Little Brother Review (Cory Doctorow)

i stayed up all last night reading Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. Everyone should read this book. i mean EVERYONE. You can get it online (legally, from the author) if you can't get ahold of the actual book: http://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/ You know I don't advocate getting around buying a book at your indie store, so you know it must be crazy important for me to tell you you can download it instead.

it's crazy CRAZY good. it's about hackers and security and surveillance and terrorism and whether you can ever be truly free when a government that no longer represents your interests terrorizes you to "protect" you from "the real terrorists." it's funny and insightful and the whole friggin thing is set in the SF Bay Area which means it's like being home all over again for me. it's the kind of book you can't read before bed at night because you get too excited. if i could write a blurb for the back of the book it would say "cory doctorow: i didn't finish your book because i was too pumped up and freaked out and i went out and overthrew the government and incited mass rebellion in the middle of the night."

some quotes:

"I missed Harajuku Fun Madness. The company had suspended the game indefinitely. They said that for 'security reasons' they didn't think it would be a good idea to hide things and send people off to find them. What if someone thought it was a bomb? What if someone put a bomb in the same spot?
What if I got hit by lightning while walking with an umbrella? Ban umbrellas! Fight the menace of lightning!"
(p.96)

"The law didn't care if you were actually doing anything bad; they were willing to put you under the microscope just for being statistically abnormal."
(p.113)

blurb on the back:

"Marcus, aka 'w1n5t0n' is only 17 years old, but he figures he already knows ho the system works--and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school's intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems.
But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the department of Homeland Security and whisked away to secret prison where they're mercilessly interrogated for days.
When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state, where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: to take down the DHS himself."


READ! SPREAD! REBEL!