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thebacklistborrower's Reviews (570)
This book of four novellas has a story for everyone. I was immediate gripped by the first, “Unauthorized Toast”, which tells the story of an immigrant woman who learns to hack the appliances in her subsidized housing, starting with the toaster which requires proprietary bread authorized by the manufacturer in order to function. The company going out of business, and consequently the servers failing, it stopped working. This story is as much a battle of wits against the consumer electronics that dictate her life, as it is a story of immigration and empowerment. It is available on ArsTechnica.com (with permission) so I shared it with a friend who works in computer security to get his thoughts. He said the technology used by the toaster and dishwasher manufacturer’s to protect from consumer modification is in our household electronics today, and he also reminded me of the failed (thank goodness) juice subscription company Juicero, which had a model not unlike the toasters.
The other three stories each had their own chilling foreshadowing in today’s society, especially with the Covid-19 crisis in our lives. Radicalized is about Americans with rejected health insurance claims turn to terrorism of insurance companies and the governments that support private health care. As of the end of March, I saw a statistic that 3.5 million Americans lost health care due to coronavirus layoffs. Those same people will be –somehow—expected to pay for the cost of weeks of ventilation, if required. Does the premise of Radicalized seem that far away? Speaking from Canada, I don’t think so. The last story, “Masque of the Red Death” may not be best reading if you’re already on edge about disease. For those of you familiar with the Poe story, you’ll find a disturbingly modernized tale of a bunch of rich folk sequestering in the hills to avoid a global catastrophe (including disease). Fun fact: there are actual real rich people actually sequestering away during this pandemic. In response to @10down asking if Cory Doctorow intended the story to be a How-To manual, he replied “Cyberpunk is a warning, not a suggestion”.
The second story, “Model Minority” is the one I was least drawn to, but mostly because the others felt so prescient. It is the story of a non-human Superman-like hero learning about privilege when he intervenes in a beat-down of a black person by police. As one who “fought for good” his whole unhuman life, the story explores the reverberations of this act on the victim, and how privilege affects us all.
These novellas grab you and keep you going. I found myself mentally jumping at the ghosts of present day that were found in the books. In so many ways it is so easy to trace the steps between today and the world of those novels, but as I describe above, rarely is it very many.
The other three stories each had their own chilling foreshadowing in today’s society, especially with the Covid-19 crisis in our lives. Radicalized is about Americans with rejected health insurance claims turn to terrorism of insurance companies and the governments that support private health care. As of the end of March, I saw a statistic that 3.5 million Americans lost health care due to coronavirus layoffs. Those same people will be –somehow—expected to pay for the cost of weeks of ventilation, if required. Does the premise of Radicalized seem that far away? Speaking from Canada, I don’t think so. The last story, “Masque of the Red Death” may not be best reading if you’re already on edge about disease. For those of you familiar with the Poe story, you’ll find a disturbingly modernized tale of a bunch of rich folk sequestering in the hills to avoid a global catastrophe (including disease). Fun fact: there are actual real rich people actually sequestering away during this pandemic. In response to @10down asking if Cory Doctorow intended the story to be a How-To manual, he replied “Cyberpunk is a warning, not a suggestion”.
The second story, “Model Minority” is the one I was least drawn to, but mostly because the others felt so prescient. It is the story of a non-human Superman-like hero learning about privilege when he intervenes in a beat-down of a black person by police. As one who “fought for good” his whole unhuman life, the story explores the reverberations of this act on the victim, and how privilege affects us all.
These novellas grab you and keep you going. I found myself mentally jumping at the ghosts of present day that were found in the books. In so many ways it is so easy to trace the steps between today and the world of those novels, but as I describe above, rarely is it very many.
Skim came in on the online library, and while I was unhappy to see that it was only available to read online, I'm glad to have read the book on a big screen -- I would like to revisit the book in hard copy once libraries are back open.
I had no idea what to expect of this book. It always seemed interesting to me, but I didn't know what it was about until it came in. I was surprised to learn it was a book about a teenager figuring out her identity and experiencing teenagerhood. The story, accompanied by the beautiful graphics will feel so prescient for all of us on the other side of teenagerhood: sculpturing of an identity, relationships with friends that sometimes are love/hate, growing apart from people, emotional isolation, cliques and crushes, and, frankly, death.
This book never proceeded as expected, with every page turning me in a new direction, tagging me along through Kim's highs and lows, but the illustrations contribute, making highs higher, and lows, lower, but also sometimes imparting a calm-- or numbness.
This is a beautiful story to add to your list that will call you to reflect on your own teenaged years with a more sympathetic heart.
I had no idea what to expect of this book. It always seemed interesting to me, but I didn't know what it was about until it came in. I was surprised to learn it was a book about a teenager figuring out her identity and experiencing teenagerhood. The story, accompanied by the beautiful graphics will feel so prescient for all of us on the other side of teenagerhood: sculpturing of an identity, relationships with friends that sometimes are love/hate, growing apart from people, emotional isolation, cliques and crushes, and, frankly, death.
This book never proceeded as expected, with every page turning me in a new direction, tagging me along through Kim's highs and lows, but the illustrations contribute, making highs higher, and lows, lower, but also sometimes imparting a calm-- or numbness.
This is a beautiful story to add to your list that will call you to reflect on your own teenaged years with a more sympathetic heart.
Great information, and I'm happy for it to be discussed in more detail during Canada Reads. Originally, when I wrote this review in 2016, I balked at the tone of the novel, feeling it to be condescending and aggressive towards "whites", who I was upset he painted with a common brush. However, being much much more aware of systemic issues facing indigenous people, I recognize that King has a right to be angry, and I have a responsibility to recognize why.
