Shout-outs are due here to Mswas Saws for recommending this, and to Is for buying it for me, therefore gifting me with one of my new favourite books. I read this in two sittings, only reluctantly putting it down for a short time while I ate and then being gutted on finishing it that I wouldn’t be spending any more time in this glorious world (it definitely has more than a few re-reads in its future).
Our not too distant future is as depressing as you might already suspect it will be. With reality truly sucking, most people spend their time in OASIS – a multi-world virtual reality, created by a reclusive genius, James Halliday. When Halliday dies, he bequeaths his vast fortune to whomever can solve a series of games and puzzles within OASIS, sending the already obsessed world into overdrive on a puzzle that it seems none can solve. Enter teenaged Wade, also known as Parzival, a poor no-one with zero going for him save for a passion for Halliday and a talent for gaming. Parzival has spent his life studying Halliday and his pop culture obsessions and, after stumbling upon the first clue, soon finds that some will stop at nothing to find the ultimate prize.
As someone with a similar pop culture problem myself, this book felt like someone had peered into my head and selected everything that would most fill me with glee with which to entertain me. From video games to movies to music, virtually everything Cline chose to include tickled me pink, to the point I spent an hour over dinner befuddling my mum as I babbled at her about this awesome book I was reading, and cooked myself pink on my pool-side holiday because I didn’t want to put it down to get in the water. I’m already pushing it on my boyfriend now that I’m home so that I can relive it through him.
Bliss.