When was the last time you read free novels, or a substantial magazine article? Do your daily reading habits center around tweets, Facebook updates, or the directions on your instant oatmeal packet? If you’re one of countless people who don’t make a habit of reading regularly, you might be missing out: reading has a significant number of benefits, and just a few benefits of reading are listed below.
1. Mental Stimulation
Studies have shown that staying mentally stimulated can slow the progress of (or possibly even prevent) Alzheimer’s and Dementia, since keeping your brain active and engaged prevents it from losing power. Just like any other muscle in the body, the brain requires exercise to keep it strong and healthy, so the phrase “use it or lose it” is particularly apt when it comes to your mind. Doing puzzles and playing games such as chess have also been found to be helpful with cognitive stimulation.
2. Stress Reduction
No matter how much stress you have at work, in your personal relationships, or countless other issues faced in daily life, it all just slips away when you lose yourself in a great story. A well-written novel can transport you to other realms, while an engaging article will distract you and keep you in the present moment, letting tensions drain away and allowing you to relax.
3. Knowledge
Everything you read fills your head with new bits of information, and you never know when it might come in handy. The more knowledge you have, the better-equipped you are to tackle any challenge you’ll ever face.
Additionally, here’s a bit of food for thought: should you ever find yourself in dire circumstances, remember that although you might lose everything else—your job, your possessions, your money, even your health—knowledge can never be taken from you.
4. Vocabulary Expansion
This goes with the above topic: the more you read, the more words you gain exposure to, and they’ll inevitably make their way into your everyday vocabulary. Being articulate and well-spoken is of great help in any profession, and knowing that you can speak to higher-ups with self-confidence can be an enormous boost to your self-esteem. It could even aid in your career, as those who are well-read, well-spoken, and knowledgeable on a variety of topics tend to get promotions more quickly (and more often) than those with smaller vocabularies and lack of awareness of literature, scientific breakthroughs, and global events.
Reading books is also vital for learning new languages, as non-native speakers gain exposure to words used in context, which will ameliorate their own speaking and writing fluency.
5. Memory Improvement
When you should free novels reading, you have to remember an assortment of characters, their backgrounds, ambitions, history, and nuances, as well as the various arcs and sub-plots that weave their way through every story. That’s a fair bit to remember, but brains are marvellous things and can remember these things with relative ease. Amazingly enough, every new memory you create forges new synapses (brain pathways)and strengthens existing ones, which assists in short-term memory recall as well as stabilizing moods. How cool is that?
6. Stronger Analytical Thinking Skills
Have you ever read an amazing mystery novel, and solved the mystery yourself before finishing the book? If so, you were able to put critical and analytical thinking to work by taking note of all the details provided and sorting them out to determine “whodunnit”.
That same ability to analyze details also comes in handy when it comes to critiquing the plot; determining whether it was a well-written piece, if the characters were properly developed, if the storyline ran smoothly, etc. Should you ever have an opportunity to discuss the book with others, you’ll be able to state your opinions clearly, as you’ve taken the time to really consider all the aspects involved.
7. Improved Focus and Concentration
In our internet-crazed world, attention is drawn in a million different directions at once as we multi-task through every day. In a single 5-minute span, the average person will divide their time between working on a task, checking email, chatting with a couple of people (via gchat, skype, etc.), keeping an eye on twitter, monitoring their smartphone, and interacting with co-workers. This type of ADD-like behaviour causes stress levels to rise, and lowers our productivity.
When you read a book, all of your attention is focused on the story—the rest of the world just falls away, and you can immerse yourself in every fine detail you’re absorbing. Try reading for 15-20 minutes before work (i.e. on your morning commute, if you take public transit), and you’ll be surprised at how much more focused you are once you get to the office.
8. Better Writing Skills
This goes hand-in-hand with the expansion of your vocabulary: exposure to published, well-written work has a noted effect on one’s own writing, as observing the cadence, fluidity, and writing styles of other authors will invariably influence your own work. In the same way that musicians influence one another, and painters use techniques established by previous masters, so do writers learn how to craft prose by reading the works of others.
9. Tranquility
In addition to the relaxation that accompanies reading free novels online, it’s possible that the subject you read about can bring about immense inner peace and tranquility. Reading spiritual texts can lower blood pressure and bring about an immense sense of calm, while reading self-help books has been shown to help people suffering from certain mood disorders and mild mental illnesses.
10. Free Entertainment
Though many of us like to buy books so we can annotate them and dog-ear pages for future reference, they can be quite pricey. For low-budget entertainment, you can visit your local library and bask in the glory of the countless tomes available there for free. Libraries have books on every subject imaginable, and since they rotate their stock and constantly get new books, you’ll never run out of reading materials.
If you happen to live in an area that doesn’t have a local library, or if you’re mobility-impaired and can’t get to one easily, most libraries have their books available in PDF or ePub format so you can read them on your e-reader, iPad, or your computer screen. There are also many sources online where you can download free e-books, so go hunting for something new to read!
There’s a reading genre for every literate person on the planet, and whether your tastes lie in classical literature, poetry, fashion magazines, biographies, religious texts, young adult books, self-help guides, street lit, or romance novels, there’s something out there to capture your curiosity and imagination. Step away from your computer for a little while, crack open a book, and replenish your soul for a little while.
Tuesday, July 24, 2018
How is the habit of book-reading useful to a person
Reading free novels is like going through someone's thought process. It's like reading their mind in and out. That process gives us many insights about life in general. There are many kind of books out there. Depending on what you're reading, they'll be useful to you.
