… in the not-so-distant future the world has turned into a very bleak place, but luckily there is OASIS, a virtual reality world that is a vast online utopia. People can plug into OASIS to play, go to school, earn money, and even meet other people (or at least they can meet their avatars), and for protagonist Wade Watts it certainly beats passing the time in his grim, poverty-stricken real life. Along with millions of other world-wide citizens, Wade dreams of finding three keys left behind by James Halliday, the now-deceased creator of OASIS and the richest man to have ever lived. The keys are rumored to be hidden inside OASIS, and whoever finds them will inherit Halliday’s fortune. But Halliday has not made it easy. And there are real dangers in this virtual world.

After hearing Jick talk about it on a Kingdom of Loathing podcast last year, I picked up a copy of  “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline. I have to admit, this book had me hooked after referring to “Heathers,” Oingo Boingo, the Atari 2600, and 800XL, Galaga, and “Family Ties” in just the first few pages.

The beginning gave me a distinct “Daemon” vibe: when an eccentric software developer and creator of the OASIS (think the Matrix), James Halliday, died he left behind a massive virtual scavenger hunt inside the massive online system. The first person to find all three keys, pass the three gates, and find Halliday’s easter egg becomes the sole heir to his entire estate and owner of the OASIS (the similarity to “Daemon” ends there since Halliday isn’t trying to kill people and take over the world from beyond the grave).

Our protagonist, Wade Watts, is a high school senior and an expert in all things Halliday. He’s just one of millions of gunters (or “egg hunters” trying to find Halliday’s egg. But it’s been five years since Halliday’s death and no one has even found the first key yet. That is, until Wade (known as Parzival in the OASIS), makes a breakthrough discovery and the hunt is suddenly on. Wade quickly learns that the search for Halliday’s egg is serious business in some circles, even worth killing for. Can Parzival and his fellow gunters find the egg and keep the OASIS free from the hands of the corporate behemoths who want sole financial control?

“Ready Player One” takes place in 2044, but it’s chock full of 80s pop-culture (check the wiki page for just a few!). “Whiz Kids,” Cory Doctorow, Will Wheaton (who reads the audiobook version), “WarGames,” “Blade Runner,” and Monty Python all make appearances. It was those references that really appealed to my nostalgic side, having been a geek in the 80s (the golden age of dungeons and dragons, video games, music, movies, and TV) when being a geek wasn’t cool. Without getting into spoilers there was a whole interactive fiction section (I took great pride in figuring out the “dwelling long neglected” puzzle chapters before Wade did ), and I had actually listened to Rush’s 2112 the day before it came up in the book. On top of all of that, I learned some things: I had no idea the last level of Pac-Man was a corrupted split-screen (I never got that far), or that the very first easter egg was in Adventure on the Atari 2600.

I also couldn’t help but wonder if Cline had modeled James Halliday on Steve Jobs with the way he is portrayed in the story (an intensely private person who built something that changed the world, and died, tragically, of cancer). Halliday’s business partner, Ogden Morrow, even reminded me of Woz, and the evil empire of Innovative Online Industries could have been Microsoft.

Overall, “Ready Player One” was an immensely enjoyable ready for me. If you were a nerd in the 80s, you really should read it.

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has survived the Hunger Games twice. But now that she’s made it out of the bloody arena alive, she’s still not safe. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge. Who do they think should pay for the unrest? Katniss. And what’s worse, President Snow has made it clear that no one else is safe either. Not Katniss’s family, not her friends, not the people of District 12.

I just finished reading “Mockingjay,” the last book of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy. (Warning … slight spoilers may follow!)

The book picks up immediately where “Catching Fire” ended: Katniss has been rescued from the arena by the rebels from District 13, but they were unable to rescue Peeta who is now in the hands of the government forces. As part of the resistance, Katniss reluctantly becomes the titular Mockingjay, the face of the revolution, and a tug-of-war of propaganda ensues between the revolting districts and the Capitol.

The revolution in Panem takes center-stage in this final book of the trilogy while the love triangle between Katniss, Peeta, and Gale continues to be a main plot point. Peeta is eventually rescued from the Capitol but turns out to be brainwashed, no longer his gentle self, but a ticking time-bomb programmed to (hopefully) kill the Mockingjay.

Can Peeta fight his demons be returned to normal? Will the Districts be able to overthrow the Capitol and win the war? Will Katniss get her final revenge and kill President Snow? Most (but not all) of your questions are answered in the final chapters. I found the end to be a little rushed (and my daughter had ruined one of the major surprises for me) but still enjoyed the series.

