CR Review #31: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

I have a thing for pop culture and trivia. I love having useless bits of information stored away in my brain, ready to be suddenly useful at a moment's notice. I even used my knowledge to get on Jeopardy (and *humblebrag* win a few times). But then I had three kids, and didn't find my ability to instantly name all 8 Bradford kids on Eight is Enough quite so useful. But it did help me to keep up when watching shows with clever dialogue like Veronica Mars or The Gilmore Girls (watched all 7 seasons in a row on dvd in the middle of the night when kid #3 was a newborn), or reading books like The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and getting more references than anyone else in my book club (actually, not much of an accomplishment). So it was with great joy that I stumbled upon Ready Player One at the library recently, and am here to tell all of you pop culture children of the 80s, that this is a book you must run out and read RIGHT NOW.

Ready Player One is the story of Wade (avatar name Parzival), an overweight, nerdy teen living in the Oklahoma of the near future. The world now exists in two realms: the regular day-to-day world, and the online, virtual world of OASIS. OASIS is a game/online world that has taken the actual world by storm. Kids go to school in OASIS. People have jobs in OASIS. You can fall in love and get married in OASIS -- without ever actually meeting your spouse in real life. The creator of OASiS, a very Bill Gates/Steve Jobs-ian character named James Halliday, who died several years before the story takes place, created a contest, wherein users of OASIS could follow clues to recover three "keys", meet several challenges, and then become the new leader of OASIS and inherit Halliday's immense fortune.

Wade and a few of his online friends attempt to do just that, while outsmarting the government, virtual hackers, and millions of other gamers. Oh, and I didn't mention that Halliday was obsessed with the 1980s, so almost everything related to the contest refers to the tv, movies, music, and video games popular during that decade, as well as other popular Sci-Fi favorites like Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and all things Joss Whedon. While I didn't play a whole lot of video games in the 80s or listen to the same kind of music as detailed in the book, I still got a laugh out of most of the references

Ernest Cline writes with an enjoyable, breezy, conversational style that immediately hooked me and and pulled me into his world. I'm pretty sure this is his first book, and I look forward to reading anything he may write in the future.

CR Review #30: The Distant Hours by Kate Morton

Until a few weeks ago, I had never heard of Kate Morton. And then I read a few engrossing reviews of The Distant Hours by various other Cannonballers, and now I can't imagine not reading everything that Kate Morton has ever written.

The Distant Hours is the story of Edie, who lives in 1990s London. She works in publishing, has just broken up with her live-in boyfriend, and needs someplace to live that fits her budget. One day, while Edie is visiting her parents, her mother receives a letter in the mail that was written in the 1940s but was in a lost bag of mail, recently recovered. The letter sends Edie's mother into hysterics, and sends her crying up to her bedroom. Over the coming weeks, Edie gets bits and pieces of information from her mother (who she is not particularly close to) about the letter and about her secretive past, including the amazing fact that during WWII, her mother (Meredith) was sent to live in a castle in the countryside with three mysterious sisters. It turns out that the castle in question was where Edie's favorite book was written, "The True History of the Mud Man".

Edie visits the castle and meets the sisters and becomes obsessed with finding out more about her mother's time there in the 1940s. Meanwhile, she moves back in with her parents and gets to know more about her mother and her past.

The book jumps from the 40s to the 90s with ease and we find out more about the castle, the sisters, and a mystery that binds them together with young Meredith (and how the mystery relates to the letter that Meredith receives in the 90s). The book is pretty long -- over 500 pages -- and honestly, I had no idea how the mystery was going to wrap up and was pleasantly surprised that it was something I hadn't even considered.

I loved Morton's writing style -- beautiful and gothic, with an extraordinary attention to the detail of the war era. I have already recommended this book to several of my "anglophile" friends, and just picked up another of Morton's books at the library.

CR Review #29: The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris

A few weeks back, just when I was finishing up my original "half-cannonball", I put off writing a review for a book that I didn't like, in lieu of one that I enjoyed (thank you, Major Pettigrew!). I can't put it off any longer. I need to tell you about my dislike for The Unnamed.

The Unnamed is the story of a man named Tim, a busy lawyer in NYC with a big house in the suburbs and a doting wife named Jane. Tim suffers from a mysterious disease (so mysterious, it is indeed unnamed) that causes him to stop whatever he is doing and immediately start walking. It doesn't matter if he's in the middle of a trial, or asleep in his warm bed, or fighting with his wife or daughter. He just has to get up and walk until he falls down from exhaustion.

Tim and Jane try all kinds of doctors and treatments, but nothing works. After a few months, Tim usually stops walking and goes back to the remnants of his life. Jane tries to keep a backpack at the ready for him, so that whatever the elements Tim finds himself in, he'll survive (including a cell phone, so she can pick him up when he falls down tired).

After a few battles with his disease, things get worse for Tim and he simply takes off, leaving Jane and their daughter alone, thinking they are better off without him and his strange problems. And then Tim walks. And walks and walks and walks. And along the way, he loses his mind, some of his toes and fingers, and most of his previous identity.

