Also of interest...in gaming and hacking

Super Mario

by Jeff Ryan

(Penguin, $27)

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The story of “How Nintendo Conquered America,” told entertainingly, if too enthusiastically, by Jeff Ryan, is very much the story of Mario, said Robert VerBruggen in NationalReview.com. When an earlier arcade game flopped, its creators reprogrammed the cabinets to display a simple game featuring a mustachioed hero in overalls. Donkey Kong was an industry-altering hit, and Mario became the face of a Japanese franchise that’s now “an essential component of American culture.”

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.