It will be interesting to see how all of this plays out on the silver screen. We went to see “Beauty and the Beast” in 3D today and all of “The Hunger Games” movie posters were hanging up (only two months to go!) which got my daughter all psyched. It’s going to be PG-13, though, and even though she’s read the books I’m not sure how seeing some of those sequences on screen are going to affect her (real or not real?) so we may have to do the “wait and watch at home” thing.

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the annual Hunger Games with fellow district tribute Peeta Mellark. But it was a victory won by defiance of the Capitol and their harsh rules. Katniss and Peeta should be happy. After all, they have just won for themselves and their families a life of safety and plenty. But there are rumors of rebellion among the subjects, and Katniss and Peeta, to their horror, are the faces of that rebellion. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge.

During our summer road trip we listened to the audiobook version of Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games” and my daughter quickly read the remaining books in the trilogy shortly afterwards. With the upcoming March 2012 release of the movie, I know I’ll probably be taking her to see all of them anyway so I figured I might as well read the rest of the books myself.

“Catching Fire” is the second book in the series and begins about six months after Katniss and Peeta emerged as the dual victors of the 74th annual Hunger Games, as they prepare to go on their Victory Tour of the other Districts. This year’s Hunger Games will be a Quarter Quell, which occurs every 25 years and usually includes some sort of miserable twist to the Games. The surprise for this Quell is that the Tributes will be selected from past victors, which means Katniss and Peeta are going into the Arena … again.

The secondary plotline continues to be the unrest in the Districts towards the Capitol. As the title suggests, Katniss has become the spark that could ignite a revolution and the Capitol will do everything in its power to prevent that. So where the first book focused more on the Games themselves, this story gives us more detail on the other Districts, their relationship with the Capitol, and the current political situation in Panem overall.

Just like the first novel, “Catching Fire” is laid out in three parts of 9 chapters each, and is an easy read (not surprising since it’s really young-adult literature). It seemed to end rather abruptly just and events were really picking up, but having started “Mockingjay” now I know it picks up immediately and keeps going, so it was the logical break point for the book.

Just remember who the Enemy is …

woot! had indicated the Kindle had a 1-year warranty from Amazon, so I called up Kindle Support (or rather, they called me once I initiated the request from their support site, which is pretty cool). The support rep (an extremely friendly, American gentleman) told me refurbished devices only have a 90 day warranty, not a year, and the warranty on my particular device expired in July 2011 (a month after I got it, so that must have been tied to the original warranty before the unit was refurbished and then purchased by me).

I was dismayed by this, since woot! claimed the 1-year warranty which turned out not to be true. The rep told me my options were to (obviously) buy a new Kindle or for $40 they would replace my broken unit with another. Digging a little deeper with the rep, I learned that the $40 replacement fee would get me a 3rd generation Kindle (now called the Kindle Keyboard) with the same free 3G service my daughter’s current Kindle has. Basically they would give me the closest current device to what I already owned. That sounded almost too good to believe so I went ahead with the replacement request.

Two days later (thanks to my Amazon Prime membership), my daughter’s new Kindle Keyboard arrived. Not only is it smaller and thinner than her 2nd gen device, it has the free 3G plus WiFi, has more storage, and it’s not the “with Special Offers” version either (it’s the $189 one). Very nice! Except for the fact that the new Kindle didn’t fit in her M-Edge GO! case, my daughter was thrilled. I was able to easily re-download her all of her books by “pushing” them from the Amazon web site and she was back in business (except for having to re-create her Collections).

I’m sad the Kindle 2 screen only lasted six months before inexplicably dying (I see a few other people on the woot! thread reported the same problem, so maybe it was just a bad batch of refurbs) and I’m a little upset at woot! for misrepresenting the warranty, but overall I’m very satisfied with Amazon’s support and the final outcome.

A plane over the Atlantic suddenly needs to reboot its computer to stay in the air, and the pilots barely avert disaster. A hospital network mixes up patient information, resulting in the death of several people. A law firm, which has lost all of its clients’ data and can’t get its system running again, turns to Jeff Aiken, a former government analyst and computer expert. He discovers that all of the crashes are insidiously connected, and an even greater disaster is coming.

I just finished reading “Zero Day” by Mark Russinovich, a cyber-thriller on par with Daniel Suarez’s “Daemon” or “FreedomTM.” At its core, “Zero Day” addresses a real-world, incredibly difficult to solve dilemma: with so many unprotected/unpatched computers in the world today, could a well-crafted virus potentially wreak havoc on the global economy?

