Little Brother

This review does not contain spoilers.

First off I should thank the author, Cory Doctorow for offering this book for free download. The book is meant to be disturbing. It is a cautionary tale of Security Forces run amuck. Media coverage of terrorist events have bred a sense of apprehension in the populace which is empowering repressive security agencies to infringe on individual rights and freedoms such as privacy, presumed innocence, freedom from search without just cause. The electronic devices which have come to make our lives so much more convenient also leave us vulnerable to government surveillance.

It has been known for years that checking certain books out from the library will trigger a report to the FBI or similar agencies. Police are supposed to get a court order before they wiretap your phone or obtain a phone log. However we are learning that our online activities and E-mail seem to be fair game for any domestic spy agency with a desire to track us. The transponders that allow us to cross bridges and use toll roads leave a record of our travels. Credit card records tell another tale and store loyalty cards add a wealth of information on our preferences. Electronic health and pharmacy records add more details. Transit passes reveal our every move. Red light cameras track who crosses an intersection and security cameras are everywhere--smile for the camera. Cameras in space can determine the denomination of a coin dropped on Red Square. The computer in your car can reveal the speed at which you’ve been driving and how often you’ve used your brakes in panic mode.

It is little comfort to be told that you’ve nothing to worry about if you’ve done nothing wrong. Tell that to black teens in any major American City. Bill C51 is presently before the Canadian Senate and would grant authorities sweeping powers to surveil electronic communications. Who is reading your E-mail? What happens if some functionary decides you fit a dangerous profile?

Post 911 $635,000,000,000 has been spent on security in the US. Cross any border and learn the sweeping powers of border agents. Board any plane and feel treated like a criminal. Know that most of this so-called security is mainly for show and does little to make us safer. In Canada we are still dealing with the fallout from head taxes for Chinese immigrants, WW#1&2 internment camps for Japanese and German citizens, residential schools for Native Canadians, disputes over expropriation. Do we really trust the government to protect our rights given that track record?

Reading this book is meant to leave you feeling uncomfortable and looking over your shoulder. What percentage of eligible voters exercise their franchise? Can we afford to be complacent?

I’m assuming that most of the grammatical errors were intentional to represent youth speak. I think it’s great the author acknowledges great bookstores though putting the descriptions at the head of each chapter somehow distracts from the flow of the narrative. Including Chapters/Indigo and Amazon among the independent bricks and mortar stores whose demise they are causing some may find disconcerting. Amazon has no base from which to stage a face to face book signing.  

[Spoilers Follow]

This is a book aimed at a younger audience. In explaining computer and internet technology in some detail it may leave those of us of an age scratching our heads. I’ll leave defining that age to others. The biggest surprise comes when the ending that seems inevitably foreshadowed is abandoned in favour of a typical “Hollywood” happy ending. This was the one sour note in an otherwise well constructed plot. Forgive the irony here.

Historic Saint John Streets

My first surprise was the fact that the authors supplied no maps to locate the streets they were talking about. The book is useless for anyone intent on taking a walking tour because the entries are in alphabetical order meaning that there is no logical order for locating the streets on the ground by neighbourhood. Unless you already have a fairly good working knowledge of the city the book leaves you lost. In spite of this with a map of the city in hand the book gives you a sense of the history of the city and its constituent parts. Street names occur up to three times around the various former communities and no attempt by common council has been made to harmonize this confusion.

Collected Poems of WH Auden

This is not a deluxe edition of the poems though at nearly 1000 pages one that gave each poem its unique page would create a wrist sprainer or require two volumes. Nevertheless there are times when the poems feel crammed. Any time one starts reading a new poet understanding his/her handling of the language, their allusions and metaphors is a challenge. Any writer is a child of their own era. Auden is a master of poetic language, his lines read so naturally one can forget they are actually rhyming but the ideas expressed go far beyond prose expression. Since my reading is not for academic purposes but rather for pleasure I don’t feel obligated to comprehend every allusion. After reading Ginsberg the expression of romance and love here is not lascivious or crass and the points made far less brash and strident.  Unlike a similar volume of WB Yeats I’ve assayed this one lacks any annotations so none of the allusions and dedications are explained. In the later poems he starts to use arcane and made-up words that have the reader reaching for a dictionary or going online to research the derivation of words no longer in common useage.

