Super Mario
by Jeff Ryan
The Week
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Ready Player One
by Ernest Cline
(Crown, $24)
The dystopian future of this debut novel proves to be “fun, funny, and fabulously entertaining,” said John R. Alden in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. In 2044, Wade Watts lives in two worlds, one ravaged by catastrophic climate change, the other a virtual reality called OASIS, where he competes in a hunt to find the fortune left by the game’s founder, who buried the prize beneath loads of 1980s trivia. “Even readers who need Google to identify Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde will enjoy this memorabilia feast.”
Luminarium
by Alex Shakar
(Soho, $25)
“Days after finishing Alex Shakar’s Luminarium, I’m still stumbling around the house in a mixture of wonder and awe,” said Ron Charles in The Washington Post. If you were dazzled by the film Inception but longed for a deeper exploration of its ideas about the interplay of technology and perception, Shakar’s novel is definitely “worth wrestling with.” Its protagonist, a creator of online games, undertakes to understand the nature of spirituality, and he gets further than you’d expect.
Ghost in the Wires
by Kevin Mitnick
(Little, Brown, $26)
Most of the hackers who emerged in the era of DOS and telephone modems have faded into obscurity, said Steven Levy in The Wall Street Journal. But years after his 1995 bust, Kevin Mitnick remains “an iconic figure.” Now a security consultant, Mitnick reveals many of his old tricks, but his “triumphal accounts” grow tiresome. He also doesn’t seem to appreciate that his relatively innocent exploits helped usher in a more nefarious breed of hackers who use their “dark arts” to intimidate and steal.
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5 bullseye cartoons about the reasons for mass shootingsCartoons Artists take on gun worship, a price paid, and more
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Lisa Cook and Trump's battle for control the US FedTalking Point The president's attempts to fire one of the Federal Reserve's seven governor is represents 'a stunning escalation' of his attacks on the US central bank
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'Three Pads' Rayner: a housing hypocrite?Talking Point As real estate moguls go, the Deputy PM is 'hardly Donald Trump'
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Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
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Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
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The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
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Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
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Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
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Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
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You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
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Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”