The plot: an insidious computer virus, masked by different rootkits, multiple variants, and seemingly multiple authors, is secretly infecting computer systems all over the world, with a trigger date of 9/11. The virus is only noticed ahead of time because some of the computers it infected had incorrect system clocks which caused it to trigger a month early, completely crashing them. Jeff Aiken, a computer security expert, and his former colleague Daryl Haugen, the Assistant Director Computer Infrastructure Security Unit at the Department of Homeland Security, are on the trail of the virus, trying to track it back to its source before the zero day strikes. Who is behind the virus? How long has it been propagating? How widespread is it? Can it be stopped? Will anyone believe them?

We’re all familiar with the concept of viruses and malware and the importance of running anti-virus software and firewalls and keeping our computer systems patched. The reality is, however, that there are a lot of machines complete unprotected or unpatched, which opens a lot of vulnerabilities for the bad guys to exploit. Russinovich, a Technical Fellow at Microsoft, is well-versed in the topic at hand, and so I found his novel to be a little more realistic than the Suarez books I referenced above.

The book is fast-paced and a good read even for those of us in the computer industry. For more information about “Zero Day,” check out the book’s website.

Lisbeth Salander, the brilliant computer hacker who was shot in the head, is alive, though still the prime suspect in three murders in Stockholm. While she convalesces under armed guard, journalist Mikael Blomkvist works to unravel the decades-old coverup surrounding the man who shot Salander: her father, Alexander Zalachenko, a Soviet intelligence defector and longtime secret asset to Säpo, Sweden’s security police.

“The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest” by Stieg Larsson is the final book of the Millenium trilogy and I finally finished reading it this past weekend during my trip up to Ohio.

“Hornets’ Nest” picks up immediately where “The Girl Who Played with Fire” ended: Mikael Blomkvist has found Salander miraculously alive after being shot in the head and buried at a remote farm where she tried to kill her father and half-brother. Lisbeth and Zalachenko end up in the hospital under police guard while the authorities try to piece together the events that occurred in the second book. Meanwhile, The Section, the secret division of the security police is mobilizing to protect its secrets and its past history. Once again Blomkvist and Salander are at the center of a political, legal, and far-reaching scandal that threatens both of their lives and the lives of their associates.

In “Fire” we learned about Lisbeth’s backstory and history with Zalachenko and The Section. “Hornets’ Nest” unravels the inner workings of The Section, its history inside Säpo, the players involved, and explains how the conspiracy started and continued into present day. It gets a bit complex and at times I found it hard to keep everyone and everything straight, but Larsson does a good job of intriguing the reader and keeping the plot moving forward at a good pace. Even the big courtroom scenes at the end, which are mostly expository, are riveting to read. It’s not until the final pages of the epilogue when everything finally falls into place and is neatly wrapped up.

Having cancelled Netflix recently, I won’t be able to watch the third installment of the Swedish movies, but the US version of the trilogy starts in December.

First you need to determine if your local library is one of the 11,000 currently participating in the lending program. You can search overdrive.com for this information. Luckily, our library was listed, so that first step was out of the way. From the Overdrive site you can jump directly to the library’s web site for borrowing digital media. It’s a little strange that this brave new world of digital lending has a restriction left over from the physical world of libraries: there are only so many “copies” of a given e-book available for checkout. Anyway, the process should be familiar to anyone who’s ever bought something online: you search for what you want, add it to your “cart” and then checkout using your library card.

This is where the process gets a little more complicated. Now that you’ve checked the books out on the library site, you have to click another button (the “Get for Kindle” button in my screenshot above) which takes you to Amazon’s site. Once logged in to your Amazon account, the “lent” books appear in your Kindle library and you can send them to your device.

At this point, it got even more complicated for me. I wasn’t able to select the Kindle as a target for delivery, only the Kindle app on my iPhone and iPad. That’s when I noticed this note on the site:

Note: Public library books require an active Wi-Fi connection for wireless delivery to a Kindle device. Library books will not be delivered via your Kindle’s 3G connection. If trying to send to a Kindle device and do not have an active Wi-Fi connection, you may instead choose to load your library book via USB. Both Mac and Windows users can manage Kindle content through a USB connection.

Huh? My daughter’s 2nd generation Kindle doesn’t have Wi-Fi, only 3G. I don’t understand the limitation of Wi-Fi only delivery. Why won’t it work over 3G Whispernet? So now, after visiting two web sites, I had to download the .AZW files, connect the Kindle via USB, and copy the files to the device. Finally, the books were available to read on the Kindle.

Supposedly I should get an e-mail in a few days reminding me that the book with expire, and then after a week it should be automatically removed. Apparently any notes or highlights you make are stored so if you check out the book again (or buy it) everything you’ve saved will be in tact.

So the process is a little convoluted, but the end result is a library book on your Kindle (without having to go into a library)!

