Ready Player One

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Unabridged audio read by Wil Wheaton

Totally awesome! This book is for anyone who likes video games. I listened to this book almost non-stop for two days - I could not turn it off.  Wil Wheaton supplies a flawless narration and is even mentioned in the book! 

Overview from B&N:

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.

It's the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place.

Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets.

And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune-and remarkable power-to whoever can unlock them.

For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday's riddles are based in the pop culture he loved-that of the late twentieth century.  And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday's icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes's oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig.

And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle.

Suddenly the whole world is watching, and thousands of competitors join the hunt-among them certain powerful players who are willing to commit very real murder to beat Wade to his prize. Now the only way for Wade to survive and preserve everything he knows is to win. But to do so, he may have to leave behind his oh-so-perfect virtual existence and face up to life-and love-in the real world he's always been so desperate to escape. 

A world is at stake.
A quest of the ultimate prize.
Are you ready.....

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith

Unabridged audio on 9 CDs. Read by Scott Holst.

I was not going to read this book. I had read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by the same author and disliked it. Not so much for the content, but for the fact that it was sold as being written by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. I doubt very much that Ms. Austen would have approved. So one could say I was "prejudice". But I had several people tell me how good this book was and it was coming from people that I would never have thought would read a book about vampires, so I thought I should give it a try. I was amazed. The story captured me on the first CD and kept my attention throughout. The narration was very good, exactly right as a matter of fact. I enjoyed the interview with the author at the end and it was interesting to see where he got the idea for the story. A very good read and I'm looking forward to watching the movie.

Overview (from Barnes & Noble)

Indiana, 1818. Moonlight falls through the dense woods that surround a one-room cabin, where a nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln kneels at his suffering mother's bedside. She's been stricken with something the old-timers call "Milk Sickness."

"My baby boy..." she whispers before dying.

Only later will the grieving Abe learn that his mother's fatal affliction was actually the work of a vampire.

When the truth becomes known to young Lincoln, he writes in his journal, "henceforth my life shall be one of rigorous study and devotion. I shall become a master of mind and body. And this mastery shall have but one purpose..." Gifted with his legendary height, strength, and skill with an ax, Abe sets out on a path of vengeance that will lead him all the way to the White House.

While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for saving a Union and freeing millions of slaves, his valiant fight against the forces of the undead has remained in the shadows for hundreds of years. That is, until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln, and became the first living person to lay eyes on it in more than 140 years.

Using the journal as his guide and writing in the grand biographical style of Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, Seth has reconstructed the true life story of our greatest president for the first time-all while revealing the hidden history behind the Civil War and uncovering the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of our nation.

Graveminder

Graveminder by Melissa Marr

One of the best books I've read all year with an ending that truly surprised me - which, to be honest, doesn't happen very often. A good paranormal that almost borders on horror.

From the publisher:

Three sips to mind the dead . . .

Rebekkah Barrow never forgot the attention her grandmother Maylene bestowed upon the dead of Claysville, the small town where Bek spent her adolescence. There wasn't a funeral that Maylene didn't attend, and at each one Rebekkah watched as Maylene performed the same unusual ritual: She took three sips from a silver flask and spoke the words"Sleep well, and stay where I put you."

Now Maylene is dead, and Bek must go back to the place she left a decade earlier. She soon discovers that Claysville is not just the sleepy town she remembers, and that Maylene had good reason for her odd traditions. It turns out that in Claysville the worlds of the living and the dead are dangerously connected; beneath the town lies a shadowy, lawless land ruled by the enigmatic Charles, aka Mr. D. If the dead are not properly cared for, they will come back to satiate themselves with food, drink, and stories from the land of the living. Only the Graveminder, by tradition a Barrow woman, and her Undertaker—in this case Byron Montgomery, with whom Bek shares a complicated past—can set things right once the dead begin to walk.

Although she is still grieving for Maylene, Rebekkah will soon find that she has more than a funeral to attend to in Claysville, and that what awaits her may be far worse: dark secrets, a centuries-old bargain, a romance that still haunts her, and a frightening new responsibility—to stop a monster and put the dead to rest where they belong.

Beautiful Creatures

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl
Unabridged audio read by Kevin T. Collins & Eve Bianco

This book was unbelievable on audio. I don't know what reading it would be like, but I am so glad I did the audio instead. It made the whole story come alive. When there was a storm, you heard the thunder and rain. When there was singing, you heard the song. The story itself was awesome, so the whole experience was well worth the listen. I've already ordered the second book on audio and then horror of horrors - the third book is ONLY a download, not on CD. Bleep Bleep I hate that publishers don't give you the option anymore. I don't want to be tied to a blasted download. I want to listen in my car! 


From the publisher:
Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she's struggling to conceal her power, and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town's oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything.

The Night Circus

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, read by Jim Dale
Unabridged audiobook, 11 CDs

I got a real shock on the first CD of this audio, Jim Dale, who did the narration for the Harry Potter series, dropped the "f" bomb. It was a shock to hear him say that, but I also find it surprising that I didn't notice another single curse word in the rest of the book.

There is only one word for this book "Magical". Magical all the way through. This has to be one of the best of the year.

From the website:
The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night. 

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway: a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them both, this is a game in which only one can be left standing. Despite the high stakes, Celia and Marco soon tumble headfirst into love, setting off a domino effect of dangerous consequences, and leaving the lives of everyone, from the performers to the patrons, hanging in the balance.

Deadlocked

Southern Vampire Series #12: Deadlocked by Charlaine Harris

Unabridged audio, 8 CDs, read by Johanna Parker

I love this series. I used to call them my Harliquins (since I don't read real Harliquins). Quick, easy reads that were total escape for me. They still are and I have read or listened to all of them several times.

Amazon has chosen to offer this only as an Audible download. Fine, except, I didn't want an Audible download, I wanted CDs. I don't like downloads all that much. I listen to most audiobooks in my car and I don't like taking an extra device to listen to, finding all the right connections and wires, etc and then remembering to turn off or pause the device when I get out of the car. It feels like a production to listen to downloads in my car! Anyway, I was almost in a panic because I usually buy everything from Amazon, but then a light bulb finally came on and I looked at the Barnes & Noble website and there it was on CD. B&N to the rescue!!

Tiny Spoiler Alert!

Poor Sookie, she just can't get a break. Ever since meeting the vampires and the werewolves and the twoies and the fairies and the demons, etc., she just can't seem to have any length of time going by without a major event. Good for us, bad for poor Sookie! I liked this book all the way through except at the end and I have to admit, I'm not surprised about the outcome with Eric, but that doesn't mean I have to like it!

Millennium Trilogy

The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson

Unabridged audio

For all it's faults, this is a great series. The story that it tells is intriguing and held my attention through all three books. The first book is good, but the story really heats up in book two and leaves you with an awesome cliffhanger lead in for book three. The first book had a bit too much detail about publishing, the hero, Blomkvist, gets girls a bit too easily and the books tend to drag a bit in places, but overall, it was well worth the listen.