Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (2008-10-13)

Excelent! Must read! Do you glimpse at wired? boingboing? Do you even use the net? (since you are looking at a review on it) What are you waiting for?
Well, it will apeal better to a younger reader, but if you can pretend to be 18 for a while, you will enjoy it.

Ironically, I finished this book the day after I turned 26. This book is easily one of my favorite books of all time. A very entertaining and insightful story. Well written. Just received "Homeland", I can't wait to read it. I highly recommend this book.

This was a re-read, after watching Citizenfour, because I saw Snowden had the sequel in his room in the movie. I wanted to refresh before reading Homeland. I forgot how terrifying, but fun, this world is. It's funny, informative about the (seemingly only) corners of where your activity can go unmonitored. Honestly having just seen Citizenfour, this book feels oddly prescient, knowing it was written years ago, but mostly I think the more stuff changes the more it stays the same.

Cory's story blends internet freedom and privacy issues with activism and geek-speak and is highly entertaining as well as inspiring; it changed the way I think about electronic money, RFIDs, social networking and mobile technologies. The scariest part if how close we already are to this kind of reality. Cory's fusion of what-is and what-could-be is really amazing - MUST READ if you are interested in these issues - and if you love San Francisco :))

The Characters were very fun to read, and the development of the story was incredible. It was hard to put down.
It was easy to get inside of Marcus' head, and see and feel exactly what he was feeling.
Anyone who likes reading about conspiracies or rebellions against the government should definitely read this book.

I bought this book for my fiance for christmas this past year. He's a computer science major minoring in math, so this book was really interesting to him. A professor had recommended it to him, and hes just loved it. He says he thinks everyone should read it, lol.

Not typically my preferred "style" of book, but once I started reading, I just kept going. I'm ignorant when it comes to the inner workings of computers, so I skimmed some of the more detailed areas. The story, however, was gripping and touching in spots. I'll definitely read another by Cory doctoral!

I bought this book after it was banned by several school districts. Any book that is banned deserves to be read and spread as widely as possible. The book deals with government excess and the creative high tech means used by a teenager to fight back. Our country isn't to the point depicted in the book... yet. We are well on the way however.
I grew up in the 50's and 60's, joined the Marines in the early 70's, and worked to pass the 26th Amendment. I hope books like this will be a wake-up call for the teens of today to become not just politically active, but politically educated.
Please! Don't just believe what the talking heads cheer-leading for either side of any topic say! They all have their own bought and paid for agenda. Do the research and decide for yourself.
If you want a good story with a road map for further study and action, this is it. It is suitable for anyone from at least puberty up. It's been over 40 years since I was a teen and I enjoyed it greatly. If the kid is still alive in you, you will too.

I can appreciate the motivation behind the telling of this story, as well as the constellation of ideas that it sets out to explore (technology, surveillance, civil liberty), but the plot jumps too sporadically from point to point, and the characters are one-dimensional, paper-thin. I didn't find myself rallying behind the teenage protagonist, who's voice / perspective isn't believable in the slightest. I was at all times highly aware of the adult male speaking through his fictional hero. The author also employs lengthy asides to expound upon a particular technology, which disrupts the narrative flow and reads like a lecture--in line with the overall preachiness of the book (observed by other reviewers). One of the most important rules in writing fiction is, show, don't tell, but the reader is often left with a bunch of telling. Life is too short--it's highly unlikely I would read another novel by this author.

This book is excellent.

The title Little Brother with it's reference to Orwell's 1984 is certainly worthy. The book takes the concepts set forth in 1984 adds a very real and modern touch to them and then strips it back to something far closer to home. Whilst it will never be the chillingly brilliant book 1984 was it does allow a younger audience to think about these very serious and real issues that societies all around the world are facing more and more in normal day to day life.

My only advice to anyone over 20 thinking about reading this book is remember the target audience. This is a book aimed at young adults (mid teens!) which means you'll get lots of the usual hormone filled, child's perspective on issues. Not to say that this isn't relevant, far from it, just don't expect to instantly relate to the characters without thinking back to your youth.

