JUNE - SPOILERS - Little Brother

SnakThe Green Dragon

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JUNE - SPOILERS - Little Brother

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1Morphidae
jun 1, 2014, 4:20 pm

Spoilers for Little Brother by Cory Doctorow...

2mamzel
jun 4, 2014, 1:41 pm

Wonderful book! Hope you all enjoy it! I particularly liked the location of the story. I'm presently reading another of his books, For the Win.

3Morphidae
jun 5, 2014, 8:01 am

Oh boy. I'm zipping through this. I was a little leery but it's quite good. I was going to go to bed an hour early last night and instead went to bed an hour late! I was tempted to stay up to finish it but MrMorphy has to get up for work and won't go to bed without me.

It's aimed at a difference audience (teens) with all its angst (bully at school, misunderstanding between friends, skipping school, "parents don't understand me," etc.) so it's not getting 9/10 stars but it's certainly getting 8/10 due to the story and story-telling itself. They make up for the angst.

4clamairy
Redigeret: jun 5, 2014, 3:42 pm

Don't. Tempt me. Frodo Morphy.

Oh dog, and the Kindle version is free on the Project Gutenberg site...

Curse you both. LOL

5Morphidae
jun 5, 2014, 4:28 pm

Okay, I won't tempt you. The last chapters petered out. I thought the final climax was rushed (5 pages?!?) and I didn't care for the ending because it was so downbeat. It came too close to the heart of our current governmental and political situation which made me sick to my stomach. I dropped it down to 7/10 stars.

6clamairy
jun 5, 2014, 5:13 pm

Ack. Okay... It's already on my Kindle. Maybe I'll start it next and see where it goes. Just about done with my current read anyway.

7Morphidae
jun 5, 2014, 5:38 pm

Don't mistake me, it's not a bad read. And it was free right?

8clamairy
jun 5, 2014, 5:52 pm

Very!

9reconditereader
jun 11, 2014, 3:28 pm

I think the sequel Homeland is better but I enjoyed both (-:,

Cory Doctorow frequently puts out his stuff for free. I have hardbacks but I think you can download most of his novels from http://craphound.com/?cat=5

10Sakerfalcon
jun 12, 2014, 5:35 am

I wish I could say that I'm finding this far-fetched, but sadly I don't think he's exaggerating much. It is a bit info-dumpy in places and at times I feel like Doctorow is speaking rather than Marcus, but it is certainly a gripping read so far.

11Meredy
jun 13, 2014, 2:33 pm

12reconditereader
jun 14, 2014, 6:47 pm

Florida is crazy. This isn't the first time!

13reading_fox
jun 16, 2014, 11:51 am

Finished it as a re-read over the weekend. My full review is HERE Comments always welcome.

I enjoy it as a novel although as mentioned in the various praises at the front it's not without flaws. HS is barely believable that they'd go quite that far, they aren't generally comprised of evil people, merely those doing a job. A few people and contacts just fall too readily and conveniently together, the whole romance angle is poor, although at least it is there, and the girls are as capable as Marcus. But it certainly isn't implausible either.

Any thoughts on the underage sex issue? realistic? not a problem? conveys the wrong impression?

Anyone on Charles and Drew's side? that security is worth any cost, even if it's inept at times. Don't question them for they know what they're doing?

Profiling remains a vexatious issue even today - not quite so closely tracked as in the novel - but police stop and search powers are not used randomly, neither are airport security shakedowns.

And I dislike the book stores he chooses to support in the ebook version. Amazon seems particularly less than friendly given the other options he could have picked. Any book store with a loyalty card is profiling you. Amazon doens't even give you the perks.

What age would you let/encourage your children to read it?

14Morphidae
jun 16, 2014, 1:17 pm

I think the underage sex is realistic. Anyone who thinks kids fifteen and over aren't experimenting are kidding themselves. Younger for lighter stuff. And it was realistic because they didn't just jump into bed together. It was an ongoing thing where it built up. Lastly, it didn't happen until life got very intense and climactic. Adults do that. Why wouldn't teens when their emotions are more-hormonally challenged?

15Jarandel
jun 16, 2014, 2:11 pm

>13 reading_fox:

The underage sex didn't really strike me, it wasn't prominent, and what happened, as far as I remember, suited the mood of the characters and events rather than sought titillation.

Security is worth A LOT.
IMHO a huge chunk of human experience & history is about trade-offs between the aspirations of the individuals, and the compromises needed to exist within groups that give them some form of security and hope for a better life than the "nasty, brutish and short" variety.
But what many politicos are currently trying to sell to us as "security" is largely populist scare-mongering exploitative of old instincts to fear the unknown and put one's own bloodline and extended group above others in times of real or perceived hardship, barely a few steps above outright calls to holy war.

No real opinion regarding the bookstores. The brick & mortar ones I probably won't see except maybe 1-2, in just as many times in my life unless big changes occur. Many love to malign Amazon, and there are real problems with some of their practices (hello tax evasion, censorship, sometime dubious employee treatment, etc...) though hopefully public scrutiny makes them get away with less than they'd like, yet they've been granting me for years a much wider access to books that were sometime a pain to get a hold of otherwise.

I think I would recommend it from age 13 and up, maybe ? That's around when I'd have been introduced to excerpts of Brave New World and the like at school and that would have been a quite readable, updated expansion on the subject.
My parents were never of the "no, you can't read that yet" school and let me have have free run of the bookcases, and I'd probably do likewise with some advice when solicited / welcome. Stuff that wasn't "my age" just went well over my head and made me put the book back for now, or remained largely unnoticed while I enjoyed the rest of the book.