Little Brother - Read It Now, Fools

I've been having my mind blown for the last couple of mornings reading Cory Doctorow's latest novel, "Little Brother."

I hate paraphrasing Cory and his ideas and I feel the same way about the book, so my main urge is that you should just go get it and read it. He offers all his books for free (actually, under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license), or, if you prefer, the book is available as a Printed Thing, too.

The book is actually described as a "Young Adult" novel, which mostly just means there are young main characters, and the tone of the book seems to be speaking to teenagers.

It's about so much about what it means to be alive today in the US and the world, and it's an incredibly respectful buffet of ideas and suggestions and how-tos and warnings and encouragements. I cannot recommend it highly enough. The general plot is about terrorism and privacy and do-it-yourself construction and just generally teaching yourself stuff, feeling empowered by technology and not constrained.

And, thankfully, the characters are believable, not black and white in terms of motivations or ethics, and I'm really starting to care about them.

This book makes me wish I had a 14 daughter or son so I could give it to them.

Get the digital versions at Doctorow's site.