The story of The Unnamed could have been a riveting one. But I just couldn't stand Joshua Ferris' writing style. He uses 20 words when 2 or 3 would do, not to be eloquent, but just to be clever. So annoying. A few years back, I had tried to read his debut novel, "And Then We Came to the End," about jobs in the crazy dot.com years (I had worked and been laid off from lots of those jobs, so I expected to enjoy this one), and couldn't even make it halfway through the book. His writing ruined the story for me -- his pretentiousness really was a turn off for me.

The one good thing about this book was that it was the first library book that I read on my kindle. So, yay for that.

First Day of School

Can't believe first day of school already came and went. Sent B off to second grade (loves her English teacher, can't remember her French immersion teacher's name, but I'm sure we'll get that sorted out!), and C off to Kindergarten. He was so fired up about taking the bus!

At the end of the day we had two tired, but happy kids, and were short one lunch box, but otherwise I'd say the day was a success.

CR Review #28: If I Stay by Gayle Forman

If I Stay is a short, bittersweet, beautifully written novel about love and loss. Mia is 17 and has a pretty good life -- she is a senior in high school, applying to Julliard in NYC to play the cello, she has a loving and cool family, a smart and understanding best friend, and a beautiful and cool musician boyfriend named Adam.

One snowy morning, Mia and her family (mom, dad, and younger brother) go for a drive near their rural Oregon home, when a truck slams into her family car and kills her family, leaving her gravely injured. Mia finds herself disembodied from her physical self -- she feels no pain, but she can't feel anything. She can't be seen or heard, but she can see and hear those around her. She is rushed to a local hospital and a trauma unit does everything they can to save her while Mia's friends and remaining family members gather at her side.

Most of the story is told in flashback, and we learn all about Mia and her family, her love for classical music, as well as her relationship with Adam. And as Mia flashes through all of her memories, she begins to wonder what will be easier and better for her to do: to let go, and be with her family, or to stay and fight through the pain and her injuries.

The writing is beautiful, and I found myself tear up a few times (mostly when she described her little brother, as I have a son about his age). A short book, I read it pretty much in one sitting, but a moving one. I'll be sure to pick up the sequel "Where She Went" when I see it at the library.

CR Review #27: Spoiled by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

Here is an incredibly brief review for the fun, fluffy Spoiled, co-authored by the amusing founders of gofugyourself.com -- a celebrity fashion/style/gossip website.

Spoiled is the story of Molly, a teenager in Indiana. Her mom has just died and she never knew her dad, and she suddenly finds out that her father is one of the biggest movie stars in the world. He asks her to come and live with him and his daughter (another 16 year old girl, named Brooke) in Beverly Hills. Brooke sees Molly as a threat to her imminent fame and fortune, and does everything in her power to let Molly know that she isn't wanted out in sunny CA.

This isn't Shakespeare, folks, but wildly entertaining nonetheless. Will Molly and Brooke become the sisters that they always wanted? Will Molly become Hollywood glam or stay the down-to-earth midwestern gal that she is? Will Brooke and Molly's dad ever put down his blackberry and take the time to get to know his girls?

Filled with pointed celebrity barbs (this certainly won't read that well in 5 or 10 years, as most of the pop culture references will make the reader scratch their heads), and amusing views of the outlandish social status scene in Hollywood, this book is a good laugh. It only took me a few hours to read, but I enjoyed it and would look for another book by Cocks and Morgan in the future.

CR Review #26: Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

I originally signed up to do a half-cannonball and read 26 books. Last week, I finished reading my 26th book, which I absolutely hated. And I really didn't want it to be the book that met my goal of 26 books read and reviewed, so I put it aside and read a different book, hoping I would like it well enough to give it a glowing review.

Luckily, the book I picked up was Major Pettigrew's Last Stand.

Major Pettigrew is one of a dying breed -- an old-school Englishman who goes shooting, feels a man looks his best in black tie, and believes that the British countryside should be preserved at all costs. He lives in a small, southern seaside town on the estate where he was raised, and he is still mourning his wife, more than 3 years after her death. He lives his life according to protocol and with military precision.

And then, one day, his brother dies suddenly. The death of his younger brother affects him mentally and physically, and as he is about to collapse in his hallway, along comes Mrs. Ali, the Pakistani widow of the local shopkeeper, looking for his newspaper money. Mrs. Ali brings the major inside for some water, and shows him an unexpected kindness, later bringing a gift basket and checking in on him. The Major feels an urge to continue the friendship, and the two find that they have much in common -- a love for British literature (Kipling, in particular), love for their family and spouses, and a respect for rules and the "British way". But because they live in a small town, his friends and neighbors and confused by his sudden friendship with the "Paki" shop lady, and many derogatory comments are made, and friendships and family relations are strained and tested on both ends.

This is a beautiful love story, written with such rich description it made me want to get on a plane and go driving around the British countryside. I've read that it will soon be a movie, so I pictured Jim Broadbent (who I've loved since Iris) as the Major and Shohreh Aghdashloo as the lovely Mrs. Ali.

So glad I picked this up, and so relieved I liked it better than the other book (review of that to come...).