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227. Bangkok Eight

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  John Burdett

Genre:  Fiction, Thriller, Mystery, Foreign

317 pages, published June 3, 2003

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Bangkok Eight is a mystery/thriller set in District Eight of modern day Thailand. When a charismatic Marine sergeant is murdered under a Bangkok bridge inside a bolted-shut Mercedes Benz, two of the witnesses are the only cops in the city not on the take.  After one is also murdered, his partner, Sonchai Jitpleecheep (a devout Buddhist and the son of a Thai bar girl and a long-gone Vietnam War G.I.) sets a mission for himself to track down the killer and exact revenge.

 

Quotes 

“I don’t want enlightenment, I want him. Sorry Buddha, I loved him more than you.”

 

“The sound she is making is the sound hearts make after they’re in pieces and the fragments dissolve into the overwhelming sadness of the universe. The power to hear it may be the only privilege of the thoroughly dispossessed.”

 

“We do not look on death the way you do, farang. My closest colleagues grasp my arm and one or two embrace me. No one says sorry. Would you be sorry for a sunset?”

 

“The dharma teaches us the impermanence of all phenomena, but you cannot prepare yourself for the loss of the phenomenon you love more than yourself.”

 

My Take

I read Bangkok Eight in advance of trip to Thailand to get some local color and insight before departing.  Judged by that metric, the book delivered.  While uneven and slow in parts, on the whole Bangkok Eight provides some very interesting insights into a country I knew little about.  Recommended to those who are planning a trip to Thailand.

 

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224. Celine

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Blair Norman

Author:  Peter Heller

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller

352 pages, published March 7, 2017

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Celine tells the story of Celine, a private investigator with a blue blood background who specializes in reuniting families.  After she is approached by Gabriela, a young woman who asks for help in finding out what happened to her missing father, Celine is drawn into a new mystery and a shadowy past.

 

Quotes 

“No: Human beings, by orders of magnitude, remained the most vicious animal on the planet.”

 

“A road trip frees the mind, revitalizes the spirit, and infuses the body with Dr Pepper and teriyaki jerky.”

 

“There might not be a measure of happiness left in a life, but there could be beauty and grace and endless love.”

 

“Pursuing fun is exhausting. Having fun is just fun. Much more relaxing just to do your work, don’t you think? I mean if you enjoy it.”

 

“Happiness was not a word that seemed to apply anymore, when she had lost so many close to her. There was a contentment that felt deeper, that acknowledged and accepted the quieter offerings of small joys– of love and occasional peace in a life that was full of pain.”

 

“The most indisputable beauty may be the one that people cannot ever touch. That God exists up there somehow, in the peaks and remote lakes and the sharp wind. Who knows why that picture stirs joy. It speaks directly to our impermanence and our smallness.”

 

“When we are most scared is the time to summon our clearest concentration and move forward, not back.”

 

“Dusk was moving over the water with a stillness that turned half the world to glass. The wall of mountains had gone to shadow as had the reflections at their feet. In the stillness the rings of rising trout appeared like raindrops. Slowly, in silence, the dark water tilted away from the remaining daylight.”

 

My Take

I went back and forth as to whether to give Celine 3 ½ stars or 4.  I ultimately decided on 4 based on the two things:   the finely drawn character portraits (especially of Celine) painted by author Peter Heller and his beautiful descriptions of the natural world.  The mystery at the center of this book is what weighed on the side of 3 ½.  I found the plot a bit thin and uninteresting.  However, I still really enjoyed this book and can recommend it.  Also, if you like Heller’s writing style, check out The Dog Stars, which is a great dystopian read.

 

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201. Career of Evil

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Robert Galbraith (pseudonym for J.K. Rowling)

Genre:  Fiction, Crime, Thriller, Suspense

492 pages, published October 20, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Career of Evil is the third book in the Cormoran Strike crime thriller series, written by J.K. Rowling under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.  Private Detective Strike returns with his assistant Robin Ellacott, in a mystery based around soldiers returning from war.  When a mysterious package is delivered to Robin Ellacott, she is horrified to discover that it contains a woman’s severed leg.  Strike surmises that there are four people from his past who he thinks could be responsible.  With the police focusing on the one suspect Strike does not think is the perpetrator, he and Robin take matters into their own hands, and delve into the dark and twisted worlds of the other three men.

 

Quotes 

“The story, like all the best stories, split like an amoeba, forming an endless series of new stories and opinion pieces and speculative articles, each spawning its own counter chorus.”

