Happy Labor Day!

I managed to have the rare holiday off, and I took advantage of it and did nothing. That’s right, I spent a lazy day doing nothing, watching reruns of Good Eats, and dozing in and out. It was glorious!

But while I did nothing all day, I received an email from Oliver Chase, an author whose book Marsh Island, I reviewed back in November of 2013. He has a new book on the way, Levant Mirage, due to be published next month and is offering me a copy of it. How can I refuse? Of course, I’ll have to read it and I’ll write up a review to share with you all.

While I’m at it, I should consider writing more reviews. I enjoyed doing them, though I’ll admit to a little stress. I hate being critical of other author’s works. I know how hard it is to write, how difficult it is to shape, and how painful it is to set it free, but a job’s a job, and I have to be honest and give my opinion to the best of my ability.

I started my reviews in the hopes of bringing in some new readers to my blog, but I never saw much of an uptick. That’s okay. I read some good books, talked to people I never would have met otherwise, and seeing what others had to say broadened my horizon. I saw new ways of looking at things, experienced things I never would have experienced, and learned so much that I never knew before. That’s the power reading has. That’s the power a good writer embodies. It’s one I want.

Now I wait to get a copy, and I wonder what else I should read. I have a few books beside me, a couple from authors I have met in a writer’s group I meet with sporadically. I wish I could go more often, but my job limits my Sundays off. C’est la vie. If you are reading this, and you have a self-published book you want reviewed, don’t hesitate to email me at joe@joehinojosa.com.

You can also check out my other reviews here on my blog by clicking here or on the link at the top of the page. I can’t wait to get started again, and happy reading.

I haven’t been writing much lately. Actually, I haven’t been writing at all. I don’t know what it means, or if it presages a surrender of my hope of becoming published. I hope not. I’ve put in too much time and effort working towards this goal, but at the moment I’m distracted by the realities of life. Is that a valid excuse?

There are stories in my head that I need to tell. I cannot deny it, it’s a fact of my being, that I’m always thinking, that I’m always inventing stories when I’m alone, coming up with plots and scenarios, dreaming of what I would like to say, yearning for others to enjoy what I have come up with.

Lately I’ve been off my rhythm. I haven’t set aside time to sit and daydream or brainstorm. I haven’t sat at my computer with the sole goal of committing the stories in my head to paper, or I guess to a computer file. It’s a shame because that’s what I want, what I need, but as I said before, I’m dealing with life issues, not at all live threatening or serious, but deserving of my attention. It’s where I need to be, and where my energies are focused.

I hope to get back to writing soon, and honestly, I have been writing, just nothing I care to share at the moment. I’m still planning on participating in NaNoWriMo again for the fifth time come November. I still want to rewrite Son of the Father, which was my first NaNo novel. I have others I want to rewrite, not because they are great works en potencia, but because they mean something to me, because I believe they have a message I want to share.

But for now I’m engaged in a trial of a sort, a moment of personal growth that is impacting me emotionally and spiritually. How I’ll come out is anyone’s guess, but it’s a journey I need to take, a journey we all have to take in one form or another, at some point in our lives. This is my time.

I finished reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline a couple of weeks ago. Can I just say it? Wow! It was a great read, fascinating and engaging, highly imaginative and compelling. I can’t believe it took me this long to actually get around to reading it.

My friend Amy was the one who told me about the book. She listened to the audiobook, narrated by Wil Wheaton, and fell in love with it. She said I needed to read it. She implored, the badgered me, and she harassed me until I relented and said I would read it. I didn’t.

It took a documentary, Atari: Game Over to pique my interest, and so one day while in Lubbock, I stopped at the Barnes & Nobel by the mall, and I bought the book. It sat on my to read pile for at least a month, probably longer. In the meantime, Amy cajoled, pestered, begged and outright pleaded for me to read the book. It wasn’t until another friend of hers – well actually, her friend’s husband, but I don’t need to be nit-picky – read the book, that I decided to sit down and read. I can’t have anyone show me up, after all!

So I read it. Well, actually I only read the first 60 pages. It was okay, I guess. It was a little slow so I put it down for a week. Then, when I had a free day, I sat down and began to read again. This time the action picked up, and I found myself fully immersed in the story about a man, James Halliday, who created a virtual world and became the wealthiest man alive, but having no heirs, decided to create a contest to give the winner his wealth, and control of OASIS, the virtual reality he and his friend created decades before.

This is a story that takes place almost exclusively online. It’s an escape from the dystopian reality of a civilization in the midst of collapse, of crushing poverty and limited resources. OASIS is what its name implies, a getaway, one that is mostly free to use, and as such, the target of a corporation intent on winning the contest in order to turn the virtual utopia into a cash cow.

Enter our hero, the narrator of the story, Wade Owen Watts, who goes by the name of Parzival while in OASIS. He’s a student who, along with millions of other individuals, is drawn into the contest, wanting to be the first to discover the secrets Halliday encoded into OASIS. Watts becomes obsessed with the 1980’s, a decade the eccentric billionaire himself obsessed over, that being the time when he was a teen.

What comes across is a race between the everyman and the soulless, corrupt corporation, not only for bragging rights or the over $100 billion, but for control of the single most important outlet for the average human being. At stake is OASIS, with its access to the single largest depository of  knowledge ever assembled, books, music, and movies all at the disposal for mankind.

It’s a little odd reviewing such an amazing book, especially one as well-known and read as Ready Player One. I’ve seen on my Facebook feed that many of my friends have recently read the novel as well, and they loved it. Hollywood has also picked up the novel and is reportedly in the process of turning it into a movie, with no less that Steven Spielberg at the helm.

So what’s my take? I’m sure it’s been said before, but it really is a bit of World of Warcraft meets The Matrix, well kind of. I loved the storyline, and though it could have easily devolved into some hokey David-vs-Goliath type story, the author deftly created one of the best books I’ve ever read. He manages to entertain despite clueing us in to the outcome of the story. You fall for the characters, who you meet as the online avatars of their respective players, and you still come to care for them, and as such Ernest Cline manages to surprise the reader.

This is definitely a 5 out of 5 star book, in my humble opinion. Check it out, then badger your friends to read it as well. I can’t wait to see what Spielberg creates in terms of the visual aspect, but he’ll be hard pressed to realize everything Cline managed to do!

List of Book Reviews
Next review –  Levant Mirage
Previous Review – The Protected