The 80’s | Book Chatter

Ready Player One
By Ernest Cline
(Crown, Hardcover, 9780307887436, August 2011, 384pp.)

The Short of It:

An entertaining romp down memory lane, but in the end its potential for “geektastic-ness” was never fully realized.

The Rest of It:

It’s the year 2044 and the real world is apparently a place where no one wishes to live. Instead, everyone chooses to live in the OASIS, a virtual world created by James Halliday. Users don their gear, sit in their Haptic chairs and then surround themselves with valuable artifacts to be used in the game. Their avatars are everything as they choose to live their lives behind these figures.

Wade Watts is one of those people. He’s a kid, living with an Aunt who really doesn’t want him there and he has no real-life friends and only a few virtual ones, but what he does have is skill. This comes in handy when Halliday leaves his entire fortune to the person who can solve the OASIS riddle that he’s left behind.

What worked for me, are the numerous references to 80’s pop-culture. I am an 80’s girl, through and through so I enjoyed many of the references, but this book tried to be too many things and in the end it was completely consumed by the game itself.

I never considered myself a gamer, but when I was in middle school, I spent a good chunk of time playing Pac -Man, Galaga, and let’s not forget Frogger. So the fact that gaming was front and center, really wasn’t the issue here, to me, it had to do with balance or specifically the lack of it.

I didn’t really like any of the characters and they all seemed a bit flat. Perhaps much of that is due to the fact that many of their true identities are not revealed until the end of the book. Instead, we are introduced to their avatars which to me, left a lot to be desired.

For this book to have worked for me, I needed more of Wade outside of his avatar, a less predictable story and a little less of the gaming re-hash that ensued every time Wade had to do battle with his opponent via an 80’s video game.

To really understand how I felt about the book, click here.

Source: Borrowed

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You Couldn’t Ignore Me If You Tried
By Susannah Gora
(Three Rivers Press, Paperback, 9780307716606, 384pp, Feb 2011)

The Short of It:

If you watch Sixteen Candles EVERY time it’s on, or if you’ve ever wished Duckie Dale ended up with Andie at the end of Pretty In Pink, then this is the book for you.

The Rest Of It:

I love this book. I bought it over a year ago for my Kindle and allowed myself to read tiny bits of it between basketball practice, tennis lessons and doctor’s appointments. It provided me with a year’s worth of joy. What IS it about the 80’s anyway? Is that decade particularly special, or is it just special to me because those were my high school years? I wonder sometimes.

Gora covers all the movies of that time…the Brat Pack films that include Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club, just to name a few. With interviews of the key players and inside scoops on casting…You Couldn’t Ignore Me If You Tried is basically a touching collection of memories. These young actors grew up to depict the characters of our youth, yet the issues they dealt with were authentic and often issues that they were struggling with in real life. The struggle for acceptance, the awkwardness, the angst… it’s all here.

What I especially love about this book is that Gora gives you all the behind-the-scenes info on casting, who was seeing who, how the directors and producers influenced these actors on a daily basis, etc. Just the bits on casting alone were fascinating. There was so much going on with these actors that it’s hard to imagine that the movies were ever made!

After each chapter, I found myself pulling out all of my DVDs and loading up my iPod with songs of that time. I just can’t say enough about the book. If you loved the 80’s, you simply have to read it. I will leave you with one of my favorite clips from Pretty in Pink. Click here to view it.

Source: Purchased