A truly well written story about what we are doing to our country in presuming guilt before innocence when it comes to terrorism. Highly recommended for those either tech savvy or upset by the our lost civil liberties in the name of national security.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and couldn't put it down from the moment I started reading. It was the kind of book that had heart-racing moments, genuinely emotional moments and times where I laughed out loud. I read another review indicating that the villains could have used some fleshing out. While there is some truth to that, I don't feel it detracted from the story for me. I would recommend this book to anyone who appreciates the spirit of rebellion with a liberal dose of current pop-culture thrown in.

Good reading for any child, especially boys, in middle school. My grandson really enjoyed reading it and several other books I purchased through the store for a much more reasonable price than at the bookstores.

Really, this is a timely one. Our culture is trying to decide how to react to what scares us, and the conundrum is that we become less free in the name of protecting freedom. Just as technology has the power to create a security state, it also can be implemented in a different way, which respects the fundamental liberties of humans.

I realized a while back I had only written reviews to complain about shoddy manufacturing, and vowed to write a positive one on the first thing I got from the store that rocked enough, and that was this book. Check it out.

A really interesting, consuming story that is also educational. I actually don't read fiction often, but this book really kept my attention and kept me turning the pages for more. I learned quite a deal about privacy and internet security from the book - and I consider myself already well knowledgeable about these issues. The book is about a 17-year kid (Marcus) who lives in a world with much more surveillance and less privacy than we have in our present world. It's reminiscent of Orwell's 1984 (or what I recall from reading it 25 years ago in high school) but much more interesting. It's written in a pretty casual, colloquial voice - which is quite fitting for the voice of Marcus.

I also have to say that the afterwards by folks like Bruce Schneier were really cool and inspiring to read.

It was a really inspiring and eye opening book that everyone should read. This is great for the younger generations in the midst of this technology take over. It starts a little slow but the story is very compelling and enjoyable and educational.

This is an incredible book, and you should certainly purchase it. The book literally left me with chills when I finished.

It is well written and fast-paced, despite the fact that it explores complex themes and contains interesting information about cryptography and computer science.

I can see reading this when younger, and being compelled to a different career path than the one I chose. Who knows, perhaps I will still change paths?!

This book I thought was great from the first page I read because the main character is a tech savvy kid like me so I got attached to this book very quickly. The overall story, plot , and theme was just perfect, I love books that carry action on every page turn and I find that something I want when I read a book and this book has a lot to recommend it. Can't wait to read the next book because I know it will be great.

Doctorow has written a fantastic book. I could easily foresee some of the corruption he wrote about coming to fruition after another terrorist attack. His characters are engaging and easy to identify with. I read this book in about three days because I simply could not put it down!

I loved this book. Your outrage at the new, horrible abuses of government through the Patriot Act will keep you engaged with the book, while the likability of the characters will fuel that engagement. Books about dystopian futures are usually downers, but this book explored governmental abuses, the destruction of privacy, and the unconstitutional torture of American citizens on American soil while still keeping the tone upbeat. The hero, Marcus Yallow, is only 17 years old, and as a result, his idealism and youthful belief in Right winning in the end will have you believing it too, despite your more cynical knowledge that in the real world it probably won't. His optimism keeps the book from becoming hopeless as you read what would otherwise be a doomed struggle against our corrupt government.

I was hooked on this book and read it as quickly over a two-day period as life would allow. It's infectious - you don't want to stop reading it. And the speedy pace makes the reading faster too. I wished it had gone on longer. My only complaint (because otherwise I'm full of praise for this novel), is that there were bits of plot that arose that the reader might have thought were going somewhere, characters introduced whose stories were never explicated (like Charles...what WAS that dude's problem?), and tangents that were dropped before fully forming. Minor plot issues were fudged for the sake of the author's real interest in technology and explaining technology. These explanations were fun enough that you didn't really care that certain other parts of plot were left by the wayside.

This was a fantastic read, especially if you loved the movie Hackers. Except this novel had an important, political point. Read it and find out.

This book describes a totalitarian surveillance state which is not so different from the world we are living in right now. It also covers some basic topics in public key encryption and web of trust that is essential to know in today’s surveillance society. It is a easy, educational and entertaining read.