 

“Except that once you had broken up, it was much easier to do so again. He ought to know. How many times had he and Charlotte split? How many times had their relationship fallen to pieces, and how many times had they tried to reassemble the wreckage? There had been more cracks than substance by the end: they had lived in a spider’s web of fault lines, held together by hope, pain and delusion.”

 

“You could find beauty nearly anywhere if you stopped to look for it, but the battle to get through the days made it easy to forget that this totally cost-free luxury existed.”

 

“He possessed a finely honed sense for the strange and the wicked. He had seen things all through his childhood that other people preferred to imagine happened only in films.”

 

“Nobody who had not lived there would ever understand that London was a country unto itself. They might resent it for the fact that it held more power and money than any other British city, but they could not understand that poverty carried its own flavour there, where everything cost more, where the relentless distinctions between those who had succeeded and those who had not were constantly, painfully visible.”

 

“Being sworn at by random people was the price you paid for living in London.”

 

“Hell’s built on regret.”

 

“This, he thought, was how women roped you in. They added you to lists and forced you to confirm and commit. They impressed upon you that if you didn’t show up a plate of hot food would go begging, a gold-backed chair would remain unoccupied, a cardboard place name would sit shamefully upon a table, announcing your rudeness to the world.”

 

“Strike knew how deeply ingrained was the belief that the evil conceal their dangerous predilections for violence and domination. When they wear them like bangles for all to see, the gullible populace laughs, calls it a pose, or finds it strangely attractive.”

 

“Those who did not know the ocean well forgot its solidity, its brutality.”

 

My Take

Career of Evil is the third book in J.K. Rowling’s series based on Detective Cormoran Strike and his assistant Robin Ellacott.  I had previously enjoyed The Cuckoo’s Calling and The Silkworm, mostly because of the character development and relationship of Strike and Robin, rather than the central crime/mystery.  I found the same to be true with Career of Evil, although I found it to be a slightly lesser book than the first two installments.  However, I still recommend it and plan on reading the fourth book in the series when it is published.

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195. Moriarity

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   Michael Koss

Author:   Anthony Horowitz

Genre:  Fiction, Crime, Suspense, Mystery

285 pages, published December 9, 2014

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Moriarty is author Anthony Horowitz’s second entry into the Sherlock Holmes genre, following up on The House of Silk.   The books are not related and even have different characters.  Notably, there is no Sherlock Holmes in Moriarity other than as a remote figure.   The stand in for Holmes is Inspector Athelney Jones, a Scotland Yard detective and devoted student of Holmes’s methods, whom Conan Doyle introduced in The Sign of Four.

 

Quotes 

“Give him his due: this is a man who has always faced his fears square on, whether they be a deadly swamp adder, a hideous poison that might drive you to insanity or a hell-hound set loose on the moors. Holmes has done many things that are, frankly, baffling – but he has never run away.”

 

“Robert Pinkerton used to say that a lie was like a dead coyote. The longer you leave it, the more it smells.”

 

“It seemed that there was nothing you could find here that was not expensive and very little that was actually necessary.”

 

My Take

I would have given Moriarty three stars, but the big twist at the end deserved an extra half star.  I enjoyed this take on the Sherlock Holmes genre more than The House of Silk.  However, both pale in comparison to Magpie Murders which is the best mystery by Anthony Horowitz that I have read.  If you are a mystery devotee and a fan of Sherlock Holmes, then you will enjoy Moriarty.

 

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194. The Silkworm

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling)

Genre:  Fiction, Crime, Mystery, Thriller

455 pages, published June 24, 2014

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The second in J.K. Rowling’s Cormoran Strike’s detective series (the first was The Cuckoo’s Calling which I really enjoyed), The Silkworm picks up where the first book left off.  We rejoin Strike and his talented assistant Robin Ellacott in a new mystery.  Strike is hired by Leonora Quine to find her missing husband, novelist Owen Quine.  As Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine’s disappearance than his wife realizes. The novelist had just completed a poisonous book portraying many of his friends and acquaintances in a harsh light which means that there are plenty of motives for murder and a web of deceit and avarice for Strike to untangle and solve.

 

Quotes 

“The whole world’s writing novels, but nobody’s reading them.”                       

 

“We don’t love each other; we love the idea we have of each other. Very few humans understand this or can bear to contemplate it. They have blind faith in their own powers of creation. All love, ultimately, is self-love.”