I'll classify a few categories according to my knowledge. Please excuse if there are any inaccuracies.
Novels : These are works of fiction. They're fun to read. Few books are generally pot boilers with nothing new to teach. Like the book called “If tomorrow comes.” And there are extraordinary books like ‘The Fountainhead’ which teach you a hell lot. Depending on the book, there are many possibilities. If you choose a random erotica or a stupid sassy romance novel, then it's not going to teach you anything. But might give you pleasure. These novels may or may not teach you something new.
Non Fiction : These are everything else apart from fiction novels. Now these books will be more on the ‘Productive’ side. You could read good personality development books. Books on various topics that interest you. Like economics, finance, relationships, science, history etc.,
Comics : Don't know whether I must mention this as a separate category or not. But chuck it. These are super fun. I personally love all kinda books.. But these are special. They might or might not be informative.
At the end, I would like to say that a book can or cannot give you info, knowledge or output based on YOU only. At the end of it all, YOU have to read free novels. If YOU have the capability to comprehend what's written or discussed in a particular book.. You'll definitely understand and learn.
And yeah, when you're someone who wants to learn about Time Management but buys ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ and says books aren't informative or worth reading, then you are crazy.
No offense, but pick the right kind of books. Pick the books that are relevant to you. That's all what I can say.
Cheers. Happy Reading.
Books Should Be Your Priority, According to Science
More than a quarter--26 percent--of American adults admit to not having read even part of a free novels online within the past year. That's according to statistics coming out of the Pew Research Center. If you're part of this group, know that science supports the idea that reading is good for you on several levels.
Reading fiction can help you be more open-minded and creative
According to research conducted at the University of Toronto, study participants who read short-story fiction experienced far less need for "cognitive closure" compared with counterparts who read nonfiction essays. Essentially, they tested as more open-minded, compared with the readers of essays. "Although nonfiction reading allows students to learn the subject matter, it may not always help them in thinking about it," the authors write. "A physician may have an encyclopedic knowledge of his or her subject, but this may not prevent the physician from seizing and freezing on a diagnosis, when additional symptoms point to a different malady."
People who free read novels live longer
That's according to Yale researchers who studied 3,635 people older than 50 and found that those who read books for 30 minutes daily lived an average of 23 months longer than nonreaders or magazine readers. Apparently, the practice of reading books creates cognitive engagement that improves lots of things, including vocabulary, thinking skills, and concentration. It also can affect empathy, social perception, and emotional intelligence, the sum of which helps people stay on the planet longer.
Reading 50 books a year is something you can actually accomplish
While about a book a week might sound daunting, it's probably doable by even the busiest of people. Writer Stephanie Huston says her thinking that she didn't have enough time turned out to be a lame excuse. Now that she has made a goal to read 50 books in a year, she says that she has traded wasted time on her phone for flipping pages in bed, on trains, during meal breaks, and while waiting in line. Two months into her challenge, she reports having more peace and satisfaction and improved sleep, while learning more than she thought possible.
Successful people are readers It's because high achievers are keen on self-improvement. Hundreds of successful executives have shared with me the free novels online that have helped them get where they are today. Need ideas on where to start? Titles that have repeatedly made their lists include: The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz; Shoe Dog by Phil Knight; Good to Great by Jim Collins; and Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson.
Reading fiction can help you be more open-minded and creative
According to research conducted at the University of Toronto, study participants who read short-story fiction experienced far less need for "cognitive closure" compared with counterparts who read nonfiction essays. Essentially, they tested as more open-minded, compared with the readers of essays. "Although nonfiction reading allows students to learn the subject matter, it may not always help them in thinking about it," the authors write. "A physician may have an encyclopedic knowledge of his or her subject, but this may not prevent the physician from seizing and freezing on a diagnosis, when additional symptoms point to a different malady."
People who free read novels live longer
That's according to Yale researchers who studied 3,635 people older than 50 and found that those who read books for 30 minutes daily lived an average of 23 months longer than nonreaders or magazine readers. Apparently, the practice of reading books creates cognitive engagement that improves lots of things, including vocabulary, thinking skills, and concentration. It also can affect empathy, social perception, and emotional intelligence, the sum of which helps people stay on the planet longer.
Reading 50 books a year is something you can actually accomplish
While about a book a week might sound daunting, it's probably doable by even the busiest of people. Writer Stephanie Huston says her thinking that she didn't have enough time turned out to be a lame excuse. Now that she has made a goal to read 50 books in a year, she says that she has traded wasted time on her phone for flipping pages in bed, on trains, during meal breaks, and while waiting in line. Two months into her challenge, she reports having more peace and satisfaction and improved sleep, while learning more than she thought possible.
Successful people are readers It's because high achievers are keen on self-improvement. Hundreds of successful executives have shared with me the free novels online that have helped them get where they are today. Need ideas on where to start? Titles that have repeatedly made their lists include: The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz; Shoe Dog by Phil Knight; Good to Great by Jim Collins; and Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson.
Tuesday, July 17, 2018
A Thousand Splendid Suns reviews
It’s not that hard to understand why Khaled Hosseini’s first novel, “The Kite Runner” (2003), became such a huge best seller, based largely on word of mouth and its popularity among book clubs and reading groups. The novel read like a kind of modern-day variation on Conrad’s “Lord Jim,” in which the hero spends his life atoning for an act of cowardice and betrayal committed in his youth. It not only gave readers an intimate look at Afghanistan and the difficulties of life there, but it also showed off its author’s accessible and very old-fashioned storytelling talents: his taste for melodramatic plotlines; sharply drawn, black-and-white characters; and elemental boldfaced emotions.
