Ready Player One

Ready Player One

by Ernest Cline

narrated by Wil Wheaton

Ⓟ 2011, Random House Audio

15.75 hours

Wade Owen Watts is a teenaged gamer escaping the reality of life in the stacks (RVs and trailers stacked one atop the other in towers) in Oklahoma City. The year is 2044 and it's the third decade of The Great Recession in America. Infrastructure has deteriorated and people look to the cost-efficient technology of virtual reality for entertainment and education. In fact, the "massively multi-player online virtual reality reality game" of OASIS has become for many, the preferred existence: a place where you can create a better version of yourself and live a more interesting life.

"Parzival" is Wade Watts' avatar in OASIS and Parzival is playing a contest within the realms of OASIS, a game within the game wherein the objective is to locate three keys that will ultimately lead to an Easter egg. The winner of this contest will inherit Jame Halliday's (co-creator of OASIS) fortune and interest in G.S.S. (Gregarious Simulation Systems) - the company that has top administrative control of OASIS. The power and revenue of this fortune and interest are immense and so the competition for each of the keys and the Easter Egg is stiff. Wade/Parzival must battle IOI, a mega-corp with deep resources, both in OASIS and IRL for the Easter Egg.

Ready Player One is the ultimate story about quest gaming and what makes it more fun is that OASIS is an homage to the 1980s - a time when computer generated gaming starting elbowing out the pinball machines in arcades. There are references to the arcade games themselves (in fact Parzival plays them - in effect becoming an uber meta-gamer in that he's playing a game within a game within a game that has IRL consequences) as well a number of other cultural references from the eighties. If you're not a gamer or not familiar with the references, you might feel like you're missing something; but most of it is sufficiently explained to ameliorate any bewilderment; but if you are familiar with gaming and/or remember the eighties, Ready Player One flows without seeming didactic.

Wil Wheaton, the eighties icon known as the actor who played Wesley Crusher in the television series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, is the narrator for Ready Player One; and he was the perfect choice. He sounds like a young adult and handles the all the time-cultural references easily and naturally. In another very cool meta experience, Wil Wheaton's name occurs within the story :-)

Ready Player One is a fun, clever story and the audio is an equally fun and clever production in its choice of narrator.

An image I created that mentions some of the eighties references in Ready Player One

The font is "Press Start 2P"

Are you old enough to remember the '80s?

Were you a gamer? What games did you play?

I was a teen during the eighties and I played some arcade and console games. At the arcades, I played Pac-Man, Ms Pac-Man (table top), Asteroids, Galaga, Centipede and Millipede. At home I had a Fairchild Channel F console which played cartridges. I distinctly remember a tank game, Desert Fox! My sister got an Atari 2600 and we played Pac Man, Asteroids and Missile Command. I remember my-then BFF, "A" (of Amityville Horror fame) had Pong! Do you remember the gaming wars? Atari vs Intellivision!

Other Stuff:

I purchased a digital dnload copy of this book through weread4you.com. I receive no monies, goods or services in exchange for reviewing the product and/or mentioning any of the persons or companies that are or may be implied in this post (including but not limited toauthors, narrators, publishers, vendors, hosts of challenges and/or challenges.)

The Year of the Flood

The Year of the Flood

by Margaret Atwood

narrated by Bernadette Dunne, Katie McNichol and Mark Bramhall;

featuring music and lyrics by Margaret Atwood and performed by Orville Stoeber

Ⓟ 2009, Random House Audio

14.00 hours

The Year of the Flood is the second title in the MaddAddam Trilogy and a companion piece to Oryx and Crake. The story take place in the year 2050 in which the waterless flood, a viral pandemic, depopulates most of the earth. Toby, an older woman who had, years earlier, been rescued by the Gardeners - a granola-crunchy survivalists group, finds herself holed up in an organic spa when the human apocalypse hits; Ren, a young woman and erstwhile Gardener who came from one of the Helthwyzer compounds - a community fully dependent on science and technology, is quarantined in a room in a strip club and; Adam One, the leader of The Gardeners, finds himself expelled from his Eden - ironically the fringe lifestyle of his cult. Margaret Atwater creates characters with a past and a present in an uncertain future.

