It’s so much fun when a friend recommends a book, and tells you that the audiobook version is just terrific, and you listen to that audiobook, and then you totally agree with her! That’s what just happened to me! Recently, Les (@Coastal Horizons) and Kay (@Kay’s Reading Life) and I visited a wonderful bookstore, Third Street Books, in McMinnville, Oregon. While there, Les mentioned how good the audiobook version was of Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline, narrated by Will Wheaton. So, I downloaded it and thoroughly enjoyed listening to it this month!

I thought this book was wonderfully creative and fun. I kept thinking of my son throughout the story because much of the computer and video game stuff was from his growing up years, but I felt the fun was ageless. It really was a love letter to the 1980s that everyone can enjoy!

From the Publisher’s Summary:

At once wildly original and stuffed with irresistible nostalgia, Ready Player One is a spectacularly genre-busting, ambitious, and charming debut – part quest novel, part love story, and part virtual space opera set in a universe where spell-slinging mages battle giant Japanese robots, entire planets are inspired by Blade Runner, and flying DeLoreans achieve light speed.

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I’m looking forward to it. My friend, Adam (@Roof Beam Reader), has already warned me that it is quite different from the book, but I will give it a try and see if it is as fun as the book.

Thanks, Les, for your recommendation!

Feeding the Dragon, by Sharon Washington, was offered as an audiobook special from Audible last week. I didn’t know anything about it, but when I read that it was the story of a little girl who grew up in the New York Public Library, I knew I had to listen to it. It was quite a delightful listen — Sharon Washington wrote it and was the reader, and I learned after listening to it that she has also performed it as a very successful play.

It is her family story. Her father was the maintenance person at the library and kept the ancient coal-fed furnace stoked at all times, thus the idea of “feeding the dragon.” The family lived in the apartment on the top floor of the library, and Sharon grew up amongst the books downstairs.

From 1969 until 1973 my family lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. At 444 Amsterdam Avenue in an apartment on the top floor inside the St. Agnes Branch of the New York Public Library:
my father George, my mother Connie; my grandmother, my dog Brownie, and me.
A typical American family.
Living in a not-so-typical place.

I enjoyed listening to this book and would love to see Sharon Washington’s performance of her story!

• Interview with Sharon Washington in The Interval
• The audiobook @ Audible
• New York Times review of the play, Feeding the Dragon.
• Read more about the play