Whereas “The Kite Runner” focused on fathers and sons, and friendships between men, his latest novel, “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” focuses on mothers and daughters, and friendships between women. Whereas “Kite Runner” got off to a gripping start and stumbled into contrivance and sentimentality in its second half, “Splendid Suns” starts off programmatically and gains speed and emotional power as it slowly unfurls.
Like its predecessor, the new free novel online features a very villainous villain and an almost saintly best friend who commits an act of enormous self-sacrifice to aid the hero/heroine. Like its predecessor, it attempts to show the fallout that Afghanistan’s violent history has had on a handful of individuals, ending in death at the hands of the Taliban for one character, and the promise of a new life for another. And like its predecessor, it features some embarrassingly hokey scenes that feel as if they were lifted from a B movie, and some genuinely heart-wrenching scenes that help redeem the overall story.
Mr. Hosseini, who was born in Kabul and moved to the United States in 1980, writes in straight-ahead, utilitarian prose and creates characters who have the simplicity and primary-colored emotions of people in a fairy tale or fable. The sympathy he conjures for them stems less from their personalities (the hero of “Kite Runner” was an unlikable coward who failed to come to the aid of his best friend) than from the circumstances in which they find themselves: contending with unhappy families, abusive marriages, oppressive governments and repressive cultural mores.
This heavy-handed opening quickly gives way to even more soap-opera-ish events: after her mother commits suicide, the teenage Mariam — the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy man, who is ashamed of her existence — is quickly married off to a much older shoemaker named Rasheed, a piggy brute of a man who says it embarrasses him “to see a man who’s lost control of his wife.”
Rasheed forces Mariam to wear a burqa and treats her with ill-disguised contempt, subjecting her to scorn, ridicule, insults, even “walking past her like she was nothing but a house cat.” Mariam lives in fear of “his shifting moods, his volatile temperament, his insistence on steering even mundane exchanges down a confrontational path that, on occasion, he would resolve with punches, slaps, kicks, and sometimes try to make amends for with polluted apologies and sometimes not.”
"A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini The life of the novel’s other heroine, Laila, who becomes Rasheed’s second wife, takes an even sharper trajectory toward ruin. Though she is the cherished daughter of an intellectual, who encourages her to pursue an education, Laila finds her life literally shattered when a rocket — lobbed by one of the warlord factions fighting for control of Kabul, after the Soviet Union’s departure — lands on her house and kills her parents.
Her beloved boyfriend, Tariq, has already left Kabul with his family — they have become refugees in Pakistan — and she suddenly finds that she is an orphan with no resources or friends. When she discovers that she is pregnant with Tariq’s child and learns that Tariq has supposedly died from injuries sustained in a rocket attack near the Pakistan border, she agrees to marry Rasheed, convinced that she and her baby will never survive alone on the streets of Kabul.
At first Mariam sees Laila as a rival and accuses her of stealing her husband, but when Laila’s baby, Aziza, arrives, Mariam begins to soften. Gradually, she and Laila become allies, trying to shield each other from Rasheed’s rages and demands. Mariam becomes a second mother to Aziza, and she and Laila become best friends.
SEE SAMPLE PRIVACY POLICY OPT OUT OR CONTACT US ANYTIME In the opening chapters of the free novel online the characters are so one-dimensional that they feel like cartoons. Laila is the great beauty, with a doting father and a protective boyfriend — a lucky girl whose luck abruptly runs out. Mariam is the illegitimate daughter of a bitter woman and a disloyal father — an unlucky girl whose luck turns from bad to worse. And Rasheed is the evil bully, a misogynist intent on debasing his two wives.
Gradually, however, Mr. Hosseini’s instinctive storytelling skills take over, mowing down the reader’s objections through sheer momentum and will. He succeeds in making the emotional reality of Mariam and Laila’s lives tangible to us, and by conjuring their day-to-day routines, he is able to give us a sense of what daily life was like in Kabul — both before and during the harsh reign of the Taliban.
He shows us the Taliban’s “beard patrols,” roaming the streets in Toyota trucks “on the lookout for clean-shaven faces to bloody.” He shows us hospitals turning away women in labor because men and women are supposed to be seen at different hospitals. And he shows us the “ ‘Titanic’ fever” that gripped Kabul in the summer of 2000, when pirated copies of that film turned up in the city: entertainment-starved people surreptitiously dug out their TVs (which had been hidden away, even buried in backyards) and illicitly watched the movie late at night, and riverside vendors began selling Titanic carpets, Titanic deodorant, Titanic toothpaste, even Titanic burqas.
In the end it is these glimpses of daily life in Afghanistan — a country known to most Americans only through news accounts of war and terrorism — that make this novel, like “The Kite Runner,” so stirring, and that distract attention from its myriad flaws.
Whereas “The Kite Runner” focused on fathers and sons, and friendships between men, his latest novel, “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” focuses on mothers and daughters, and friendships between women. Whereas “Kite Runner” got off to a gripping start and stumbled into contrivance and sentimentality in its second half, “Splendid Suns” starts off programmatically and gains speed and emotional power as it slowly unfurls.
Like its predecessor, the new free novel online features a very villainous villain and an almost saintly best friend who commits an act of enormous self-sacrifice to aid the hero/heroine. Like its predecessor, it attempts to show the fallout that Afghanistan’s violent history has had on a handful of individuals, ending in death at the hands of the Taliban for one character, and the promise of a new life for another. And like its predecessor, it features some embarrassingly hokey scenes that feel as if they were lifted from a B movie, and some genuinely heart-wrenching scenes that help redeem the overall story.
