Sara Machado

The action takes place in 2044, on an Earth that has experienced an energy crisis and continues to experience global warming. Society is in decline and “lives” most of its time in Oasis - an online simulator (Metaverse is that you???).
Total isolation and the lack of physical contact have been trivialized in detriment of an online existence where our true characteristics are hidden behind what we choose for our avatars.
Unfortunately this doesn't sound as much as a sci-fi dystopia as I would like. It feels too close to a possible future.

The creator of Oasis, who has no offspring, creates a game based on the pop culture of the 1980s and 1990s to pass on his legacy after his death to whoever can solve the puzzles. The story follows Wane and his avatar Parzival through the search of Halliday's egg.

The book has a slow start and the first 20% consist essencially of worldbuilding (which is really good by the way) but after that it has a good pace.

I think this book is ideal for anyone who spent their teenage years in the 80s and 90s and would typically be connoted as a Geek.
Although I am younger, I grew up with 5 siblings who would be the target of the book and therefore I have many references from a youth that is not exactly mine.
Still, I felt that some references did not contribute to the story's development and sounded a bit like name dropping.
I really liked the book but I don't think it is for everyone and I don't think it will age well (I'm sure not going to recommend it to my kids as they will most probably find it boring).

PS: Metaverse can actually been traced back to Neal Stephenson and his dystopian novel Snow Crash (1992), which is actually one of the references mentioned in RPO. However, Mark Zuckerberg Metaverse sounds pretty much like Oasis, at least for me... but I am no expert on the subject.

The book follows the story of Less, an unsuccessful writer who is about to turn 50.
An invitation to the wedding of his ex-boyfriend of the last decade (which Less doesn't want to go to) causes him to accept invitations to events around the world.

Pros: I really enjoyed Andrew Sean Greer's writing and the way the different episodes of Less's life are told, interspersing the past and present to support the character's development.
I immediately sympathized with Less, empathized with many of his fears, and devoured the book to find out how the story would end.

Cons: Less is a privileged and shallow character. I didn't feel there was any real growth for Less throughout its journey, ending up becoming a series of interesting episodes to tell friends, without much of a personality transformation or development.

“You are the most absurd person I've ever met. You've bumbled through every moment and been a fool, you've misunderstood and misspoken and tripped over absolutely everything and everyone in your path, and you've won. And you don't even realize it”

“Arthur Less, you have the best life of anyone I know”. This is nonsense to Less

I believe this was the author's purpose since you can support it with several quotes but part of my enjoyment of the book was lost because I felt Less had no agency in his happy ending.

Overall it is a good story about love, relationships and accepting yourself and I realy enjoyed it.
I can't ignore the feeling that if this book had been written by a woman or followed the story of a female character, it would be classified as chick-lit and not be a pulitzer.

Literary value: 4 stars
Entertainment value: 5 stars

“I matter. I matter equally. Not ‘if only'. Not ‘as long as'. I matter equally. Full stop.”

This book is a very small book (65 pages) with very important messages. I wanted to highligh everything.
Please read it!

The text that follows is a personal sharing and not a comment on the book. Is is about my journey and why I am commited to educating myself about privile and feminism. Consider yourself warned, be gentle and proceed with caution.

I grew up with 5 brothers and all my life I did the same things they did: I loved stories, I played with legos, I had dolls but also cars and Dinosaurs (barbies use to ride a T-Rex), I had a bike and rollerblades and loved them. I did not like football, but not all of them did anyway, and it was mostly because of my clumsiness. I run in parks, climbed trees and got dirty. I did this almost always wearing a dress or leggins because of the freedom of movement. I was always able to choose my own clothes, except when we had lunch with my grandparents.

I grew loving books, music and board games. I love Star Wars and Lord of the Rings as well as Beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid and Alladin (We all still know these movies by heart).

I was always absolutely convinced I would study STEM subjects. My father advised me to choose any engineering course (because I loved math and physics) but I chose biochemistry. I hated it so much that I wanted to get as far away from the subject as possible and went on to study management, specializing in finance.

I did not know how privileged I was when I was growing up. In fact, I am still learning about privilege in general.

I knew I was privileged in many areas of my life: I grew up with a family, I was able to study and have nothing significant lacking in my life. I am aware that this is a huge amount of privilege obviously, what I didn't understand was how lucky I was to grow in a family that teach me I could be whatever I wanted.

When I started going to interviews I was asked if I had a boyfriend, when was I planning to have kids and if I felt comfortable travelling since it would affect the family.

When I started working in corporate finance we were 8 women in approximately 40 employees and only one was a Director.

When I started going to client board meetings I was almost always the only woman in the room.

In 10 years of consultancy I only spoke with 3 women with decision making power and only one of them was CEO.

When we decided to have kids I really wanted a girl because of the extra challenge of preparing her for a world that it is still not equal for women. I wanted to raise a girl to be whatever she wants but aware of her privilege, as well as the dificulties she might face.
Little did I know about the immensity of a challenge it is.

I know what I want to teach her and is absolutely in line with everything written in this book. The problem is educating society.
Society begins to invent gender roles even before they are born! I keep explaining to my husband's family the kind of toys and clothes I want and go on receiving kitchen appliances and pink babies.
At this point, I am not even sure if she really likes pink and purple or if it was manipulated by the tons of pink objects available in the world (I try to choose everything in happy colours to counterbalance but it is a challenge).

I keep seeing friends and family raising their kids with gender biases and its tricky to interfere as nobody likes to be told what to do.
Gender injustice is real, but I always have to prove its existence and its exhausting. Even the friends that acknowledge gender injustice have difficulty in understanding that a lot of their actions and language are gender biased.

I feel very lucky with my life and what I have accomplished. I want to see more females in positions of power. I want it not to feel like luck and to be available to all women.

I will keep educating myself and force my friends do the same and eventually we will #BreakTheBias.

This was the first book I have read by Neil Gaiman and I will definitely read other works by him.
I really liked the premise of the book and the main plot.
The structure of the book includes little side stories to the main plot, which I didn't always like and often wanted to skip because I felt they were interrupting me when I really wanted to know what was going to happen to Shadow.
The book includes a lot of mythology that I was unfamiliar with, forcing me to do some additional research. Having read it on kindle made it easier by allowing me to research some of the gods, but I ended up using “fandom” to better visualize some of the characters.
There is an annotated version that includes more details about the gods (including pictures) which may make the book more interesting and easier to follow.
I think it might be more interesting to read this book having a greater knowledge of Ameria so I will certainly reread it when I do a roadtrip in the US.

All in all it was a very interesting read.