Cory Doctorow’s young adult novel Little Brother is a book that just about everyone seems to be talking about this year (especially… ahem… Doctorow himself), and I finally managed to get through it over the past month or two. Billed as a 21st century companion to George Orwell’s 1984, the story takes place in current day San Francisco where tech whiz teenager Marcus Yallow and his friends get caught up in the middle of a terrorist attack. After being imprisoned by the Department of Homeland Security under suspicion of involvement, Yallow eventually fights back against the police state by starting an underground resistance movement online.

I have to admit, I had some misgivings about the fact that Doctorow chose to write a young adult novel that was clearly going to be a platform for his views on rights and privacy in the digital age. Not that I necessarily disagree with what he has to say, but I didn’t want to read a book that was going to preach at me the whole time. There are moments where it felt a little too self-righteous and one-sided, and I didn’t like the thought of impressionable young kids reacting to this stuff and taking it for the gospel. On the flip side, however, it raises issues that are certainly worthwhile for teenagers to think about, so it can probably only do more good than harm.

Putting all that aside, however, the book is still pretty damn engrossing. I was surprised at how dark and disturbing some of the stuff is (again, considering that it’s a book for teens). Pretty early on there are some intense torture scenes (Orwell would be proud), and in general, the book presents a fairly believable portrayal of what might happen if another major terrorist attack did happen on U.S. soil. Sure there is an awkward teenage love story (it kind of reminded me of the comic book Runaways in that regard), and Doctorow throws in some nerdy elements like LARPing and homebrew electronics for no good reason, but in general it’s a great read.

Is it the most important book I read this year? Probably. But then again, I’ve only read a few books this year. Either way, I definitely recommend it, I just can’t bring myself to worship it quite as much all the other wanna-be hax0rs out there on the blogosphere.

When I first heard about Dan Kennedy’s book Rock On: An Office Power Ballad, it seemed like something that would be right up my alley, so I immediately ran out to my local bookstore and picked up a copy. Not that I needed another book to throw into the reading queue, but it sounded like a quick, fun title that I could easily sneak in between War and Peace and the Quantum Physics textbooks I’ve been reading lately (okay, I lied… I’m not reading either of those). Anyway, I was right, it did turn out to be a quick read… maybe a little too quick.

Kennedy had the pleasure/misfortune of working at a major record label in New York a few years ago, and he spins the experience into a collection of stories about workplace politics and the hilariously banal and hypocritical business side of being a rock star. It just so happens that he was working in the biz right at at time when the music industry started showing signs of collapsing under its own weight and external pressure from the internet. In the end, this juicy concept turned out to be moderately amusing but also a bit unfulfilling.

Only a handful of the stories actually felt like they were worth retelling (the ones about Fat Joe’s entourage and an embarrassing slip-up with Duran Duran come to mind), the rest require embellishment from Kennedy in order to force them into being funny. To his credit, he does have a witty and self-deprecating style of writing that is still enjoyable to read, but I couldn’t help but feel that his experiences paled in comparison to Toby Young’s in his book How To Lose Friends and Alienate People. I also could have done without some of the random top 10 lists and other filler (can you tell he writes for McSweeney’s?). That said, I have a soft spot for these kinds of personal memoirs, and I dug Kennedy’s storytelling enough to make me want to check out his previous book Loser Goes First. If you’re the anti-establishment type, you might still get a kick out of it.

If you’ve been keeping up with Lost so far this season, I hope you were as intrigued as I was by the most recent episode, “The Constant”. It certainly gave viewers plenty to think about, even if it did (as always) ultimately generate more questions than answers. In my online travels, I somehow stumbled across an interesting book that seems to have a strong connection to some of the events that took place in this particular episode.

This may get into spoiler territory here for anyone who’s not caught up, so I’ll continue the discussion after the jump.

Continue reading… »

I’ve been meaning to post something about the CBC series jPod for a while now, but I needed some time to gather my thoughts on it. It seemed a bit awkward out of the gate, but I feel like things are really starting to click after last week’s episode, “SpriteQuest”. Unfortunately, since the show was recently relegated to a Friday night time slot, I have a feeling it won’t be around much longer.

jPod is based on the book of the same name by Douglas Coupland (Generation X, Microserfs) and follows a group of twenty-something hipsters who work at a video game company called Neotronic Arts (based loosely on Electronic Arts, which has a studio in Vancouver). Here’s the thing though: I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the show to gamers or people who work in the video game industry, because that isn’t really the focus of the show. This just serves as a backdrop to explore the moral ambiguity, cynical attitude and cultural hang-ups of humans in the digital age (albeit in a somewhat exaggerated way).

When bringing a book to the screen, there’s always a possibility that they will not capture the characters in a way that matches what you had pictured in your head. And unfortunately for me, David Kopp does not quite embody the essence of what I thought the main character Ethan would be like. He is just a bit too cool and good-looking (he reminds me of Justin Chatwin) and has no vulnerability to him whatsoever. On the other hand, I did find some of the other casting to be rather inspired, especially Alan Thicke (!) as Ethan’s dad.

The biggest compliment I can give this show, however, is to say that it is surprisingly edgy. The humour is dark and often borderline offensive; which is not to say that it’s a gross out comedy, but just refreshingly bold and unrestrained. For example, we see the main characters getting drunk on cough syrup, and they fire off wisecracks about suicide and eating disorders all the time. I like the fact that in between scenes they sometimes insert strange little two or three second interstitials of abstract products and imagery… a very Coupland-esque attempt at bringing his visual art to the medium of TV. At any rate, you certainly won’t see something like this on a major network, I don’t think.

Overall, the show has its moments and it’s definitely worth checking out — especially considering the fact that there still isn’t much out there in the wake of the writer’s strike. (The CBC, being as forward thinking as they are, have actually put all of the full episodes online on the official website.)

If you want to see the best screen adaptation of Coupland’s work so far, however, I recommend checking out Paul Fox’s Everything’s Gone Green, which covers a lot of similar themes.