Mr. Hosseini, who was born in Kabul and moved to the United States in 1980, writes in straight-ahead, utilitarian prose and creates characters who have the simplicity and primary-colored emotions of people in a fairy tale or fable. The sympathy he conjures for them stems less from their personalities (the hero of “Kite Runner” was an unlikable coward who failed to come to the aid of his best friend) than from the circumstances in which they find themselves: contending with unhappy families, abusive marriages, oppressive governments and repressive cultural mores.
This heavy-handed opening quickly gives way to even more soap-opera-ish events: after her mother commits suicide, the teenage Mariam — the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy man, who is ashamed of her existence — is quickly married off to a much older shoemaker named Rasheed, a piggy brute of a man who says it embarrasses him “to see a man who’s lost control of his wife.”
Rasheed forces Mariam to wear a burqa and treats her with ill-disguised contempt, subjecting her to scorn, ridicule, insults, even “walking past her like she was nothing but a house cat.” Mariam lives in fear of “his shifting moods, his volatile temperament, his insistence on steering even mundane exchanges down a confrontational path that, on occasion, he would resolve with punches, slaps, kicks, and sometimes try to make amends for with polluted apologies and sometimes not.”
"A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini The life of the novel’s other heroine, Laila, who becomes Rasheed’s second wife, takes an even sharper trajectory toward ruin. Though she is the cherished daughter of an intellectual, who encourages her to pursue an education, Laila finds her life literally shattered when a rocket — lobbed by one of the warlord factions fighting for control of Kabul, after the Soviet Union’s departure — lands on her house and kills her parents.
Her beloved boyfriend, Tariq, has already left Kabul with his family — they have become refugees in Pakistan — and she suddenly finds that she is an orphan with no resources or friends. When she discovers that she is pregnant with Tariq’s child and learns that Tariq has supposedly died from injuries sustained in a rocket attack near the Pakistan border, she agrees to marry Rasheed, convinced that she and her baby will never survive alone on the streets of Kabul.
At first Mariam sees Laila as a rival and accuses her of stealing her husband, but when Laila’s baby, Aziza, arrives, Mariam begins to soften. Gradually, she and Laila become allies, trying to shield each other from Rasheed’s rages and demands. Mariam becomes a second mother to Aziza, and she and Laila become best friends.
SEE SAMPLE PRIVACY POLICY OPT OUT OR CONTACT US ANYTIME In the opening chapters of the free novel online the characters are so one-dimensional that they feel like cartoons. Laila is the great beauty, with a doting father and a protective boyfriend — a lucky girl whose luck abruptly runs out. Mariam is the illegitimate daughter of a bitter woman and a disloyal father — an unlucky girl whose luck turns from bad to worse. And Rasheed is the evil bully, a misogynist intent on debasing his two wives.
Gradually, however, Mr. Hosseini’s instinctive storytelling skills take over, mowing down the reader’s objections through sheer momentum and will. He succeeds in making the emotional reality of Mariam and Laila’s lives tangible to us, and by conjuring their day-to-day routines, he is able to give us a sense of what daily life was like in Kabul — both before and during the harsh reign of the Taliban.
He shows us the Taliban’s “beard patrols,” roaming the streets in Toyota trucks “on the lookout for clean-shaven faces to bloody.” He shows us hospitals turning away women in labor because men and women are supposed to be seen at different hospitals. And he shows us the “ ‘Titanic’ fever” that gripped Kabul in the summer of 2000, when pirated copies of that film turned up in the city: entertainment-starved people surreptitiously dug out their TVs (which had been hidden away, even buried in backyards) and illicitly watched the movie late at night, and riverside vendors began selling Titanic carpets, Titanic deodorant, Titanic toothpaste, even Titanic burqas.
In the end it is these glimpses of daily life in Afghanistan — a country known to most Americans only through news accounts of war and terrorism — that make this novel, like “The Kite Runner,” so stirring, and that distract attention from its myriad flaws.
Thursday, July 12, 2018
Có nên đầu tư vào dự án park vista
Park vista, do tập đoàn Anpha Corp cùng với Đông Mê Kông cùng bắt tay đầu tư xây dựng, là dòng sản phẩm cao cấp của Khu vực Nam thành phố. du an park vista nằm tại khu 11, có mặt tiền đường Nguyễn Hữu Thọ, hiện nay đã làm bất động sản khu vực phía Nam Sài Gòn nóng lên không ít.
Đầu tư dự án lần này, Anpha Corp đã rót không ít kinh phí cũng như sự tận tâm, chăm chút đến từng chi tiết của dự án. Ngay từ những công đoạn đầu những sai sót đã không được cho phép xảy ra, vì, tất cả những điều Anpha Corp mong muốn chính là đem một sản phẩm hoàn thiện nhất giao đến tay khách hàng của họ. Giá các căn hộ thuộc sự án được đánh giá là khá tốt trong bất động sản khu vực, khách hàng có thể yên tâm sẽ được nhận ưu đãi từ chủ đầu tư.
Thời gian dự án park vista tiếp cận với thị trường cũng là lúc các dự án khác đang gấp rút triển khai giai đoạn chào bán. Ấy vậy nhưng sức hút của Dự án Park Vista là không thể chối cãi được. Có một lượng lớn khách hàng đặt chỗ và giữ chỗ tại dự án.
