author: James Frey

name: Steev

average rating: 3.80

book published: 2008

rating: 5

read at: 2013/12/04

date added: 2013/12/05

shelves: novels, fun, own-it

review:
This book proves that Frey was not a flash-in-the-pan with "A Million Little Pieces." Here he takes the same intense and emotional style turned to focus on the city of Los Angeles and a variety of fictional but very realistic inhabitants. I kept wanting the various little story threads to somehow intersect, which is one thing that drives the book forward. The structure is a neverending alternation between various historical and statistical factoids about the city and various characters, mostly newly arriving in the city and trying to set up a life for themselves. Some of the characters Frey keeps coming back to and building a plot, others you only see once and then never again. It's a bit dizzying and sometimes frustrating but ultimately forms an experience that is gripping and wise. It makes me glad I moved away from L.A. as soon as I did, although the book also makes me kind of want to move there.

author: Morrie Warshawski

name: Steev

average rating: 3.43

book published: 1994

rating: 4

read at: 2009/04/03

date added: 2013/12/13

shelves: filmmaking

review:
I sort of skimmed this, I must admit, since I'm trying to quickly raise just A LITTLE more money so I can finish a film. A lot of the book is about organizing your filmmaking career in the process of trying to raise funds for a new socially-conscious film. I'm actually toward the end of making a documentary, and just need a few grand to finish editing.

In fact, if you want to help support the film, which is about war and taxes, please see http://deathandtaxes.detritus.net

author: Cory Doctorow

name: Steev

average rating: 3.94

book published: 2008

rating: 4

read at: 2013/12/24

date added: 2013/12/25

shelves: fun, novels, own-it, politics

review:
This is not great literature, but it is great inspirational storytelling for kids who might be geeks or are leaning toward becoming geeks, interested in computers, hacking, cryptography, and civil liberties. Basically the book is a piece of not-so-subtle propaganda - a word I use simply as description, not as value judgement. Doctorow is trying to spread and instill a way of thinking about politics, the "War on Terror," the Security State, and related issues. He does so with writing that is pretty basic, though it is competent storytelling that kept me turning the pages and wondering what would happen. There was a lot of (to me) over-obvious, breaking-the-fourth-wall explanation, mostly of stuff I already knew, on topics ranging from ciphers to DNS to San Francisco Mission District burritos. Some of that was fun to recognize and skim over, while other instances of that made me wonder if young readers would get bored or angry with such bald instructional passages and just set the book down. The potential problem is that when you cross over the line from political literature into expository how-to manual thinly disguised as fiction, you run a risk, and you also waste an opportunity to make truly great art. I could argue that David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest" occupies the other end of the spectrum, in that it covers a lot of the same ground, politically, that "Little Brother" does, but it does so while also being an amazing work of avant-garde literature that is at many times formally brilliant and challenging, something that "Little Brother" definitely never is. But of course I would be clueless and stupid to think that the average 14-year-old computer nerd might get the same kind of call-to-arms buzz from DFW's mammoth opus as from Doctorow's book, or even finish it. I just think that some middle ground might be the better way to go, because any kid smart and dorky enough to care about jamming arphids or installing linux on Xboxes will most likely also be smart enough to smell literary hamfistedness and benefit from the pleasure of reading a piece of writing that is not just good, but great. Doctorow's book is good-not-great writing, but it is admittedly very good popular education.

author: Jon Krakauer

name: Steev

average rating: 3.66

book published: 2011

rating: 5

read at: 2013/12/27

date added: 2013/12/27

shelves: crime, own-it

review:
Krakauer is always a good muckraker. In this slim volume he turns his skills to bear on someone who he once trusted, Greg Mortenson, whose charity organization Krakauer had donated lots of money too, only to start doubting Mortenson's work and honesty. My cynical, pessimist side wishes there were a book like this for every feel-good heartwarming pop-memoir of miraculous altruism and supposed world-changing vision, because I'm sure way more of this goes on all the time than we ever see or suspect. This book just methodically rips to shreds all the smoke and mirrors that Mortenson employed over years of pretending to do good. It's pretty satisfying, though saddening too.

author: Milorad Pavić

name: Steev

average rating: 4.16

book published: 1983

rating: 5

read at: 1998/01/01

date added: 2013/12/27

shelves: politics, fun

review:
I forget if I read the male or female version. Anyway, it was incredible, easily one of the most innovative and fascinating works of fiction i've ever read.

author: Vernor Vinge

name: Steev

average rating: 3.76

book published: 2006

rating: 4

read at: 2014/02/01

date added: 2014/02/01

shelves: own-it, fun, novels

review:
Vinge is always one of the best writers at realistically depicting what the near future will really look like, at least in terms of information technology. This book posits a 2025 that seems pretty plausible to me. Given that Google Glass will be rolling out now, in 2014, and will probably get super popular pretty promptly, I don't think it's too outlandish to predict that we'll have information displays built into contact lenses in another 10 years, plus wearable computers controlled by minute gestures. Add to that extrapolations of the trends in entertainment, social networking, surveillance and nationalistic security apparati, and you get a future that Vinge paints as the world a famous poet finds himself in after he comes back from Alzheimer's, cured but not quite, by medical breakthroughs. As usual, this isn't great literature, but the writing isn't as bad as most science fiction, and there's some interesting and touching character development that makes it a bit more than a futurist manifesto.

author: Seth Tobocman

name: Steev

average rating: 4.29

book published: 1990

rating: 5

read at: 1999/01/01

date added: 2014/02/21

shelves: art, own-it, politics, spirit-self

review:

author: Novella Carpenter

name: Steev

average rating: 3.98

book published: 2009

rating: 3

read at: 2014/03/22

date added: 2014/03/26

shelves: after-the-fall, food, fun, homesteading, own-it

review:
Yet another case of a journalist not really able to make the jump to quality long-form writing. This book is interesting content, but it just never really clicked. The author tried to go for the deep personal angle, but never really arrived at a tone that made me give much of a damn about her or her neighbors or friends.

author: Harper Lee

name: Steev

average rating: 4.29

book published: 1960

rating: 5

read at: 2011/06/22

date added: 2014/05/16

shelves: novels, politics

review:
Absolutely totally deserving all the praise and sales that it has received. One of the best novels ever, hands down.

author: John Summers

name: Steev

average rating: 4.00

book published: 2014

rating: 5

read at: 2014/06/07

date added: 2014/06/08

shelves: politics, fun, own-it

review:
Took me awhile this time, but the issue does not disappoint. Highlights are the piece by David Graeber about play, the Susan Faludi article on feminism, and the excellent take-down of Vice magazine.