The characters' lives are intertwined with each other and with characters from Oryx and Crake, though the treatment of the three major protagonists in The Year of the Flood are unequal. The lives of Toby and Ren are portrayed as dynamic as each of them attempts to move forwards and/or onwards in the aftermath of the human apocalypse and their pasts; but the life of Adam One is portrayed statically: his struggles are mainly philosophical as he tries to marry his suspect theology with reality. There are hints in his sermons as to what is going on in his life; but he is not grounded in the reality of the present the way the other characters are. His past is limited to the arc of the novel. The question becomes, do each or any of them have what it takes to move beyond the immediacy of the present and into the future? Toby is older, wiser and more experienced than Ren; but she is too old to procreate. Ren is young, fertile optimistic; but soft and still egocentric enough to place her feelings before pragmatic considerations. Adam One is strong in his convictions; but ultimately at what cost? What if being bigger, faster, stronger and smarter aren't co-equal in the equation for survival? Which variable(s) will save you over the others? And what if it's a faulty equation to begin with?

The Year of the Flood expands the world that was introduced in Oryx and Crake and there are crossovers that tie up some loose ends from the first book in the MaddAddam trilogy (Yes! We do discover what The Snowman did at the end of O&C!) There is a satisfying sense of closure at the end of TYOTF; though the novel as a whole didn't "pop" the way Oryx and Crake did. Perhaps it is because the novelty of the world that Margret Atwood first introduced, one of color and exotic forms wore off, only to be replaced my images of squalor. Or maybe it was the narration.

Bernadette Dunne, Katie McNicol and Mark Bramhall narrate from the point-of-perspectives of Toby, Ren and Adam One respectively. Bernadette Dunne gives a solid performance, though one wonders if a couple of the characters wouldn't have benefited from some ethnic flavor. Katie McNicols shines as a young woman undaunted, though unprepared for the future ahead; but her voicing of other characters seems underdeveloped (e.g. her voice for Zeb seemed at odds with the physical descriptions of him - a bear-like Russian. He came across as sounding not like a bear-like Russian at all.) Mark Bramhall took all his textual cues, performing the role of Adam One with decreasing optimism and certainty; but often sounded more like a charlatan than a charismatic guru. There is performed music after the Adam One sermons, performed by Orville Stoeber. The voices of Mark Bramhall and Orville Stoeber are a close match so there is a sense of continuity; but the music overall is of a 1970's Church folk style, which if you're not keen on it, can be irritating. The casting was well-conceived; but somehow each of the narrators fell a little short of completely inhabiting their respective characters. The result is that the listener is reminded that they are listening to a narrative, not experiencing the story.

Not withstanding the narration and the sense that one could stop with the MaddAddam books now, it should be interesting to see where Margaret Atwood takes us in the final installment.

Other Stuff: The Year of the Flood (by Margaret Atwood; narrated by Bernadette Dunne, Katie McNichol and Mark Bramhall; featuring music and lyrics written by Margaret Atwood and performed by Orville Stoeber) qualifies for:

• The 2012 Audio Book Challenge hosted by @teresasreading at Teresa's Reading Corner and;
• The What's in a Name? Challenge #5 hosted by @BethFishReads at Beth Fish Reads as "a book with something you'd find on a calender ("Year.")

I borrowed a library CD edition of The Year of the Flood (by Margaret Atwood; narrated by Bernadette Dunne, Katie McNichol and Mark Bramhall; featuring music and lyrics written by Margaret Atwood and performed by Orville Stoeber) from The Ashland Library (Jackson County Library System in Southern Oregon.) I receive no monies, goods or services in exchange for reviewing the product and/or mentioning any of the persons, companies or organizations that are or may be implied in this post.