Hệ thống giao thông khu vực quanh dự án đang ngày càng được nâng cấp và mở rộng. Đây là một bàn đạp tốt, đẩy giá trị bất động sản của khu này lên cao. Trong tương lai, khi quy hoạch trở nên đồng bộ và hoàn thiện, sức tăng của con số giá trị không biết sẽ dừng lại ở vị trí nào. Do đó, chọn mua sớm chính là một giải pháp tối ưu giúp bạn tiết kiệm kha khá kinh phí.
Giá bán của một căn hộ dao động từ 18 đến 23 triệu trên một mét vuông. Nhanh tay liên hệ để sở hữu những vị trí đẹp nhất.
Đầu tư dự án lần này, Anpha Corp đã rót không ít kinh phí cũng như sự tận tâm, chăm chút đến từng chi tiết của dự án. Ngay từ những công đoạn đầu những sai sót đã không được cho phép xảy ra, vì, tất cả những điều Anpha Corp mong muốn chính là đem một sản phẩm hoàn thiện nhất giao đến tay khách hàng của họ. Giá các căn hộ thuộc sự án được đánh giá là khá tốt trong bất động sản khu vực, khách hàng có thể yên tâm sẽ được nhận ưu đãi từ chủ đầu tư.
Thời gian dự án park vista tiếp cận với thị trường cũng là lúc các dự án khác đang gấp rút triển khai giai đoạn chào bán. Ấy vậy nhưng sức hút của Dự án Park Vista là không thể chối cãi được. Có một lượng lớn khách hàng đặt chỗ và giữ chỗ tại dự án.
Hệ thống giao thông khu vực quanh dự án đang ngày càng được nâng cấp và mở rộng. Đây là một bàn đạp tốt, đẩy giá trị bất động sản của khu này lên cao. Trong tương lai, khi quy hoạch trở nên đồng bộ và hoàn thiện, sức tăng của con số giá trị không biết sẽ dừng lại ở vị trí nào. Do đó, chọn mua sớm chính là một giải pháp tối ưu giúp bạn tiết kiệm kha khá kinh phí.
Giá bán của một căn hộ dao động từ 18 đến 23 triệu trên một mét vuông. Nhanh tay liên hệ để sở hữu những vị trí đẹp nhất.
Wednesday, July 4, 2018
Ready Player One
Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One” is a book filled with references to video games, virtual reality, ’80s pop-culture trivia, geek heroes like E. Gary Gygax, and funny-sounding cult items like Frobozz and Raaka-Tu. Yet it works for people who like books without pictures too.
Mr. Cline is photographed on the jacket standing in front of an open-flapped DeLorean, like the one in “Back to the Future.” He looks a bit like the filmmaker Kevin Smith, one of the few people on the planet who may be capable of catching all of Mr. Cline’s geekoid references. (Mr. Cline himself wrote the screenplay for the 2009 film “Fanboys,” about unusually fanatical “Star Wars” devotees.) Another is the science-fiction writer John Scalzi, who has aptly referred to “Ready Player One” as a “nerdgasm.” There can be no better one-word description of this ardent fantasy artifact about fantasy culture.
With its Pac-Man-style cover graphics and vintage Atari mind-set “Ready Player One” certainly looks like a genre item. But Mr. Cline is able to incorporate his favorite toys and games into a perfectly accessible narrative. He sets it in 2044, when there aren’t many original Duran Duran fans still afoot, and most students of 1980s trivia are zealous kids. They are interested in that time period because a billionaire inventor, James Halliday, died and left behind a mischievous legacy. Whoever first cracks Halliday’s series of ’80s-related riddles, clues and puzzles that are included in a film called “Anorak’s Invitation” will inherit his fortune.
Halliday was “the video-game designer responsible for creating the Oasis, a massively multiplayer online game that had gradually evolved into the globally networked virtual reality most of humanity now used on a daily basis,” Mr. Cline writes. Part of what has made Oasis so attractive is that real life on an impoverished, resource-depleted Earth has grown increasingly grim. So the characters in “Ready Player One” spend their time as avatars bewitched by online role playing. They live as shut-ins and don’t know one another in the flesh. Art3mis, the hot-looking blogger and warrior who becomes the novel’s heroine, may actually be an overweight middle-aged guy named Chuck.
Read novel online - The book’s narrator is a school kid named Wade Watts, whose parents at least had the foresight to give him the alliterative name of a superhero. But Wade’s real circumstances are not exciting. He lives in a tall block of stacked mobile homes and escapes to an abandoned van to adopt his online persona. He goes to school because he has to; his video console and virtual-reality visor will be taken away if he flunks out. But his school avatar is often seen slumped at its desk, sleeping. That’s because Wade is busy being an alter ego called Parzival. Like Art3mis he spells his name funny because the other spellings are already taken.
Wade is obsessed with “Anorak’s Invitation,” not least because there’s something fishy about it: the extras seen with Halliday have been digitally borrowed from old John Hughes films. There’s no knowing what actually happened to Halliday. But Halliday’s knowledge of 1980s trivia was so thorough that Wade is determined to match it. (As a full-time gamer he is competitive by nature. And what else has he got to do?) So he knows everything about every episode of “Family Ties” and every coin-operated arcade game. “Ready Player One” takes its title, sentimentally, from the phrase that signaled the start of games from that era.
