Reflections of an Inquisitive Mind

Ready Player One is a story about a boy living in a world where the energy crisis has become worse than ever. Entire continents are living in poverty. People's homes are in shambles and their daily food is obtained through food stamps. There is one ray of hope, the OASIS. The OASIS is a massive multiplayer online (MMO) simulation. People go to the OASIS to escape their reality. They go to the OASIS to work. Schools for children are in the OASIS. The OASIS is where people now live their lives because the reality is too cruel. Spoiler Alert! The creator of the OASIS has died. In his will, he leaves the OASIS to anyone who wins a quest that he built into the OASIS. The protagonist of this story is a boy named Wade and the story follows him through his adventures and misfortunes, both in the real world and in the OASIS, as he follows this quest.

As always, Jeffrey Archer enthralls his readers with his books. The third book in the Clifton Chronicles, Best Kept Secret, is a page-turner. I could scarcely put the book down and read well into the night. There is so much to admire in each of the characters. Emma Barrington is at the forefront of empowering women in the 1950's. She is intelligent, resourceful and courageous. She goes on a quest to find the baby that was found when her father died. She and Harry Clifton adopt little Jessica and raise her as their own along with their son, Sebastian. She enrolls at a university in the United States through an overseas program and graduates summa cum laude. She eventually becomes the board member of the Barrington Shipping Company. She even struggles with her brother in court over the will of their mother,Lady Elizabeth Barrington. Emma Barrington is a formidable woman in this story and I can't wait to see what part she plays in the coming books. 

Elizabeth Gilbert's book Big Magic is a journey in the answer to one question: Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you? Creative living, according to Gilbert, is not specifically a pursuit of a life devoted to the creative arts like writing or poetry, or painting. Rather, it is the pursuit of living creatively in the everyday. She begins by addressing the obstacles to creative living, namely fear. Fear is that self preservation instinct that prevents us from achieving what we have the potential to achieve. However, fear and creativity, Gilbert says, are buddies; where creativity goes, fear isn't far behind. She then goes on to explain the relationship between ideas an people as a magical one wherein an idea and its person enter into a contract to bring the idea to fruition. Creativity is a force of enchantment - not entirely human in it's origins. The main process in the creative pursuit is this: Courage, Enchantment, Permissio