascinating part of Hadden’s story is what he saw as an NPR correspondent in Haiti and Latin America.

Hadden excels at bringing to life everything he saw during his employment, including the perils of emigrating from Central America through Mexico to the United States. What American readers will likely find most shocking, however, is the reaction Hadden observed to 9/11. Certainly Hadden seems to have found it shocking:

For the next several days the Mexican newspapers were filled with op-eds and commentaries on how justice, albeit tragic justice, had been served. On how naive the Americans were for not seeing it coming. On how sad it was that people had died, but what did the Big Bully Up North expect after pushing the entire planet around since time immemorial? -p. 136

“The United States has been screwing over Latin America for centuries,” Guadalupe told me…. “The American government was behind it,” said Walter, Guadalupe’s husband, “and the American government responds to Wall Street. It’s all interconnected…. Many more Argentines died during our seven years of U.S.-supported military juntas than Americans on September 11. There is a lot of anger still. A lot of unhealed wounds.” -p. 137-138

These statements will be seen by many as very provocative, but they are particularly interesting in the context of everything Hadden saw, and it is worth reading Never the Hope Itself to at least begin understand where they were coming from.

All this being said, the section on 9/11 is a relatively minor one in the context of the book and certainly isn’t the main thrust of Never the Hope Itself. Hadden’s time in Latin America is fascinating and instructive and is a great starting point for those interested in learning about the recent history of the region.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source:.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

The Twelfth Enchantment by David Liss – Book Review

Sep 212011

The Twelfth Enchantment by David Liss
Published by Random House

Ever since the death of Lucy Derrick’s father, she has been as maligned as the most unfortunate of Jane Austen’s heroines. Her near elopement four years earlier left her with her virtue intact, but her reputation somewhat worse for the wear. It seems lucky, really, that Mr. Olsen seems to want to marry her, for all that he is incredibly dull and the two of them have nothing to talk about. At this point, anything to get her away from her Uncle Lowell and his malicious housekeeper Mrs. Quince.

Everything changes for Lucy, though, one day as she uncomfortably makes conversation with her intended. Suddenly, there is an unknown voice screaming her name, and a disheveled man tells her that she must not become Mrs. Olsen and she must ‘gather the leaves’ before vomiting pins and losing consciousness. In her attempts to help the mysterious man, who will soon be revealed to be the scandalous Lord Byron, she comes across a woman who will soon be her friend, a Mary Crawford who has some minor skill as a cunning woman, but who recognizes great skill in Lucy. Suddenly, Lucy is embroiled in something larger than herself, something that involves the Luddites and perhaps the entire fate of England.

It isn’t every 400+ page book that can be read in just slightly over 24 hours, even on a holiday weekend. The Twelfth Enchantment is that book. Lucy is an immediately compelling character. She is downtrodden, but determined. She is marrying Mr. Olsen because it is her only option, but she is making that conscious decision because she knows she must eat and her Uncle Lowell will not consent to feed her forever, marriage is, odd as it mean seem in Regency England, a means to a greater measure of independence, as well as escape from her past reputation.

A great character begs for a great plot, and Liss has created that in The Twelfth Enchantment as well. Lucy is thrust into a world she has never known, but one she seems to understand to a degree that surprises even her. The stakes are high, and only get higher, and Lucy must discover who she can and cannot trust in a world where hardly anyone is what they seem.

Magic and historical atmosphere abound, for an incredibly compelling read. Highly recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Older Entries

Devourer of Books

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline – Audiobook Review

If Jack’s In Love by Stephen Wetta – Book Review

Paradise Lust by Brook Wilensky-Lanford – Book Review

BOOK CLUB – The True Memoirs of Little K by Adrienne Sharp

Skating Over the Line by Joelle Charbonneau – Book Review

TSS: Red Books

Teach Your Buffalo to Play Drums – Saturday Story Spotlight

Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos – Audiobook Review

Never the Hope Itself by Gerry Hadden – Book Review

The Twelfth Enchantment by David Liss – Book Review

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