 

“Though they spent so much time trying to make themselves beautiful, you were not supposed to admit to women that beauty mattered.”

 

“…writers are a savage breed, Mr. Strike. If you want life-long friendship and selfless camaraderie, join the army and learn to kill.  If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels.”

 

“Strike had always marvelled at the strange sanctity conferred upon celebrities by the public, even while the newspapers denigrated, hunted or hounded them. No matter how many famous people were convicted of rape or murder, still the belief persisted, almost pagan in its intensity: not him. It couldn’t be him. He’s famous.”

 

“In the depths of his tiredness, surrounded by these blank, sheep-like visages, he found himself pondering the accidents that had brought all of them into being. Every birth was, viewed properly, mere chance. With a hundred million sperm swimming blindly through the darkness, the odds against a person becoming themselves were staggering.”

 

“Keeping busy was the only answer: action had always been his drug of choice.”

 

“She emanated that aura of grandeur that replaces sexual allure in the successful older woman.”

 

“I said that the greatest female writers, with almost no exceptions, have been childless. A fact. And I have said that women generally, by virtue of their desire to mother, are incapable of the necessarily single-minded focus anyone must bring to the creation of literature, true literature. I don’t retract a word. That is a fact.”

 

My Take

The Silkworm provides a new murder mystery for Private Detective Cormoran Strike and his Assistant/Partner Robin Ellacott to solve.  After thoroughly enjoying the fantastically creative world created by J.K. Rowling in the Harry Potter series, I was happy to see that her writing talent translates to Detective/Crime Thriller genre.  While the details of the mystery are not the most gripping, her two lead characters of Cormoran and Robin are so richly drawn, nuanced, and compelling that I loved spending time with them in the gritty world of modern day London.  The solution to the book’s central mystery was almost beside the point.

 

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178. Magpie Murders

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   Michael Koss

Author:   Anthony Horowitz

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Crime, Thriller, Suspense

496 pages, published June 6, 2017

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

When editor Susan Ryeland is given the manuscript of Alan Conway’s latest mystery novel, she has no reason to think it will be much different from any of his others.  After working with the bestselling crime writer for years, she’s intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pünd, who solves mysteries that occur in quaint English villages.  In the vein of Agatha Christie, Alan’s traditional formula has proved hugely successful.  When the new book (which is included for us to read) abruptly ends before the dénouement, things start to get very interesting as we are thrust into a completely different, yet inherently related, murder mystery.

 

Quotes 

“But I’m not sure it actually matters what we read. Our lives continue along the straight lines that have been set out for us. Fiction merely allows us a glimpse of the alternative. Maybe that’s one of the reasons we enjoy it.”

 

“You must know that feeling when it’s raining outside and the heating’s on and you lose yourself, utterly, in a book. You read and you read and you feel the pages slipping through your fingers until suddenly there are fewer in your right hand than there are in your left and you want to slow down but you still hurtle on towards a conclusion you can hardly bear to discover.”

 

“Rumours and malicious gossip are like bindweed. They cannot be cut back, even with the sword of truth. I can, however, offer you this comfort. Given time, they will wither and die of their own volition.”

 

“It’s strange when you think about it. There are hundreds and hundreds of murders in books and television. It would be hard for narrative fiction to survive without them. And yet there are almost none in real life, unless you happen to live in the wrong area. Why is it that we have such a need for murder mystery? And what is it that attracts us? The crime, or the solution? Do we have some primal need of bloodshed because our own lives are so safe, so comfortable?”

 

“As far as I’m concerned, you can’t beat a good whodunnit: the twists and turns, the clues and the red herrings and then, finally, the satisfaction of having everything explained to you in a way that makes you kick yourself because you hadn’t seen it from the start.”

 

“he had expressed the belief that everything in life had a pattern and that a coincidence was simply the moment when that pattern became briefly visible.”

 

“I had chosen to play the detective—and if there is one thing that unites all the detectives I’ve ever read about, it’s their inherent loneliness. The suspects know each other. They may well be family or friends. But the detective is always the outsider. He asks the necessary questions but he doesn’t actually form a relationship with anyone. He doesn’t trust them, and they in turn are afraid of him. It’s a relationship based entirely on deception and it’s one that, ultimately, goes nowhere. Once the killer has been identified, the detective leaves and is never seen again. In fact, everyone is glad to see the back of him.”

