Reading Player One

By Patrick L.

Ernest Cline's book, Ready Player One, is a book about 80's and 90's culture.  Wade Watts, the protagonist, and every other person on the planet plays a virtual reality game called OASIS. The creator of the game has died and left an over five million dollar reward for whoever can solve his puzzles in the game. Society has let the world almost die for five years just to try to find this treasure.

Wade Watts is a poor teen, and is going through high school in the OASIS. After his parents died, he is left to live with his abusive aunt. the only refuge he has away from her is a van covered by rubble. In this van, he watched, read, and played everything in 80's and 90's culture. Everything from watching Star Wars to playing Adventure on the Atari 2600.

After five years of searching, most people have just given up on trying to find this treasure and just claimed it to be a hoax. Not Wade and his friends though, they keep searching to get that treasure. The book follows his exploits and genius thinking to find the treasure.  

Ernest Cline is a writer that always puts 80's and 90's stuff in his writing.  He has written two other books to this one, Armada: a Novel and The Importance of Being Ernest

This is the first of the Ernest Cline books I've read and this won't be the last. This was his first book and it was a good choice to start with.

Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline, Random House, August 2011, 372 pages