When She Woke

When She Woke
by Hillary Jordan
narrated by Heather Corrigan
Ⓟ 2011, HighBridge Audio
10.80 hours

Set in the not-to-distant future and in a society that has sought to redress its issues with religious fundamentalism, When She Woke features Hannah Payne, a young woman convicted of aborting her unborn child. She is sentenced to sixteen years living as a red Chrome, meaning that she has been injected with a virus that turns her skin blood red. Its plot line is very similar to that of The Scarlet Letter (by Nathaniel Hawthorne) and might be considered a homage to the Classic and/or a re-imagining of the tale from the woman's (Hester Prynne as Hannah Payne) point of view.

Hillary Jordan has taken care to cast her characters in a realistic and human way. Hannah Payne expresses her doubts, angers, insecurities and new convictions in way that is believable. The reader may not find her logic unassailable; but her actions and new awareness bear the pedigree of experience. Aiden Dale, as the modern iteration of Hawthorne's Arthur Dimmesdale, is a morally complex man drawn with true pathos and much less of a villain for his cowardice than the original. Jordan has fleshed out the emotional landscape of this story without excessive melodrama and provided a way to connect with the Classic. That is not to say that the story doesn't stand well on its own, because it does. Without having read The Scarlet Letter, a reader would be interested in the characters' psychological development and perhaps question his or her own convictions as they travel with Hannah on her literal and interior journey:

"Was that all her religious beliefs had ever been then, a set of precepts so deeply inculcated in her that they became automatic, even instinctive? Hear the word God, think He. See the misery of humankind, blame Eve. Obey your parents, be a good girl, vote Trinity Party, never sit with your legs apart. Don't question, just do as you're told."

What might give a reader pause is that there is a fine line between honoring a Classic such as The Scarlet Letter and, being unoriginal. The Scarlet Letter certainly provided the creative impetus for Ms Jordan; and despite her claims that The Handmaid's Tale (by Margaret Atwood) was not an influence, the comparisons are inescapable. The influence of The Handmaid's Tale may not have been direct, but Ms Jordan's invites the comparison by creating scenes that are strikingly similar in tone and substance to Ms Atwood's own dystopian novel. Drawing so heavily upon the Classic, and coincidentally upon Ms Atwwod's work, for plot points and character creation may give credence to the charge that Ms Jordan may have borrowed too heavily. Still, what Hillary Jordan brought to the table was a fresh, credible voice to the plight of a woman caught between a rock and a hard place.
Heather Corrigan is renders the text very nicely. The listener will be easily able to discern between interior thought and dialogue and, the mood(s) of the protagonist, Hannah Payne, from whose POV the story is told. Though Heather Corrigan sounds younger than the protagonist, her skill set in bringing Hannah to life is not to be denied. One minor quibble is that the word is "Chrome," not "Crone." Once you know what the word is supposed to be, it's all good :-)

See also:The Scarlet Letter (by Nathanial Hawthorne)
The Handmaid's Tale (by Margaret Atwood)

Other Stuff: When She Woke (by Hillary Jordan; narrated by Heather Corrigan) qualifies for:

• The 2012 Audio Book Challenge hosted by @teresasreading at Teresa's Reading Corner

I purchased and dnloaded a copy of When She Woke (by Hillary Jordan; narrated Heather Corrigan) from weread4you.com. I receive no monies, goods or services in exchange for reviewing the product and/or mentioning any of the persons or companies that are or may be implied in this post.

The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid's Tale was originally published in 1985.
This eBook edition was purchased and dnloaded in December, 2011






Offred, once a citizen in the state of Massachusetts in the U.S., is now a Handmaid in the early days of the Republic of Gilead (late twentieth century,) a totalitarian state predicated on religious fundamentalism as a recourse to the moral decay and societal upheaval, including declining birth rates, in the former democracy. Gilead, in addressing the need for more well-baby births, creates and dictates the role of the Handmaid, a surrogate mother for infertile couples, via a literal and patriarchal reading of Genesis 30: 1-3:

And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister and said unto Jacob, Give me children or else I die. And Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel; and he said, Am I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees,* that I may also have children by her.

