All About Books with Adrianne

Award Winning Novel Review

Cline, E. (2011). Ready player one. New York: Crown Publishers.

If you are a child of the 80's and you love science fiction/fantasy, Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is the book for you. The book is set in the year 2044 where life as we know it now does not exist. Unless you are super rich, reality is pretty bleak. The majority of people on earth live their lives on the Internet in the OASIS. The OASIS is a massive virtual utopia where people can be anything that they want to be. The creator of OASIS, James Halliday, was a teenager during the 1980's and a lot of OASIS is based on books, bands, video games, movies and TV of that time period. Upon his death Halliday bequeaths his entire fortune (worth billions) to the person who can solve a series of puzzles. People try for years to figure out the puzzle. Wade, the main character of the story solves the first puzzle. Who knew that this would lead to the death of his aunt, put him on the run for his life, and let him meet the person that he would eventually fall in love with?

I would recommend Ready Player One to students 15 and older. Teenagers who love video games to the point they find it hard to deal with the outside world would enjoy this book.There are a lot of references to the decade of the 1980's which made the book enjoyable for me, but these references may turn off others who are not as familiar with that time in history. Science fiction/fantasy lovers will enjoy the depth the author goes into describing the virtual world that most of the population uses as a way to avoid the dismal reality that surrounds them. This is Ernest Cline's first novel. He wrote a screenplay called Fanboys that became a cult hit. I look forward to reading more from Ernest Cline.

2012 Alex Award Winner

The Alex Awards are presented yearly to 10 adult books that have a special appeal to young adults. Titles for each year are chosen from books published the previous year. The awards are given by the American Library Association (ALA). It began in 1998 and became official in 2002.

The award is named for Margaret A. Edwards. She worked for many years at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore. She was called Alex by friends.

Other Alex Award winners for 2012