Roses are Difficult Here

W. O. Mitchell is the writer of Jake and the Kid. He writes about small town and rural prairie life but his modest settings belie a social analysis as sophisticated as that of the sociologist that in this novel is studying the people of Shelby, Alberta. The book is filled with the kind of characters that thrive in small towns and also the claustrophobia that such a closed environment can lead to. But there is also comfort in small town life.

Hate List

The story of a high school mass-murder suicide told from the point of view of the perpetrator’s girlfriend in its aftermath. Two things stand out as I read this book. The need to fight bullying and name-calling in our society and in our schools in particular. And the heavy price America pays for making guns readily available.  As one who was bullied and called names in school I can understand the wish to strike back. Not everyone is able to slough it off with the knowledge that they are better than the miserable cowards who feel they have to engage in such behaviour because of their own feelings of inferiority and lack of self-worth. I don’t condone murder but I can sympathize the feelings that motivated it. Did those kids who engaged in ridicule and bullying get what they deserved? Was revenge worth losing one’s life or wrecking it? Should we think twice before we marginalize and ostracize others?

The Big Rock Candy Mountain

We all know guys like Bo Mason. Whether products of their upbringing or their inborn nature they aren’t specifically lazy or shiftless, they just feel cooped up working inside and feel the need for open spaces, they tend to rebel when authority figures try to tell them what to do. That said it doesn’t make them easy to live with or particularly dependable. They tend to move around a great deal.

We all know guys like Bo Mason. Whether products of their upbringing or their inborn nature they aren’t specifically lazy or shiftless, they just feel cooped up working inside and feel the need for open spaces, they tend to rebel when authority figures try to tell them what to do. That said it doesn’t make them easy to live with or particularly dependable. They tend to move around a great deal.

Wallace Stegner’s book becomes quite readable after one works one’s way through the first few pages. The family moves to the Saskatchewan Prairies. WW#1, wheat farming, weather, the influenza epidemic, prohibition all figure in the storyline. Since Bo is ever restless and always looking for the main chance no matter what side of the law it may take him the family is always moving. He operates best in places the law hasn’t yet reached. In Salt Lake City they change houses 8 times in 4 years. Should we be surprised that when it comes to his son Chet the nut doesn’t fall far from the tree?

"Big Rock Candy Mountain", first recorded by Harry McClintock in 1928, is a folk music song about a hobo's idea of paradise,....

 One evening as the sun went down
And the jungle fires were burning,
Down the track came a hobo hiking,
And he said, "Boys, I'm not turning
I'm headed for a land that's far away
Besides the crystal fountains
So come with me, we'll go and see
The Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
There's a land that's fair and bright,
Where the handouts grow on bushes
And you sleep out every night.
Where the boxcars all are empty
And the sun shines every day
And the birds and the bees
And the cigarette trees
The lemonade springs
Where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
All the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth
And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs
The farmers' trees are full of fruit
And the barns are full of hay
Oh I'm bound to go
Where there ain't no snow
Where the rain don't fall
The winds don't blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
You never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol
Come trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats
And the railway bulls are blind
There's a lake of stew
And of whiskey too
You can paddle all around it
In a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
The jails are made of tin.
And you can walk right out again,
As soon as you are in.
There ain't no short-handled shovels,
No axes, saws nor picks,
I'm bound to stay
Where you sleep all day,
Where they hung the jerk
That invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
....
I'll see you all this coming fall
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

[Fortunately Anon cannot sue for copyright infringement.]