In “Anorak’s Invitation” Halliday mentions one of his sentimental favorites, the Atari game Adventure, and the Easter egg that its creator, Warren Robinett, incorporated into it. And now it’s time to start looking things up, if you are hooked by Mr. Cline’s premise but unfamiliar with his huge frame of reference. An Easter egg is a secret sign or clue or whatnot that may be embedded in a game, and Halliday has deliberately created an occasion for egg hunting. A great many egg hunters, known as “gunters” for short, do nothing but try to find Halliday’s eggs. Reader, ask yourself: Would you be interested in Wade’s story if you weren’t sure he was smarter than all the other guys?
SEE SAMPLE PRIVACY POLICY OPT OUT OR CONTACT US ANYTIME Because Wade needs at least a few friends, he bonds with Art3mis and three other avatars. They become known as the High Five when they start racking up high numbers on the cosmic scoreboard. Mr. Cline describes their progress with a winking appreciation of the culture clash that ensues when Wade, a humble schoolboy, reaches the Tomb of Horrors to lock antlers with Acererack the Demi-Lich from Dungeons & Dragons. But “Ready Player One” crosses a line here, when its virtual-reality fetish leads it into Dungeons & Dragons for real.
The book gets off to a witty start, with Wade and his cronies slinging insults about one another’s knowledge of fantasy films and using ’80s-vintage movie quips like “Don’t call me Shirley.” (From “Airplane!” of course.) And if they are capable of arguing endlessly about “Star Wars” trivia, they’re also living in a 27-sector virtual-reality world arranged like a Rubik’s Cube and where the “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” realms are right next door to each other. (See “nerdgasm,” above.) So the breadth and cleverness of Mr. Cline’s imagination gets this daydream pretty far. But there comes a point when it’s clear that Wade lacks at least one dimension, and that gaming has overwhelmed everything else about this book.
Still it will be interesting to see how “Ready Player One” becomes (as is planned) a movie based on a book about songs, TV shows, games and movies. And when lines like “Continue your quest by taking the test” are said out loud and don't forget reading novel online for free
Mr. Cline is photographed on the jacket standing in front of an open-flapped DeLorean, like the one in “Back to the Future.” He looks a bit like the filmmaker Kevin Smith, one of the few people on the planet who may be capable of catching all of Mr. Cline’s geekoid references. (Mr. Cline himself wrote the screenplay for the 2009 film “Fanboys,” about unusually fanatical “Star Wars” devotees.) Another is the science-fiction writer John Scalzi, who has aptly referred to “Ready Player One” as a “nerdgasm.” There can be no better one-word description of this ardent fantasy artifact about fantasy culture.
With its Pac-Man-style cover graphics and vintage Atari mind-set “Ready Player One” certainly looks like a genre item. But Mr. Cline is able to incorporate his favorite toys and games into a perfectly accessible narrative. He sets it in 2044, when there aren’t many original Duran Duran fans still afoot, and most students of 1980s trivia are zealous kids. They are interested in that time period because a billionaire inventor, James Halliday, died and left behind a mischievous legacy. Whoever first cracks Halliday’s series of ’80s-related riddles, clues and puzzles that are included in a film called “Anorak’s Invitation” will inherit his fortune.
Halliday was “the video-game designer responsible for creating the Oasis, a massively multiplayer online game that had gradually evolved into the globally networked virtual reality most of humanity now used on a daily basis,” Mr. Cline writes. Part of what has made Oasis so attractive is that real life on an impoverished, resource-depleted Earth has grown increasingly grim. So the characters in “Ready Player One” spend their time as avatars bewitched by online role playing. They live as shut-ins and don’t know one another in the flesh. Art3mis, the hot-looking blogger and warrior who becomes the novel’s heroine, may actually be an overweight middle-aged guy named Chuck.
Read novel online - The book’s narrator is a school kid named Wade Watts, whose parents at least had the foresight to give him the alliterative name of a superhero. But Wade’s real circumstances are not exciting. He lives in a tall block of stacked mobile homes and escapes to an abandoned van to adopt his online persona. He goes to school because he has to; his video console and virtual-reality visor will be taken away if he flunks out. But his school avatar is often seen slumped at its desk, sleeping. That’s because Wade is busy being an alter ego called Parzival. Like Art3mis he spells his name funny because the other spellings are already taken.
Wade is obsessed with “Anorak’s Invitation,” not least because there’s something fishy about it: the extras seen with Halliday have been digitally borrowed from old John Hughes films. There’s no knowing what actually happened to Halliday. But Halliday’s knowledge of 1980s trivia was so thorough that Wade is determined to match it. (As a full-time gamer he is competitive by nature. And what else has he got to do?) So he knows everything about every episode of “Family Ties” and every coin-operated arcade game. “Ready Player One” takes its title, sentimentally, from the phrase that signaled the start of games from that era.
In “Anorak’s Invitation” Halliday mentions one of his sentimental favorites, the Atari game Adventure, and the Easter egg that its creator, Warren Robinett, incorporated into it. And now it’s time to start looking things up, if you are hooked by Mr. Cline’s premise but unfamiliar with his huge frame of reference. An Easter egg is a secret sign or clue or whatnot that may be embedded in a game, and Halliday has deliberately created an occasion for egg hunting. A great many egg hunters, known as “gunters” for short, do nothing but try to find Halliday’s eggs. Reader, ask yourself: Would you be interested in Wade’s story if you weren’t sure he was smarter than all the other guys?
SEE SAMPLE PRIVACY POLICY OPT OUT OR CONTACT US ANYTIME Because Wade needs at least a few friends, he bonds with Art3mis and three other avatars. They become known as the High Five when they start racking up high numbers on the cosmic scoreboard. Mr. Cline describes their progress with a winking appreciation of the culture clash that ensues when Wade, a humble schoolboy, reaches the Tomb of Horrors to lock antlers with Acererack the Demi-Lich from Dungeons & Dragons. But “Ready Player One” crosses a line here, when its virtual-reality fetish leads it into Dungeons & Dragons for real.
