Shelfawareness wrote a great article on Ernest Cline’s DeLorean Tour for Ready Player One. It rocks that he’s traveling the country in a cool car promoting a cool book.
Ernie Cline and His Car
 Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is now in paperback (Broadway, $14). In celebration of the June release, and in order to sell more books, of course, Cline embarked on a cross-country tour of bookstores in his DeLorean, doing readings and signings. When he came to Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, I set out to interview him. At first glance, Ready Player One is not my kind of book, considering that it’s saturated with game playing, homages to Atari 2600 and references to the 1980s. (Our review said that Cline has a thing for ’80s pop culture the way James Joyce had a thing for the Dublin of June 16, 1904.) I dutifully started to skim the book and soon was immersed in the world of Wade Watts and a brutal 2044 America. Cline has written an adventure, a quest, a romance that barrels along with all the abandon and precision of his beloved DeLorean.In the story, Wade is on a mission to find a virtual “Easter egg” to win a multibillion-dollar fortune. In the actual book, Cline has hidden an “egg,” and the first finder will win the DeLorean, perhaps the most iconic ’80s car, in large part because of the movie Back to the Future. He’s fitted it with gear from the film car, and half the fun (besides enjoying Cline’s enthusiasm) is watching people recognize the car and shout, “Look! It has the flux capacitor!” In fact, I quickly realized the best thing to do was to toss the notepad and bask in the reflected glory of Ernie and his DeLorean.You can visit Ernie, the car and the book on his website (make sure to read his bio). —Marilyn Dahl  |