This was the first Potter film we actually saw in the theater. My daughter was too young when the films were first released (she read the whole series start to finish in 2007 when she was just 6) and we felt that it was “safer” to watch the films at home (the last few are obviously pretty dark). Just the other week we got “Deathly Hallows: Part 1″ from Netflix and she seemed to do okay with the more intense stuff. Since “Harry Potter” is the “Star Wars” of her generation (with wands instead of lightsabers), I wanted her to have that theater experience to remember so this was her last chance (until they re-release them in 20 years with newly enhanced digital effects … oh, wait, that’s just Lucas’ gig).

Part 2 picks up right where Part 1 left-off (after 20 minutes of trailers!), so I was glad we had just watched the first one. It also helped that I was sitting next to our family expert, who’s read the books multiple times. I was able to to whisper questions to my daughter about who was who, or what was going on (it’s been years since I read the books), to get the scoop. Overall, it was a great movie, although all of those actors spent a lot of time being wet, dirty, and bloody.

The whole world knows and loves this book. It is the magical epic of King Arthur and his shining Camelot; of Merlin and Owl and Guinevere; of beasts who talk and men who fly, of wizardry and war. It is the book of all things lost and wonderful and sad. It is the fantasy masterpiece by which all others are judged.

As a slight change to my regular WIJFR posts, this one should be WIAFR (What I Almost Finished Reading).

It’d been a while since my daughter and I had read a book together so back in Mid-May we started “The Once and Future King” by T. H. White.

Part 1, “The Sword in the Stone,” chronicles the Wart’s (Arthur’s) childhood and tutelage under Merlyn. She laughed at the wizard’s antics (sewing his beard into his scarf, blowing himself to Bermuda, etc.) but was slightly confused by the concept of his living backwards in time. As the Wart was changed into different animals (hawl, owl, ant, fish, etc.) by Merlyn for his lessons, she enjoyed hearing about the adventures and problems he had (I’m sure if we keep reading she’ll make the connection between the meaning of those lessons and the situations that occur later on). She even caught some of the references to other literature, like Robin Wood (not Hood!) and Maid Marian (obvious) and Queen Circe (not-so-obvious, and even though she knew of her through the Percy Jackson novels I was still impressed). Next to Merlyn and the Wart, I think her next-favorite character was Archimedes, Merlyn’s trusty owl. Of course, the book ends with the Wart pulling the sword out of the stone and becoming the King of England (spoilers! ) which pleased her as well.

“The Once and Future King” is actually a compilation of five of T. H. White’s earlier works, so I guess you could say we actually finished “The Sword in the Stone” and then stopped there. We got a few chapters into Part 2 (“The Queen of Air and Darkness“) but I felt that the content and language was a bit above a 10-year old’s comprehension level so suggested we stop and finish it later. She protested, but I think that’s the right decision for now. Instead, it’s time to show her the old Disney movie!

In a not-too-distant future, the United States of America has collapsed, weakened by drought, fire, famine, and war, to be replaced by Panem, a country divided into the Capitol and 12 districts. Each year, two young representatives from each district are selected by lottery to participate in The Hunger Games. Part entertainment, part brutal intimidation of the subjugated districts, the televised games are broadcasted throughout Panem as the 24 participants are forced to eliminate their competitors, literally, with all citizens required to watch. When 16-year-old Katniss’s young sister, Prim, is selected as the mining district’s female representative, Katniss volunteers to take her place. She and her male counterpart, Peeta, the son of the town baker who seems to have all the fighting skills of a lump of bread dough, will be pitted against bigger, stronger representatives who have trained for this their whole lives.

During our recent family vacation road trip, we all “read” (listened to) the audiobook version of Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games.” We spent almost 68 hours in the car, so we had no trouble getting through all 11 hours of it.

I had never heard of this book but my daughter apparently learned about it through classmates so my wife purchased the audiobook from iTunes before we left. Since I knew nothing going in, other than it was young adult fiction, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

The excerpt I included at the beginning of this post does a pretty good job of summing up the plot of the novel, so I won’t attempt to elaborate on that any more. It was a pretty good (although sometimes brutal) story. We started out listening to only short bits at a time, intending it to be an occasional distraction from other activities in the car, but soon we were really into it and going through 2 hours at a time easily. Carolyn McCormick‘s reading of the novel was well executed (although $26 for an audiobook seems a bit much).

In the week since we’ve gotten back from vacation, my daughter has already borrowed (and finished!) the next two books in the trilogy: “Catching Fire” and “Mockingjay.” I wonder if I should mention to her that the movie is coming out next year. I guess we’ll need something to look forward to once the Harry Potter movies are all done.