Little Brother

bro this book made me want to put a gun to my head every single letter i read

Excellent read. Engaging main character and good support characters, believable tech. Docotrow's writing engages the reader and urges you to keep on reading. This is not science fiction, though.

My ENGLISH TEACHER had us read this book as part of the curriculum.
Combined with the fact that I enjoy all this hacking crap and the oh-so-apparently shown "Big brother sucks at what he does" idea, I heartily enjoy this book.

Fear, paranoia and abuse of authority by the feds follow a terrorist attack.

Good, not great. Interesting concept, but more realism - plot and characters - would have made this a better book.

This is an amazing book. It kept me interested and engaged. Just plain, freaking thrilling. Do yourself a favor and read it. Giving it 5 stars!

This is, simply, the book that brought me back to reading. Introduced to it through boingboing I figured I had little to lose and downloaded a copy.

It's by no means ground breaking but it is touching and frustrating and endearing and inspiring and enraging all at the same time. It's a book I've read three times over now and I'm glad I've put the time in for each read through.

After my first read I went out and bought a print copy, not for myself, for my wife. I knew she would enjoy it. It's quick, light, and engaging prose that keeps you driving through to the end. It may target to a YA audience but that doesn't hinder it in anyway. I pressed on through the pages quickly each time through.

Since reading this for the first time I've renewed my love of books. Not only am I buying books again but I'm happy to plunge in to CC licensed books for the thrill of finding gems just like this.

Certainly a book worth reading, though it does sometimes get a bit preachy, especially when it's getting onto the virtues of particular technologies. It's a safe bet that everyone making it even half way through the book knows everything they want to know about the glories of public key-private key partnerships for secure message passing - either everything or nothing.

There are many issues entwined here, both in the novel and in how to review it. What does the average teenager know about technology? That varies widely. One average they may be more computer literate than older generations, but that's the average. There are plenty of game playing, ring tone downloading, text message addicted teens and young adult who are at the same time largely ignorant of how most technology works. Even consumer level customization can elude them if there's no easily available YouTube how-to video.
The knowledge of history and social issues is also uneven.
One thing is different, if you have spare time and get interested in some topic you can pursue it easily on the internet. We are no longer limited by having to find the "right" library (or even get access to it if you aren't affiliated with a University or live in a community that can afford to keep "old" books on the shelves of the public libraries).
Then there's another issue, characters. These kids are interesting but like many real live kids these days they could be "fleshed out" a bit more. And someday I'll stumble across a nerdy girl character who's front and center but at least Cory's are players.
Technology can be both fascinating and boring at the same time. All-nighter team programming is the perfect example--except for "break time" and the occasional comment the activity would never make it into a movie.
Our television dominated culture does have attention deficit which is why some many movies have car chases and things blowing up and why readership continues to drop.
As for touching the issues, this treatment helps make clear some of the issues that should be part of this election cycle--the difficulty of providing meaningful security, the risk of false positives, the misery to the public of getting it wrong. I think Cory had done a good job and making it a Creative Commons venture may help get some folks back in the readership game.

Wow, what an awesome story! "Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" meets "Ender's Game." I loved it.

This book is very poorly written. The characterisation is poor and the plot is a bit of a muddle. There is no real sense of danger or purpose, and the whole thing seems a bit too geeky for me. Plus, a lot of the "computer and internet factoids", for want of a better phrase, are wrong. Also wrong is Doctorow's assumption that most people who download ebooks on the net for free don't read them because it's too much of a pain and so end up buying the book. Obviously he hasn't ever seen anybody with a PDA, an IPAQ, an ebook reader.

The story seems too derivative and a bit of a take on William Gibson. It didn't work for me at all. I found the book stone cold boring and it was a drudgery to get through. I would have stopped about 50 pages in, if not for wanting to review it.

His other assumption that teenagers will "get" this book is also wrong. No teen I know cares about the issues being raised in Little Brother. Most teens in the UK are hanging about on street corners drinking cider, taking drugs, having sex and getting into trouble. They are not all playing online geeky role playing games. And the ones who are probably wouldn't bother reading this book anyway.
I think he has his audience all wrong.

Yet again, another bad creative commons book. I've yet to read anything put out by creative commons that was any good or even half way decent.