Bellwether

Bellwether by Connie Willis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fad researcher Sandra Foster just wants to know what caused women to start bobbing their hair in the 1920s - but what she gets is an aggressively incompetent assistant, a longer budget request form, and a chance meeting with a man who seems immune to every trend.

Sandra sees herself as the sane point in the turning world - even though her hobby is systematically checking out her favorite books so that the library won't get rid of them, and every moment of her day is spent  analyzing pop culture. She struggles to understand why people are suddenly wearing duct tape armbands and rolling their eyes, and wishes that things like politeness and chocolate cheesecake would catch on.

Flip, Sandra's rude assistant, is possibly the most irritating character in literature (aside from Lydia Bennett), and she could be Ignatius J. Reilly's trainee When Flip's misdelivery of a package leads Sandra to the office of chaos researcher Bennett O'Reilly, Sandra doesn't realize that the chance meeting will lead her to borrow a flock of sheep just to keep the unconventional scientist around. This isn't even the craziest thing that happens in Bellwether.

Connie Willis has a way of writing that makes you feel as though you're inside a screwball comedy. The romance aspect here is slightly underplayed but charming (I could use more of Bennett). Sandra's company, HiTek, has a level of internal dysfunction to rival Office Space's TPS reports or the Feds' toilet paper memo in Snow Crash. Best of all, each chapter begins with fascinating tidbits about historical fads, from Hula Hoops to dancing mania to diorama wigs.

Bellwether is every bit as smart and funny as you expect a Connie Willis book to be, and the perfect way to start your summer reading.

Interested in the idea of complexity? Continue on with The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow, or Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Ready Player One

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An Easter egg that holds the key to an eccentric billionaire's fortune is hidden in the virtual reality world of OASIS - and a high school boy has just deciphered the first clue.

Wade Watts, master of obscure 80s geek culture, lives in a trailer park stack in the energy-starved America of 2040. His only relief from his dangerous life comes when he plugs into the expansive OASIS to hunt for the holy hand grenade of questers all over the world. To figure out each clue, he must rely on his extensive knowledge of 80s pop culture touchstones - from Ladyhawke to Dungeons&Dragons to Atari. But he has stiff competition - not only in the form of fellow questers, but also the ruthless corporation IOI and its hordes of "Sixer" hunters - men and women hired to hack the game to win control of OASIS. Can one otaku hope to prevail?

I only happened to be born in the 80s and have never once played an arcade game or entered the World of Warcraft, but I read this book in a day, sucked in by its puzzle premise. Cline pays tribute to leagues of gaming geeks without mocking them. In fact, he shows the value that connections forged in virtual reality can have IRL (though eventually Watts realizes that going out into the sunlight now and again might be a good idea). It lacks Snow Crash's electric style, but Ready Player One is another great trip through a fun and vivid virtual world.

This book would definitely appeal to fans of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. (The premise reminded me of Ellen Raskin's children's book, The Westing Game, too.)


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