Makers by Cory Doctorow

WOW.  Wow.  WOW.  Loved.  This.  Book.

I don't remember where I first read about this book but the author's name caught my eye since he's one of the editors at Boing Boing, a great tech blog.  I took it to Belize and could not put it down.  It was a wild ride and I kept appreciating Doctorow's storytelling ability as well as his sharp eye for how technology impacts us.  I will warn you, though, that this book is not for everyone.  If you are not a geek, nerd, techie, or otherwise appreciative of things like the idea of a 3-D printer, then I'd skip this.

The story is incredibly imaginative and I don't want to ruin too much.  One of the first things that happens in the story is that Duracell and Kodak merge, and the new company's mission is to fund innovation in small pockets around the world.  Silicon Valley reporter Suzanne flies to Miami to check out what engineers Lester and Perry are funded to do - and she discovers them living in an abandoned mall cranking out interesting things on a 3-D printer.  In the early part of the book, Doctorow's demonstrates his grasp of how innovation can be iterative. 

As the book goes on, he exercises his ability to make social commentary about IP law and corporate espionage.  Then while you were busy paying attention to that, he's made you completely invested in several characters fraught with foibles.  And once you are distracted by that, he starts in on the value of open source communities and user-created communities, but without really making the book about technology.  Oh, and he takes on Disney and dieting on the way because, heck, why not?

I came away from this book with my brain chugging to keep up with Doctorow; I felt like he was a tour guide to the future. 

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

Mer recommended this book to me and then I suggested it to my bookclub.  It was fantastic.

The book is about a widower who lives in a small town in England.  Upon the death of his brother, he becomes embroiled in estate problems with his brother's family and his son.  At the same time, he grows close to a Pakistani widow who runs a shop in town.  In his quest to navigate his family and his love life, he must break with many of the social norms of his proper English town. 

There were two things I really enjoyed about this book.  First, there was something reminiscent of Alexander McCall Smith's work in the earnestness of the characters and their simple situations.  Like in his books, the writing was clear and easy to read, and the plot was simple to follow.  Both of those qualities often made me forget how ambitious the book was.

The other thing I enjoyed was how well Simonson captured the inconsistent nature of "proper" society.  Her depictions of neighbors interacting and of social events perfectly described the implicit prejudices around race and class that the characters would have, on the surface, denied. Many reviews have referred to this aspect of  the book as being a "novel of manners" in the spirit of Jane Austen.  Perhaps it is past embarrassing that I haven't read anything of hers by now.

All told, a great read.  I'd try something else by Simonson but (impressively) this is her first novel.

The Girl who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

I have been saving this sequel to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for vacation, so when we left for Belize I started it on the plane.  While the first book in this series had a raft of characters to develop and describe, this book focused on a subset of those characters.  In particular, this book is really about Lisbeth Salander: she becomes more obviously the central character than she was in the first book.

Salander begins the book more balanced and adjusted than we've seen her in the past.  She deals with real estate problems and updates her appearance.  She does ultimately kick ass and take names, but before that happens, her character has matured and we get to know her better, including some detail about her early life.  We also follow Mikael Blomkvist, the publisher from the first book, who decides to publish an expose on the sex trafficking industry.  Blomkvist and Salander begin the book in unrelated storylines but ultimately (not without Salander's hacking skills) their paths cross again.

I enjoyed this book even more than I did Dragon Tattoo.  I thought the characters were more compelling and the story easier to follow.  I also appreciated Larsson's continued themes around exposing abuse of women as a major social problem.  I can't wait for my next vacation to read the final book in the trilogy.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

I suggested this book to my book club and it was our February pick.  Many of my book friends have been reading it and it received numerous positive reviews. 

This novel is about a set of twins who are orphaned in an small Catholic Ethiopian hospital.  They are lovingly raised by a married doctors who work there.  The book chronicles their lives from birth through adulthood, spanning both Ethiopia and the U.S.  While the twins are very different personalities, they are quite close, and both become doctors themselves.  The narrative switches between a few different voices, but the majority of the story is told by one of the twins.  Though ultimately professionally successful, he struggles with issues of identity for much of his life, haunted by his missing parents. 

I liked this book but it was long in places. There were descriptions of medical procedures that seemed unnecessarily detailed, as well as a lot of detail around the political backdrop of Ethiopia.  That said, it was also stunning in places, with exceptional writing and twists in the story that I was not expecting.  About halfway through the book it dawned on my that the memoir I had just finished reading was also set in Ethiopia and it was interesting to compare the depiction of the country in both books.

For my doctor friends I'd say this is probably required fiction, for everyone else, it's for the readers more tolerant of a long, involved, densely written story.