To be completely honest I liked story. Even more, story was a single thing I really liked about this book. I was overwhelmed by amount of references on one page and character development wasn't that good. The only character I liked in this book was friend of Halliday, I forgot his name. He had some kind of persistent character.

But yeah, even though I COMPLETELY agree with what OP wrote I still liked this book. Probably I wouldn't if I buy it.

I was in musican school for 6 years on guitar subject and dropped it because of sol-fa (I really hated it but now I kind of regret) and then something like 2 years after started to play guitar with help of tabs. Thats was interesting, because I found them easy to play through. And now I casually go to http://www.gametabs.net/ and look for something easy and melodic to play.