*Italics mine

Offred, a fertile woman, is assigned the role of a Handmaid; but the role, as prescribed by the Genesis passage, also entails the presence of both the wife and the Handmaid during attempts at conception; and in the event of a birth of a child, the wife plays the role of the birth mother in terms of societal recognition and esteem.

This return to Biblical precepts and melding them into intransigent law and an absolutist government creates an atmosphere of awkwardness, fear and suspicion, thereby sacrificing wisdom and compassion on a metaphorical altar to the God who needs to be appeased. As primitive a reaction to to societal misfortune as this is, it is an enduring practice as demonstrated by current events and Margaret Atwood's vision of a very possible future.


The Handmaid's Tale is a neat trick of remembering our future. By leaving the actual time unspecified, grounding the vision of the dystopian future in realistic terms (there are cars, guns and surveillance, but no UFOs, intergalactic wars or time travel), having some of her predictions come true (ATM cards, the concretization of a Middle East country as a security threat as opposed to the Soviet Union) and, adding an epilogue that provides "historical" perspective, Atwood creates a work of speculative fiction that has currency in the present as a cautionary tale against the combination of religious fundamentalism and government, the ease with which citizens can be marginalized and, how good intentions and technology can work against the society it was intended to help. Offred chronicles her life as a Handmaid (a birth mother for infertile couples) in the optimism that there will be a future audience, that her story will be a matter of future history from which something may be learned, if nothing else, "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum."


See also:
The Scarlet Letter (by Nathanial Hawthorne) - a review of the print edition of the Classic Flashback Friday: 1984 (by George Orwell; narrated by Simon Prebble) - a mini-review of the audiobook


Other Stuff: I purchased and dnloaded a copy of The Handmaid's Tale (by Margaret Atwood) from Barnes & Noble/nook. I receive no monies, goods or services in exhange for reviewing the product and/or mentioning any of the persons or companies that are or may be implied in this post.

A Study in Emerald

A Study in Emerald

by Neil Gaiman

narrated by Neil Gaiman

.80 hours

Harper Audio

This is a short mystery story set in London, 1881, told from the point of view of Retired Major S___ M____ - the friend, roommate and recruited sidekick of the unnamed Consulting Detective featured in this little thriller. The premise of the story is that a stabbed corpse has been discovered in Shoreditch and, the homicide is a matter of national security as the deceased was apparently a family member and friend of Queen Victoria. [How this is a matter of national security and not just embarrassment is beyond me, but the listener is expected to just roll with it...] The whole of the mystery is really a pretense by which Neil Gaiman gets to show off his character creations, Gothic atmospherics and, his own unique strangeness. The fact that the listener of this otherwise-whodunnit is never given the advantage of full disclosure of the evidence is nearly obscured by the smoke-and-mirrors of interstitial "ads," intimations that the Royal family might be something-other-than-human and, the dynamics between the competing intellects of the characters. In and of itself, A Study in Emerald isn't much in terms of a mystery; but it could more than ably serve as the opening chapter to a full-fledged novel. The tease of an arch-nemesis in the making is very titillating. Neil Gaiman narrates this short and his voice is appropriately clear, resonate, deep and drippy [reminds me of Alan Rickman, the actor.]

Recommendation: I'm not so sure that A Study in Emerald is a piece that would have you craving for more Neil Gaiman; but it is an entertaining diversion for about 45 minutes. And heck, it's free! Yes, A Study in Emerald is a free dnload from audible.com! You can also get the print copy free from Neil Gaiman's web-site too. Neil Gaiman has a rather controversial idea as to the efficacy of free and pirated material on the internet:

According to my notes for the What's in a Name? Challenge, A Study in Emerald qualifies as "a boom with a germ/jewlry in the title."