Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is a Science fiction, dystopian novel, according to Goodreads.

People who play video games on either computers or game systems will really like this book. In addition, people who like history of technology and history of the 1980s pop-culture will like this book too.

Synopsis: the setting of this story is in the year 2044, where the real world is horrible so people escape from it by living in a virtual fantasy world called the OASIS, where people do everything, such as shopping, working, and playing games.

The main character’s name is Wade Watts. He is obsessed with playing video games on the OASIS, where many different planets and worlds exist. However, everyone in Wade’s world is obsessed with the OASIS. However, Wade and everyone’s obsession of the OASIS goes through the roof after hearing about James Halliday death. James Halliday is one of the creators of the OASIS. Halliday later becomes a recluse and dies alone without any family.

 The day Halliday dies, the world finds out that Halliday creates a contest to see who will win his inheritance and complete control of the OASIS. Halliday leaves clues in the OASIS to where the Easter egg is hidden. Whoever, is smart enough to figure out the clues to where the Easter egg is hidden, wins all of James Halliday’s money and complete control of the OASIS.

 Ready Player One, reminds me of the novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. Where one has to search for a golden ticket, which grants one access to Willy Wonka’s Factory, which leads up to the one winner who wins the ultimate prize.

I personally recommend Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, because it is an interesting story that has many twist and turns leaving the reader wanting to read more.

 

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz By L. Frank Baum

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

 by L. Frank Baum

Illustrated by William Wallace Denslow

Introduction and Notes by J. T. Barbarese

When someone says The Wizard of Oz, many thoughts are conjured up in one’s mind. Ruby red shoes that Dorothy wears, which were the wicked Witches of the East, until her untimely death after Dorothy’s house falls upon her, killing her instantly. Dorothy’s three comrades, a scarecrow, a tin man, and a lion, who accompanies her on her journey to get back home. In addition, the song, Somewhere Over the Rainbow sung by Dorothy (Judy Garland), which of course was only in the movie. 

Though the movie is great, the book is different in many ways, but has some aspects of the movie, keeping it true to the story version, which makes the book great too.

The Wizard of Oz is an iconic movie,[1] which was released on 25 August 1939 (USA). The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published on 17 May 1900, created a firm foundation making it an iconic book.


The Storyline: Dorothy and her dog Toto are taken to a magical land called Oz by a twister. Where all she wants to do is, get back to Kansas to Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, but she has to travel to the Emerald City to find Oz. Dorothy makes friends with a scarecrow, Woodman man, and Lion, during her journey. The scarecrow, Wooden man, and lion also hope that the Great Wizard of Oz can grant them their wishes too. The scarecrow wants a brain. The Wooden man wants a heart, and the cowardly lion wants courage.

 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum (1900), is considered one of the first American Children’s books, which has the first true American child protagonists.

 A few things that are the same from the book to the movie is there are still The Munchkins, who live in Munchkin Land, that she first encounters after the cyclone (in the movie it’s called a twister), carried Dorothy and Toto far away from Kansas. However, the Lollipop Guild and the Lullaby Guild aren’t in the book at all. However, one could imagine they are still in the book version too, even though there is no mention of these two groups of munchkins.

 Her three companions the scarecrow, the lion, and the wooden man (in the movie the wooden man is a tin man), still rusts and has to use an oilcan on his joins to be able to move. These three characters help her on her quest. 

There are shoes that Dorothy wears, but instead of the shoes being ruby red shoes. They are silver shoes. The ruby red shoes were for the movie version because colour film has just started to be used in movies. The Wizard of Oz was the first movie to employ both black and white and coloured in a movie. 

 The Emerald City was still green, but not because it was truly emerald green. Everyone, who lived in the city, had to wear spectacles, which were tinted, green, which made everything look green. 

 Furthermore, the book instead of just having two witches, the Wicked Witch of the East and Glenda the Good Witch of the North, there are actually four witches. Each witch represented the four cardinal directions: North, South, East, and West.

I personally recommend The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, because it’s a Classic. Goodreads classifies the book as a classic, fantasy, and adventure. The Illustrations enhance the images that the readers have in their minds making the book come alive. The book gives readers more of a sense of a continuous timeline and how Dorothy’s journey took awhile before she returned home. As the movie version says…

“There is No Place Like Home.”

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[1] 25 August 2014 marked the 75^th Anniversary of the Wizard of Oz movie version.

A Girl Named Zippy Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel

A Girl Named Zippy Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel is the first memoir that I have ever read. 

The definition of memoir is a story about a life, but is told in the structure of a story with different events of a person’s life. In memoir, there are turning points from the author’s life. These stories are told in first person. Not to be confused with autobiography, which tells the story about a life. Memoir could be referred to as a “memoirist.”  

In A Girl Named Zippy Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana, the main character, Haven Kimmel, goes by the nickname Zippy. 

This story begins in 1965, in the small rural city, Mooreland, Indiana with Zippy, recalling how very small the city was in 1965. Her family dynamics is quite common for the 1960s, a mom, a dad, and two older siblings, a sister and brother and her being the youngest.

Throughout the book, we meet her best friend, Julie, who she has known all of her life. We meet the interesting neighbours of Mooreland.

From the moment one starts reading this story Zippy takes us through many different events from Meeting on First Day,[1] at The Quaker meeting house. To grammar school and the first time, she met a person like Dana, who wore a black leather biker jacket.

Young adults and adults will be able to relate to A Girl Named Zippy Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel because she has characters that everyone can relate too or have known in their own lives. 

I recommend everyone to read A Girl Named Zippy Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel because she weaves events of her life into a dazzling story that will keep one wanting to read more.

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[1] Quakers use numbers for the days and months because it is part of plain speech. It also separates Quakers from the wider ‘world,’ and rejects the pagan and Roman association (Pink Dandelion. An Introduction To Quakerism. Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 2007. 26).