Helloooooooooooo Hob-nobbers! It’s been a busy month! From The Avengers, to the NBA playoffs, to the NHL playoffs, to the Indians dominating the AL Central, to The Avengers, there’s been all kinds of excitement in the month of May. I Hope you had an awesome memorial day and are getting ready for summer. I know I’ve hired a new personal trainer to get back my rocking beach bod.
BOOKS!!!
Well ladies and gentlemen, I finally read Ernest Cline’s book Ready Player One and let me tell you, it was a good time! While not exactly a young adult book, it was an Alex Award winner this year, which is awarded to books written for adults that can also appeal to young adults.
The book is set in the year 2044 and the world is a pretty bleak place. Famine, crime and poverty are rampant, with little hope for improvement or change. To escape from this harsh reality, people have immersed themselves in a virtual reality utopia-world called the OASIS. In this incredibly realistic alternate universe, you can go to school, shop, watch movies, work, and basically live your entire life within this computer program. When James Halliday, the creator of the OASIS dies, he hides his entire fortune within the simulation. Since he had no friends or family, he left behind clues, or “Easter eggs”, to point users in the right direction. Based on his passions, the clues required the egg hunters (gunters) to immerse themselves in his life. That means there is plenty of 80’s trivia from when he was a kid. From TV shows, to movies, to music and of course to video games, everything is fair game.
For Wade Watts (username “Parzival”) this contest has been his life obsession. Finding the fortune is his only opportunity to rise out of the murk and mire of his everyday life. As the challenge progresses, the difficulty increases. Rival gunters like Aech, Art3mis, Daito and Shoto threaten to beat him to the prize, while a huge corporation called Innovative Online Industries (IOI) threatens much, much more.
Random thoughts:
This is much cuter than Where's Waldo ever was.
Here's a pretty sweet opportunity for the trip of a lifetime.
Why carry sidewalk chalk with you everywhere you go? Just in case.
There's no such thing as too much of a good thing...
