Ready Player One Review

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline follows the teenage Wade Watts in the year 2044. Even though the story takes place in the future it primarily deals with the past; the 1980s. Feel free to read on, I will not include any spoilers. Everything so far is found on the back cover or in the first chapter.

The story is addicting. Cline is good at giving little pieces along the way that keep you reading. I have read the book every chance I can get. The book is 400 pages long and keeps you engaged the whole way!

The story revolves around the future dystopian society that the earth has turned into, due to many of the current issues: climate change, energy crisis, burning fossil fuels, wealth inequality, and more. A dystopian society is a horrible society that is the opposite of what we strive for. It can be thought of as the opposite of a Utopian society, which is perfect. Dystopian stories have been popular for a few years now. Think of the Hunger Games, The Giver, Divergent series, and The Road to name a few.

In the dystopian society there exists a utopian escape, the massive multiplayer online (MMO) game that everyone plays OASIS. The creator of OASIS created a competition before he died. Whoever finds the clues hidden in the game will inherit the fortune left after his death. For people in a dystopian society, this is their only chance to move up in life.

Wade is one of millions of players looking for the clues to the contest. He is an average nerd with a good heart living in a terrible situation, like most of humanity. The 1980s play a big part because the inventor of OASIS grew up in the 80s and that is the only hint available for the clues. They discuss 80s culture, music, movies, trends, and everything else. The 80s are making a comeback, if not in the real world definitely in literature and television.

If you are on the fence about the story, definitely check it out! You will find something to love in either Wade, his experience, the 80s, or nerd culture. There is also word that this will be made into a major motion picture directed by Steven Spielberg.

One of the best books of 2016. One of the hardest books to put down I have read in a long time. Download a sample and get hooked.



The book is available in paperback, audio book, and on your kindle.

Ready Player One (Kindle Edition)

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The Song of the Lark

Song of the Lark

By Willa Cather

Published 1915

Free on Kindle

I previously wrote about another novel by Willa Cather (1873-1947), The Professor’s House, and cover her history a bit more in that one. She is one of the best American novelists, considered in the top 10 and won the Pulitzer Prize for  One of Ours in 1922, a novel set in World War 1.

The Song of the Lark was written in 1915 and the story takes place in 1890s Colorado. The area is still being settled and there are many different groups of people living together during the frontier days. The story follows a young musician, Thea Kronberg, as she develops as an artists.

Novels that follow a character from early youth to adulthood are called Bildungsroman, a German term meaning a “novel of education.” Other notable Bildungsromans are A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and my favorite novel Of Human Bondage. See my post.

I have started work on my Master’s Thesis and I am writing about The Song of the Lark using a postcolonial theory lens to analyze characters. The idea for this paper came about because of readings I was doing for an American literature class on Modernism. Thats the early 20th century. I was reading the book when I started to get a real positive portrayal of the Mexican characters. This stood out because I had finished a previous novel, Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, where the Mexican characters were portrayed or described very negatively. I kept reading the novel and got a more complex approach, in that some of the white characters insult the Mexican characters and other are looked down upon for being friends with them. I thought that Cather was doing something interesting with the race relations in the novel and wanted to explore that a bit more.  I wanted to do an analysis of the characters so that I could understand more about what was going on with them and what Cather was saying implicitly and through the narration.

Cather is a very skilled writer and can put two sentences together to give meaning and complicate ideas without having to say anything. She did not want to be limited in her interpretation so she leaves things unsaid, using silence to leave open the many possible interpretations of the text.

The Song of the Lark is the latest novel I have read by Cather and is currently my favorite. This is the second book in her “Prairie Trilogy,” following O Pioneers! and preceding My Antonia. Both of which are free in ebook. Download some samples and start reading some of the best American Literature.

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