 

“One can think of the truth as eine vertiefung – a sort of deep valley which may not be visible from a distance but which will come upon you quite suddenly. There are many ways to arrive there.”

 

“I held out the packet and suddenly we were friends. That’s one of the only good things about being a smoker these days. You’re part of a persecuted minority. You bond easily.”

 

My Take

I thoroughly enjoyed the fiendishly clever and enigmatic Magpie Murders.  In fact, for four straight hours I couldn’t put it down until I finished it.  Having previously created the Alex Rider books, the television series Foyle’s War and having written for Midsomer Murders and Poirot, Author Anthony Horowitz, OBE, is as prolific as he is talented.  If you like murder mysteries, then you must check out Magpie Murders.  Highly recommended.

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174. The Cuckoo’s Calling

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Boulder Librarian

Author:   Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Crime, Thriller, Suspense

455 pages, published April 30, 2013

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

While The Cuckoo’s Calling, a murder mystery and book one of a series featuring private detective Cormoran Strike, lists the author as Robert Galbraith, that is a pseudonym.  It is actually written by J. K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame.  The book opens with Detective Strike hired to investigate the death of supermodel Lula Landry (known to her friends as the Cuckoo) which has been ruled a suicide by the police.  After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator.  He is down to one client, has creditors on his back, has just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office.  The Landry case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers.

 

Quotes 

“Seven and a half million hearts were beating in close proximity in this heaving old city, and many, after all, would be aching far worse than his.”

 

“Other people his age had houses and washing machines, cars and television sets, furniture and gardens and mountain bikes and lawnmowers: he had four boxes of crap, and a set of matchless memories.”

 

“You’re like everyone else, Strike; you want your civil liberties when you’ve told the missus you’re at the office and you’re at a lap-dancing club, but you want twenty-four-hour surveillance on your house when someone’s trying to force your bathroom window open. Can’t have it both ways.”

 

“Humans often assumed symmetry and equality where none existed.”

 

“In the inverted food chain of fame, it was the big beasts who were stalked and hunted.”

 

“The dead could only speak through the mouths of those left behind, and through the signs they left scattered behind them.”

 

“When you are young, and beautiful, you can be very cruel.”

 

“There’s people who’d expect you to take a bullet for them and they don’t bother rememb’ring yuh name.”

 

“Couples tended to be of roughly equivalent personal attractiveness, though of course factors such as money often seemed to secure a partner of significantly better looks than oneself.”

 

“Strike was used to playing archaeologist among the ruins of people’s traumatised memories;”

 

“I am become a name.”

 

My Take

When my son Nick was in Elementary School (he is currently a college student), he and I read all of the Harry Potter books together and we both loved living in the wildly inventive and fantastic world created by J.K. Rowling.  Based in modern day London, Rowling has created a different type of world in The Cuckoo’s Calling, one that I also enjoyed inhabiting during the almost 16 hours that I spent listening to the audio book version.  The Cuckoo’s Calling has everything you could want from a mystery/suspense/thriller:  compelling and real characters, a gritty plot that hums along at a rapid clip, an inside look at a world different from the one you inhabit, plenty of red herrings to keep you guessing and some surprise twists at the end.  It’s no surprise that I’m looking forward to reading book 2 in this series.

 

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144. Room

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Emma Donoghue

Genre:  Fiction, Suspense, Thriller, Sociology

321 pages, published September 13, 2010

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Room has a very interesting premise.  Five year old Jack has spent his entire life confined to a small room along with his Ma.  They have constructed an entire world within the confines of a very limited space.  At night, Ma shuts him in wardrobe, so he can be safe when Old Nick visits.  While Room is home to Jack, to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years.  Ma has created the best life she can for Jack, but she is psychologically on the edge and knows she needs to somehow free them before she has a complete breakdown.  She devises a bold escape plan which depends on the courage of Jack.  However, being free from Room is only the beginning of Ma’s struggle.

 

Quotes

“So they’re fake?” “Stories are a different kind of true.”

 

“Really, a novel does not exist, does not happen, until readers pour their own lives into it.”

 

“Jack. He’d never give us a phone, or a window. “Ma takes my thumbs and squeezes them. “We are people in a book, and he wont let anybody else read it.”

 

“Scared is what you’re feeling. Brave is what you’re doing.  “Huh?” “Scaredybrave.” “Scave.”

Word sandwiches always make her laugh but I wasn’t being funny.”

 

“People don’t always want to be with people. It gets tiring.”

