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This book has 4 recommendations

Neal O'Gorman (Serial Entrepreneur)

I'm not someone that chooses favourites, however, the most recent book that I got a lot out of and which, for me, spans both business and non-business is 'Ready Player One' by Ernest Cline.

It was recommended by the VP of Labs at Unity as a book to help appreciate the potential of how virtual reality can impact our future. It certainly achieved that. There's no doubt that it helped my mind delve into the potential opportunities that VR will provide both for Artomatix (an AI for art creation company I helped co-found) and many other startups.

It also is a fun read that references a lot of classic games from the 1980's and I'm looking forward to the movie that's coming out. Hopefully, the movie will be as good as the book.

Fabrice Grinda (Serial Entrepreneur, Investor)

I have lots of books to recommend, but they are not related to my career path. The only one that is remotely related is Peter Thiel’s Zero to One. That said here are books I would recommend.

Dominic Steil (CTO/Dapps Inc)

[One of the books that had the biggest impact on Dominic Steil.]

Brian Burkhart (Founder & Chief Word Guy/SquarePlanet Presentations & Strategy)

The last novel I read was Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One: A Novel,” because my buddy Mike Maddock said, “You gotta read this book!” And I tore it up. I read the whole book in less than two days. It’s something I wish everyone, including myself, did more of.

Amazon description

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 2045, 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 this 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 at stake.

A quest for the ultimate prize.

Are you ready?

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See more books recommended by

Neal O'Gorman, Fabrice Grinda, Dominic Steil, Brian Burkhart

See more books written by

Ernest Cline

Sources

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