✔ Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (kindle own w/ iTunes audio) 4.5★

A synopsis in a net-shell, or at least one that some of my F2F friends have been able to understand. It's the 2040s and there is a computer machine that allows you to have the whole computer programmed virtual reality (the movie Wall-E but we're still on Earth, that's become a horrid environment and poor economically). The people use the "Oasis" virtual reality machine to escape their reality. Which sounds about what what we're doing right now. And the co-maker of the "Oasis" has died and left his money, company and the "Oasis" to the winner of a game he created within the "Oasis". So now everyone is playing a game within a game, but all the games, movies, etc, are from the 1980s (competition meets The Wizard 1989 movie). And then there is the big corporate company (IOI) that wants the "Oasis" and all of the billionaire's money (the Koch brothers).

Now I mentioned the movie, The Wizard, because critics dubbed that movie as just one big Super Mario Brothers commercial. This book had a little feel of that. I think it's great that Ernest Cline went into such detail about all the video games (right down to the creator and company maker), movies and such all from the 1980s. But whenever Wade went on about the game or what he was doing in the game, I felt like I was back with my old friends that were addicted to video gaming. They'd go on and on and on about a video game. And a lot of times, the whole conversation would fly right by.

So that's why I haven't given this a full 5 stars. I wouldn't have been able to get past all that if I hadn't also been listening to the audio by Will Wheaten. His accents were great. And they made the book's humorous parts even funnier. There is a lot of funny parts and Wade does mature and become less addicted to "gaming" and the "Oasis", which I really hoped he would. And this is a book that I'd see myself reading again, so I am keeping my kindle and iTunes purchases.

5★♥

A Christmas Carol has been a book I've been trying to read for the past few Christmases. I'd start it, but then never finished it. Third times was a charm. I've finally finished it and am glad I read it. It was a good read and now a favorite.

“For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.”

I really liked Charles Dickens's "Ghost of an Idea." I've watched many different movies that have some form of this story. I liked reading this just as much as watching one of the movie adaptions. This was my first Dickens book that I've read. His writing style in this was poetic I thought. The story is short and broken off in Staves. I think my favorite part was the description of Christmas Day activity during Stave Three: The Second of Three Spirits.

I'll definitely be rereading this in the future and will try to read some of Dickens's other books too.