The book gets off to a witty start, with Wade and his cronies slinging insults about one another’s knowledge of fantasy films and using ’80s-vintage movie quips like “Don’t call me Shirley.” (From “Airplane!” of course.) And if they are capable of arguing endlessly about “Star Wars” trivia, they’re also living in a 27-sector virtual-reality world arranged like a Rubik’s Cube and where the “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” realms are right next door to each other. (See “nerdgasm,” above.) So the breadth and cleverness of Mr. Cline’s imagination gets this daydream pretty far. But there comes a point when it’s clear that Wade lacks at least one dimension, and that gaming has overwhelmed everything else about this book.
Still it will be interesting to see how “Ready Player One” becomes (as is planned) a movie based on a book about songs, TV shows, games and movies. And when lines like “Continue your quest by taking the test” are said out loud and don't forget reading novel online for free
Ready Player One
Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One” is a book filled with references to video games, virtual reality, ’80s pop-culture trivia, geek heroes like E. Gary Gygax, and funny-sounding cult items like Frobozz and Raaka-Tu. Yet it works for people who like books without pictures too.
Mr. Cline is photographed on the jacket standing in front of an open-flapped DeLorean, like the one in “Back to the Future.” He looks a bit like the filmmaker Kevin Smith, one of the few people on the planet who may be capable of catching all of Mr. Cline’s geekoid references. (Mr. Cline himself wrote the screenplay for the 2009 film “Fanboys,” about unusually fanatical “Star Wars” devotees.) Another is the science-fiction writer John Scalzi, who has aptly referred to “Ready Player One” as a “nerdgasm.” There can be no better one-word description of this ardent fantasy artifact about fantasy culture.
With its Pac-Man-style cover graphics and vintage Atari mind-set “Ready Player One” certainly looks like a genre item. But Mr. Cline is able to incorporate his favorite toys and games into a perfectly accessible narrative. He sets it in 2044, when there aren’t many original Duran Duran fans still afoot, and most students of 1980s trivia are zealous kids. They are interested in that time period because a billionaire inventor, James Halliday, died and left behind a mischievous legacy. Whoever first cracks Halliday’s series of ’80s-related riddles, clues and puzzles that are included in a film called “Anorak’s Invitation” will inherit his fortune.
Halliday was “the video-game designer responsible for creating the Oasis, a massively multiplayer online game that had gradually evolved into the globally networked virtual reality most of humanity now used on a daily basis,” Mr. Cline writes. Part of what has made Oasis so attractive is that real life on an impoverished, resource-depleted Earth has grown increasingly grim. So the characters in “Ready Player One” spend their time as avatars bewitched by online role playing. They live as shut-ins and don’t know one another in the flesh. Art3mis, the hot-looking blogger and warrior who becomes the novel’s heroine, may actually be an overweight middle-aged guy named Chuck.
Read novel online - The book’s narrator is a school kid named Wade Watts, whose parents at least had the foresight to give him the alliterative name of a superhero. But Wade’s real circumstances are not exciting. He lives in a tall block of stacked mobile homes and escapes to an abandoned van to adopt his online persona. He goes to school because he has to; his video console and virtual-reality visor will be taken away if he flunks out. But his school avatar is often seen slumped at its desk, sleeping. That’s because Wade is busy being an alter ego called Parzival. Like Art3mis he spells his name funny because the other spellings are already taken.
Wade is obsessed with “Anorak’s Invitation,” not least because there’s something fishy about it: the extras seen with Halliday have been digitally borrowed from old John Hughes films. There’s no knowing what actually happened to Halliday. But Halliday’s knowledge of 1980s trivia was so thorough that Wade is determined to match it. (As a full-time gamer he is competitive by nature. And what else has he got to do?) So he knows everything about every episode of “Family Ties” and every coin-operated arcade game. “Ready Player One” takes its title, sentimentally, from the phrase that signaled the start of games from that era.
In “Anorak’s Invitation” Halliday mentions one of his sentimental favorites, the Atari game Adventure, and the Easter egg that its creator, Warren Robinett, incorporated into it. And now it’s time to start looking things up, if you are hooked by Mr. Cline’s premise but unfamiliar with his huge frame of reference. An Easter egg is a secret sign or clue or whatnot that may be embedded in a game, and Halliday has deliberately created an occasion for egg hunting. A great many egg hunters, known as “gunters” for short, do nothing but try to find Halliday’s eggs. Reader, ask yourself: Would you be interested in Wade’s story if you weren’t sure he was smarter than all the other guys?
SEE SAMPLE PRIVACY POLICY OPT OUT OR CONTACT US ANYTIME Because Wade needs at least a few friends, he bonds with Art3mis and three other avatars. They become known as the High Five when they start racking up high numbers on the cosmic scoreboard. Mr. Cline describes their progress with a winking appreciation of the culture clash that ensues when Wade, a humble schoolboy, reaches the Tomb of Horrors to lock antlers with Acererack the Demi-Lich from Dungeons & Dragons. But “Ready Player One” crosses a line here, when its virtual-reality fetish leads it into Dungeons & Dragons for real.
