Iggy's Book Nook

[Martin]

As for Player, just so you know, it REALLY picks up when Wade finds the first key.

[BillyG]

I loved Snow Crash. I knew nothing about it, or Stephenson, and only picked it up based on the strength of Reamde. It felt like the prequel to Blade Runner in a lot of ways.

[Martin]

I'll have to read The Diamond Age.

[IggytheBorg]

Just finished the 3d Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser book, Swords in the Mist. Likerd this one, a collection of one short novella and several much shorter stories, a lot better than the last one, which was 2 novellas crammed into one book. I like the pacing of genuine short stories vs. novellas for these guys. I don't know if they have the character wheewithal (or Lieber the authorial chops, frankly) to make it thru book length adventures as a general matter w/o becoming kind of tedious. But in short tale form, they shine like the jewels in the eyes of the Gods OF Lankhmar. Some of these tales were a little abrupt, but the swashbuckling, Gary Gygax-influencing goodness present in any Lankhmar collection was present in spades. Makes for an excellent light, break up the horror monotony read. Very glad there's 4 more of these.

[BillyG]

Yup, no fucking idea if Ready Player One is great or manipulative.

[Martin]

lol. I had the same question.

It's great. ILike I said above it's both a tribute to and a great 80's movie made in a book.

[BillyG]

Yeah but is it really an 80s movie or is it "hey, this is just like that OTHER 80s movie" because that seems to be the crux of it. I'm enjoying it, but it needs to find footing in something other than "hey I am totally copying something 30 years old." He found the first key and met Art3mis, so hoping it picks up.

[Martin]

I think I wrote it before, but now it will.

It's not a BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR stuff, but it's fun stuff.

[Bobby Bear]

I finished Ready Player One a while back. Like you said, Martin, it's a fun book. It has some truly wonderful moments, often very sweet and funny. Cline's writing is as informal and direct as it gets, which I enjoy, although sometimes I felt like I was reading a massive treatment for a film instead of a novel for that very reason.

Since the principals, their universe, and the main goal of the plot were all so charming, I didn't have too many complaints. However, I did feel Wade's struggle was a little too smooth at times by action adventure protagonist standards. It would've been nice if he didn't know quite so much about almost every movie/comic/TV show/game/band/novel/etc, ever. That irked a few times. Okay, a lot. Come on, the guy's still in his teens. Even with all that free-time and no real social life, I still have a hard time accepting he isn't "late to the party" more often.

And, not to sound like that guy, but I got the impression pretty early on that Rush would figure, given Fanboys and Cline's reputation as a serious admirer of theirs. This is in no way a problem - I love Rush, as I may or may not have mentioned on multiple occasions - but it did feel a bit like Cline was just enjoying himself a bit too much maybe. Could he have stood to kill a few more darlings for the good of the story? Absolutely, I would argue. With the wealth of pop-culture at his disposal (most of which was utilized wonderfully) it's a shame some of those touches were a little obvious.

To put it differently, I felt like Jonathan Ross must have as he watched Clerks II: "Here Smith goes again with the references!"*

With a little structural tightening, and a few more stones thrown at Wade while he's stuck up the Act 2 Tree, this could have been sensational instead of very, very good.

3.5 Winonas out of 5

* Having said that, any novel with a quality nod to The Last Starfighter gets automatic goodwill from me.

[BillyG]

I finished it last night. It's an OK piece of writing, but it's the ultimate fan fiction wankery when it all boils down.

[Bobby Bear]

I don't know if I'd go that far, but I know where you're coming from, Billy. I don't think Cline showed enough restraint at times, although the very fact that he showed any, I would argue, elevates the work well clear of that category. Plus, the guy knows how to get people where they need to be emotionally for major turning points and scenes to work. However you might feel about the means he uses to get them there, that takes a serious amount of skill.

[BillyG]

What really took me out of it was "blah blah blah, a videogame produced in 1986 for the Atari 2600 which was designed by so and so" OVER AND OVER AND OVER. We got it very early on that the gunters were super educated about all of the stuff left in the Almanac. We did not need to have these descriptions tossed at us over and over. This isn't a book that people that don't play games or have some baseline knowledge of geekery as a whole is going to pick up and those are the only people that would need that info.

He did a fine job with emotion and making interesting characters, it was everything around it that kind of just did not much for me. When Wade was taken in as an indebted employee at IOI I figured some cool shit was gonna go down, but that breezed by in a chapter.

And really, when I saw Knowles listed as a good friend in the thank yous it kind of made all the sense in the world to me.

[Bobby Bear]

The gaming encyclopedia stuff didn't really bug me, Billy. But again, I totally see how it could have. The novel, charming though it is, feels like a weird dress-rehearsal/audition for a movie, so I'm curious to see how the end result of that turns out (I understand Cline is writing the script himself for Warner Bros.) Thing is, it'll need a massive budget to do justice to the scale of that story.

[BillyG]

Yeah, I totally got the feeling it was written to be a film, but that would be impossible. There's about a billion rights issues in that book.

[B_Metal]

Ok, I'm looking for some new horror reads and I've read all through Brian Keene. Any other selections/author's I need to pour through? Any help is appreciated, contemporary authors are preferable.