 

“I bang my head on a faucet. “Careful.” Why do persons only say that after the hurt?”

 

“I think the sea’s just rain and salt.”

“Ever taste a tear?” asks Grandma.

“Yeah.”

“Well, that’s the same as the sea.”

I still don’t want to walk in it if it’s tears.”

 

“It’s called mind over matter. If we don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

 

“The world is always changing brightness and hotness and soundness, I never know how it’s going to be the next minute.”

 

“[E]verywhere I’m looking at kids, adults mostly don’t seem to like them, not even the parents do. They call the kids gorgeous and so cute, they make the kids do the thing all over again so they can take a photo, but they don’t want to actually play with them, they’d rather drink coffee talking to other adults. Sometimes there’s a small kid crying and the Ma of it doesn’t even hear.”

 

“Sometimes when persons say definitely it sounds actually less true.”

 

“In Room me and Ma had time for everything. I guess the time gets spread very thin like butter all over the world, the roads and houses and playgrounds and stores, so there’s only a little smear of time on each place, then everyone has to hurry on to the next bit….”

 

My Take

I listened to Room as an audio book and was captivated by the story.  Told from the perspective of a five year old boy who has never been outside a small room, Donahue has created an entire new world, creatively filled with routines and make believe devised by Ma to keep her and Jack sane and healthy,  inside that room.  Just as interesting is the escape plot hatched by Ma and Ma and Jack’s response to the outside world once they do escape.  It is interesting how Jack responds to all of the things we take for granted and compelling to see how Ma struggles to integrate back into a world she hasn’t lived in for more than seven years.  Room demonstrates the resilience of the human spirit and the extraordinary bond between a mother and her child as Ma and Jack move from one world to another.

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142. The Good Girl

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Mary Kubika

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense

352 pages, published July 29, 2014

Reading Format:  Hoopla Audio Book

 

Summary

The Good Girl is a mystery/thriller with a big twist at the end.  One night, Mia Dennett enters a bar to meet her boyfriend.  When he doesn’t show, she makes a spur of the moment decision to leave with an enigmatic stranger.  At first Colin Thatcher seems like a safe one-night stand.  However, following Colin home will turn out to be the worst mistake of Mia’s life.

 

Quotes

“I love the quietness of the library, the gateway to knowledge, to the French language and medieval history and hydraulic engineering and fairy tales, learning in a very primitive form: books, something that’s quickly giving way to modern technology.”

 

“The goal with teenagers is simply getting through it alive, with no permanent damage.”

 

“Teenagers believe they’re invincible—nothing bad can happen. It isn’t until later that we realize that bad things do, in fact, happen.”

 

“As it was, being a bad mother was child’s play compared to being a good mother, which was an incessant struggle, a lose-lose situation 24 hours a day; long after the kids were in bed the torment of what I did or didn’t do during those hours we were trapped together would scourge my soul.”

 

“What did you want?” she asks. What I wanted was a dad. Someone to take care of my mother and me, so I didn’t have to do it myself. But what I tell her is Atari.”

 

“Having a best friend is a wonderful thing. There needs be no proofreading, no refinement, of the comments that come from my head.”

 

My Take

I enjoyed listening to The Good Girl, but didn’t love the book.  Not as gripping as Gone Girl, but The Good Girl is still worth a read, especially if you like the suspense/thriller genre.  It will be interesting to see what they do with the film version.

 

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138. Ready Player One

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Ernest Cline

Genre:  Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopia, Young Adult, Thriller

374 pages, published August 16, 2011

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Ready Player One takes place in the year 2044.  The earth is mostly a wasteland with most residents choosing to live in the virtual reality of the OASIS.  Main character Wade Watts has devoted his life to understanding the intricacies hidden inside this alternate world’s digital borders.  When it is announced that James Halliday, the recently deceased creator of the OASIS, has left his vast fortune to the first person to solve a series of puzzles hidden in the OASIS, Wade and a group of compatriots take up the challenge and start on their quest.

 

Quotes

“The OASIS lets you be whoever you want to be. That’s why everyone is addicted to it.”

 

“What about The Simpsons, you ask? I knew more about Springfield than I knew about my own city.”

 

“Sitting alone in the dark, watching the show on my laptop, I always found myself imagining that I lived in that warm, well-lit house, and that those smiling, understanding people were my family. That there was nothing so wrong in the world that we couldn’t sort it out by the end of a single half-hour episode (or maybe a two-parter, if it was something really serious).”