The book gets off to a witty start, with Wade and his cronies slinging insults about one another’s knowledge of fantasy films and using ’80s-vintage movie quips like “Don’t call me Shirley.” (From “Airplane!” of course.) And if they are capable of arguing endlessly about “Star Wars” trivia, they’re also living in a 27-sector virtual-reality world arranged like a Rubik’s Cube and where the “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” realms are right next door to each other. (See “nerdgasm,” above.) So the breadth and cleverness of Mr. Cline’s imagination gets this daydream pretty far. But there comes a point when it’s clear that Wade lacks at least one dimension, and that gaming has overwhelmed everything else about this book.
Still it will be interesting to see how “Ready Player One” becomes (as is planned) a movie based on a book about songs, TV shows, games and movies. And when lines like “Continue your quest by taking the test” are said out loud and don't forget reading novel online for free
Mr. Cline is photographed on the jacket standing in front of an open-flapped DeLorean, like the one in “Back to the Future.” He looks a bit like the filmmaker Kevin Smith, one of the few people on the planet who may be capable of catching all of Mr. Cline’s geekoid references. (Mr. Cline himself wrote the screenplay for the 2009 film “Fanboys,” about unusually fanatical “Star Wars” devotees.) Another is the science-fiction writer John Scalzi, who has aptly referred to “Ready Player One” as a “nerdgasm.” There can be no better one-word description of this ardent fantasy artifact about fantasy culture.
With its Pac-Man-style cover graphics and vintage Atari mind-set “Ready Player One” certainly looks like a genre item. But Mr. Cline is able to incorporate his favorite toys and games into a perfectly accessible narrative. He sets it in 2044, when there aren’t many original Duran Duran fans still afoot, and most students of 1980s trivia are zealous kids. They are interested in that time period because a billionaire inventor, James Halliday, died and left behind a mischievous legacy. Whoever first cracks Halliday’s series of ’80s-related riddles, clues and puzzles that are included in a film called “Anorak’s Invitation” will inherit his fortune.
Halliday was “the video-game designer responsible for creating the Oasis, a massively multiplayer online game that had gradually evolved into the globally networked virtual reality most of humanity now used on a daily basis,” Mr. Cline writes. Part of what has made Oasis so attractive is that real life on an impoverished, resource-depleted Earth has grown increasingly grim. So the characters in “Ready Player One” spend their time as avatars bewitched by online role playing. They live as shut-ins and don’t know one another in the flesh. Art3mis, the hot-looking blogger and warrior who becomes the novel’s heroine, may actually be an overweight middle-aged guy named Chuck.
Read novel online - The book’s narrator is a school kid named Wade Watts, whose parents at least had the foresight to give him the alliterative name of a superhero. But Wade’s real circumstances are not exciting. He lives in a tall block of stacked mobile homes and escapes to an abandoned van to adopt his online persona. He goes to school because he has to; his video console and virtual-reality visor will be taken away if he flunks out. But his school avatar is often seen slumped at its desk, sleeping. That’s because Wade is busy being an alter ego called Parzival. Like Art3mis he spells his name funny because the other spellings are already taken.
Wade is obsessed with “Anorak’s Invitation,” not least because there’s something fishy about it: the extras seen with Halliday have been digitally borrowed from old John Hughes films. There’s no knowing what actually happened to Halliday. But Halliday’s knowledge of 1980s trivia was so thorough that Wade is determined to match it. (As a full-time gamer he is competitive by nature. And what else has he got to do?) So he knows everything about every episode of “Family Ties” and every coin-operated arcade game. “Ready Player One” takes its title, sentimentally, from the phrase that signaled the start of games from that era.
In “Anorak’s Invitation” Halliday mentions one of his sentimental favorites, the Atari game Adventure, and the Easter egg that its creator, Warren Robinett, incorporated into it. And now it’s time to start looking things up, if you are hooked by Mr. Cline’s premise but unfamiliar with his huge frame of reference. An Easter egg is a secret sign or clue or whatnot that may be embedded in a game, and Halliday has deliberately created an occasion for egg hunting. A great many egg hunters, known as “gunters” for short, do nothing but try to find Halliday’s eggs. Reader, ask yourself: Would you be interested in Wade’s story if you weren’t sure he was smarter than all the other guys?
SEE SAMPLE PRIVACY POLICY OPT OUT OR CONTACT US ANYTIME Because Wade needs at least a few friends, he bonds with Art3mis and three other avatars. They become known as the High Five when they start racking up high numbers on the cosmic scoreboard. Mr. Cline describes their progress with a winking appreciation of the culture clash that ensues when Wade, a humble schoolboy, reaches the Tomb of Horrors to lock antlers with Acererack the Demi-Lich from Dungeons & Dragons. But “Ready Player One” crosses a line here, when its virtual-reality fetish leads it into Dungeons & Dragons for real.
The book gets off to a witty start, with Wade and his cronies slinging insults about one another’s knowledge of fantasy films and using ’80s-vintage movie quips like “Don’t call me Shirley.” (From “Airplane!” of course.) And if they are capable of arguing endlessly about “Star Wars” trivia, they’re also living in a 27-sector virtual-reality world arranged like a Rubik’s Cube and where the “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” realms are right next door to each other. (See “nerdgasm,” above.) So the breadth and cleverness of Mr. Cline’s imagination gets this daydream pretty far. But there comes a point when it’s clear that Wade lacks at least one dimension, and that gaming has overwhelmed everything else about this book.
Still it will be interesting to see how “Ready Player One” becomes (as is planned) a movie based on a book about songs, TV shows, games and movies. And when lines like “Continue your quest by taking the test” are said out loud and don't forget reading novel online for free
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)