Ready Player One

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, Narrated by Will Wheaton

Goodreads rating: 4 stars

Narrator: 4 stars

My boyfriend and I listened to this book together on the way to Mississippi from good Ol West Texas during the Thanksgiving holiday. It is not typically a book I would read, or be interested in, (Between what he had said about the book and others who have heard about it, I did ultimately put it on my TBR list for a later date,) but my boyfriend had been wanting to listen to it (he is not big on any books really), so I decided to listen with him.

I want to admit, the entire time I was listening, I kept thinking about Sheldon Cooper and Will Wheaton’s issues on Big Bang Theory.

This book, in case you didn’t already know, is about video games. And not just any video game, but a video game that pretty much took over Real Life. There were actual jobs that people could get in the Oasis video game, and when the work day was over, they simply left the simulation. When the game’s creator died, he left a challenge for the players, a way to inherit EVERYTHING he owned. This story was about the Main Character, Wade Watts’ journey through the game to his ultimate winning of the game (no this is not a spoiler, he even talks about it in the beginning of the book).

Even though I knew Watts would win, I found myself anxious in some parts because it just didn’t seem probable for him to win. Watts had everything going against him. Including multiple near death experiences.

I can’t really compare this book to anything else I have ever read, because I haven’t read anything quite like it. I enjoy Science Fiction/Dystopian novels from time to time, most are usually overplayed, but this one is completely different. I liked that it is a gamer’s dystopian and not just the normal run of the mill rundown country that destroyed itself. Yes, the world in 2045 is not the same we know today, but it is still functioning in some capacity. I am not much into video games, but I probably would have gotten into this hoopla found in Oasis. Sounds like my kind of game!

I don’t want to go much further into a review, one, I really don’t feel like I am capable of giving away much more than what I have due to possible spoilers; two, because I have never read this kind of book before, I am not sure how to address my feelings of the overall book. I enjoyed the book. I feel it deserves the rating provide by myself, but also the overall rating it has on Goodreads as well. I think Wheaton did a great job narrating it, made it worthwhile. I have been on the fence about another book Wheaton narrated, but now that I have heard his skills, I will give other books narrated by him a try.

Ultimately, it comes down to this. I enjoyed listening to this book with my boyfriend while we made the 30 hour round trip drive. It combined both of our loves, my love of reading, and his love of video games. It was something we could do together and talk about.