If you are an open, progressive individual, you will learn from this book, but you may also surprise yourself with issues that you may not be aware of. If you hold deep-seated prejudices and stereotypes of indigenous people, you may not appreciate this book. You will likely get offended by being grouped in with "whites", as he calls them, saying to yourself "not all whites do that, I don't do that." However, I'd still encourage you to work though this book. It is an excellent primer into the systemic and long-standing issues facing indigenous people.
If you are an open, progressive individual, you will learn from this book, but you may also surprise yourself with issues that you may not be aware of. If you hold deep-seated prejudices and stereotypes of indigenous people, you may not appreciate this book. You will likely get offended by being grouped in with "whites", as he calls them, saying to yourself "not all whites do that, I don't do that." However, I'd still encourage you to work though this book. It is an excellent primer into the systemic and long-standing issues facing indigenous people.
Throughout this book, Shirley is on the search for her lover Coenraad, a James-Bond type man who works for The Agency. She left her husband and kids to follow him around the globe based on secret codes in magazines. This search leads her to Toronto, where she grew up, and wandering the city based on a code she can't quite interpret, to immigrant bakeries, attics with operatic singers, through blue collar neighbourhoods, movie theatres, art galleries, and hotel bars.
The premise of the book makes the reader think they may be reading a romance, or a drama, or mystery. However, it quickly becomes obvious that Shirley is not her own woman, as her jet-setting, lover-taking, black dress and pearls might suggest, but instead a woman who is committed to a man who hardly gives her the time of day. And each destination in her search for her lover presents a vignette of women and the men that control them: financially, emotionally, sexually, and violently. These vignettes are beautifully written and haunting; the the way they are written lends the feeling of impermanence and disassociation: it feels like Shirley is dreaming, or a ghost wandering the world until she can be real in the arms of Coenraad.
The ending, its own vignette revealing Shirley's departure from her family, was not at all what was expected -- but what should I have expected so far into the book. It ultimately leaves you with a sense of a new path, and of hope.
The premise of the book makes the reader think they may be reading a romance, or a drama, or mystery. However, it quickly becomes obvious that Shirley is not her own woman, as her jet-setting, lover-taking, black dress and pearls might suggest, but instead a woman who is committed to a man who hardly gives her the time of day. And each destination in her search for her lover presents a vignette of women and the men that control them: financially, emotionally, sexually, and violently. These vignettes are beautifully written and haunting; the the way they are written lends the feeling of impermanence and disassociation: it feels like Shirley is dreaming, or a ghost wandering the world until she can be real in the arms of Coenraad.
The ending, its own vignette revealing Shirley's departure from her family, was not at all what was expected -- but what should I have expected so far into the book. It ultimately leaves you with a sense of a new path, and of hope.
This book defies categorization: is it a drama? Mystery? Coming-of-age?
However you want to describe it, it captured me and did not let me go until I finished the book less than 3 days later -- a feat I haven't accomplished since I was in high school with nothing else to do with my days.
This semi-autobiographical novel by Etaf Rum at first seems like an immigrant story as it tells the story of Isra, a young woman from Pakistan who is married into an American-raised Arab family, and travels to New York expecting a new life like the ones she's read about in books. But it quickly turns into more as her story is intersected with that of her mother-in-law Fareeda's, as well as Isra's oldest daughter, Deya, 18 years after the move to New York. Even while the book jumps between the early 1990s and 2008, between Fareeda, Isra, and Deya, the story is expertly woven together to tell the mother's and daughter's parallel, coming-of-age stories as they struggle to accept their arranged marriages and their place in their ultra-traditional culture, and Fareeda, who enforces it.
This book is beautifully, but sharply, written, with so much emotion and tension built in. The reader cannot help but become connected to the stories of all these women, empathize with them, and learn more about these real experiences and faced by women every day. However, the true value of this book lies not only in its portrayal of this story that needed to be told, but also in its messages that can transcend all of intersectional feminism: how all women are constrained by societal expectations, how so many women are still victims of domestic violence, how hard it is to change a culture that allows it.
"Whatever any woman said, culture could not be escaped. Even if it meant tragedy, even if it meant death."
However you want to describe it, it captured me and did not let me go until I finished the book less than 3 days later -- a feat I haven't accomplished since I was in high school with nothing else to do with my days.
This semi-autobiographical novel by Etaf Rum at first seems like an immigrant story as it tells the story of Isra, a young woman from Pakistan who is married into an American-raised Arab family, and travels to New York expecting a new life like the ones she's read about in books. But it quickly turns into more as her story is intersected with that of her mother-in-law Fareeda's, as well as Isra's oldest daughter, Deya, 18 years after the move to New York. Even while the book jumps between the early 1990s and 2008, between Fareeda, Isra, and Deya, the story is expertly woven together to tell the mother's and daughter's parallel, coming-of-age stories as they struggle to accept their arranged marriages and their place in their ultra-traditional culture, and Fareeda, who enforces it.
This book is beautifully, but sharply, written, with so much emotion and tension built in. The reader cannot help but become connected to the stories of all these women, empathize with them, and learn more about these real experiences and faced by women every day. However, the true value of this book lies not only in its portrayal of this story that needed to be told, but also in its messages that can transcend all of intersectional feminism: how all women are constrained by societal expectations, how so many women are still victims of domestic violence, how hard it is to change a culture that allows it.
"Whatever any woman said, culture could not be escaped. Even if it meant tragedy, even if it meant death."