 

“A recluse. A pale-skinned pop culture–obsessed geek. An agoraphobic shut-in, with no real friends, family, or genuine human contact. I was just another sad, lost, lonely soul, wasting his life on a glorified videogame. But not in the OASIS. In there, I was the great Parzival. World-famous gunter and international celebrity. People asked for my autograph. I had a fan club. Several, actually. I was recognized everywhere I went (but only when I wanted to be). I was paid to endorse products. People admired and looked up to me. I got invited to the most exclusive parties. I went to all the hippest clubs and never had to wait in line. I was a pop-culture icon, a VR rock star. And, in gunter circles, I was a legend. Nay, a god.”

 

“Students weren’t allowed to use their avatar names while they were at school. This was to prevent teachers from having to say ridiculous things like “Pimp Grease, please pay attention!” or “BigWang69, would you stand up and give us your book report?”

 

“In Marie’s opinion, the OASIS was the best thing that had ever happened to both women and people of color. From the very start, Marie had used a white male avatar to conduct all of her online business, because of the marked difference it made in how she was treated and the opportunities she was given.”

 

“From then on, my computer monitored my vital signs and kept track of exactly how many calories I burned during the course of each day. If I didn’t meet my daily exercise requirements, the system prevented me from logging into my OASIS account. This meant that I couldn’t go to work, continue my quest, or, in effect, live my life. Once the lockout was engaged, you couldn’t disable it for two months. And the software was bound to my OASIS account, so I couldn’t just buy a new computer or go rent a booth in some public OASIS café. If I wanted to log in, I had no choice but to exercise first. This proved to be the only motivation I needed. The lockout software also monitored my dietary intake. Each day I was allowed to select meals from a preset menu of healthy, low-calorie foods. The software would order the food for me online and it would be delivered to my door. Since I never left my apartment, it was easy for the program to keep track of everything I ate. If I ordered additional food on my own, it would increase the amount of exercise I had to do each day, to offset my additional calorie intake. This was some sadistic software. But it worked. The pounds began to melt off, and after a few months, I was in near-perfect health. For the first time in my life I had a flat stomach, and muscles. I also had twice the energy, and I got sick a lot less frequently. When the two months ended and I was finally given the option to disable the fitness lockout, I decided to keep it in place. Now, exercising was a part of my daily ritual.”

 

“as terrifying and painful as reality can be, it’s also the only place where you can find true happiness.” 

 

“Listen,” he said, adopting a confidential tone. “I need to tell you one last thing before I go. Something I didn’t figure out for myself until it was already too late.” He led me over to the window and motioned out at the landscape stretching out beyond it. “I created the OASIS because I never felt at home in the real world. I didn’t know how to connect with the people there. I was afraid, for all of my life. Right up until I knew it was ending. That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be, it’s also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real. Do you understand?” “Yes,” I said. “I think I do.” “Good,” he said, giving me a wink. “Don’t make the same mistake I did. Don’t hide in here forever.”

 

“Other virtual worlds soon followed suit, from the Metaverse to the Matrix. The Firefly universe was anchored in a sector adjacent to the Star Wars galaxy, with a detailed re-creation of the Star Trek universe in the sector adjacent to that. Users could now teleport back and forth between their favorite fictional worlds. Middle Earth. Vulcan. Pern. Arrakis. Magrathea. Discworld, Mid-World, Riverworld, Ringworld. Worlds upon worlds.”

 

“As soon as my log-in sequence completed, a window popped up on my display, informing me that today was an election day. Now that I was eighteen, I could vote, in both the OASIS elections and the elections for U.S. government officials. I didn’t bother with the latter, because I didn’t see the point. The once-great country into which I’d been born now resembled its former self in name only. It didn’t matter who was in charge. Those people were rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic and everyone knew it. Besides, now that everyone could vote from home, via the OASIS, the only people who could get elected were movie stars, reality TV personalities, or radical televangelists.”

 

My Take

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the audio book verison of Ready Player One.  As someone who enjoys reading science fiction and dystopian novels, I appreciate the fascinating world inside the alternative virtual reality of the OASIS created by the very creative Ernest Cline, a writer who know how to keep a story humming along.  It also didn’t hurt that Ready Player One struck a nostalgia nerve with its many references to the video games and movies of my youth.   Time will tell if our future looks like the VR world of the OASIS, but it is interesting to ponder the possibility in the meantime.

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