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3.56 AVERAGE
3.56 AVERAGE
(Dug review out of the depths of LiveJournal.)
Like Little Brother, an interesting exploration of ideas but a bad story. Also, really poor narrative treatment of Death Waits.
Like Little Brother, an interesting exploration of ideas but a bad story. Also, really poor narrative treatment of Death Waits.
https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/cory-doctorow-makers/2009/10/25
Redelijk teleurstellend. Weinig boeiend, weinig verhelderend, weinig verhaal.
This is a weird and somewhat anachronistic book. Released somewhere around 2009 or 2010, it is very forward thinking with regard to 3D printing, builder robots, and automation. But at the same time it has references to defunct tech sites, things such as livejournaling and digg-dotting.
If you can get past the weird anachronisms, there's a really good story of collaboration and people coming together to do awesome things. It's also not a brief glimpse. We see the whole thing start to finish, over a literal lifetime of the characters. It's a story about friendship and community. And it's very good.
Also, I don't know if Doctorow has any sort of canon on this stuff, but I like to think of it as a distant past prequel to Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.
If you can get past the weird anachronisms, there's a really good story of collaboration and people coming together to do awesome things. It's also not a brief glimpse. We see the whole thing start to finish, over a literal lifetime of the characters. It's a story about friendship and community. And it's very good.
Also, I don't know if Doctorow has any sort of canon on this stuff, but I like to think of it as a distant past prequel to Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.
A great view of the post factory age. When repurposing discarded electronics becomes more viable than creating new ones, a new breed of backyard inventors springs up to challenge the conventional model of corporations, R&D, weight loss, and amusement rides. Meanwhile, Cory Doctorow takes us along for the ride following a small group of inventors, business people, and a blogger that can't quite stay out of the tumultuous fray. From its inception at a junkyard, through its forays into a dozen different industries and its all-or-nothing fight against the Mouse, this pod's adventures offer everything you could ask for in the near future, and a fresh view of everything from 3D printing to crowdsourced storytelling.
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
I have a good contender for worst read of 2015!
The first half of this book is simply a message with a story slathered thinly on top. The practically all-male cast is cardboard and hollow, and their characters seem to be half developed based on what clothes they wear and food they eat. The female main character is a Mary Sue who can do little wrong (every single male character professes himself in love with her at some point). The other female characters are weird wish fulfillment girl (a college student who offers sage advice and then throws herself at a main character 10+ years her senior, in a very awkward sex scene) or the frustrated wife of another male character who mainly exists to watch the children and occasionally gets angry at her husband.
There's all sorts of over-the-top telling. Like, a character will say "You really smell, man!" and then everyone in the scene will find this so funny they are described as doubled over laughing (or rolling around on the ground) with tears running down their face. Was this book meant for 10 year olds?
Also, the fat shaming. Doctorow is obsessed with describing everyone's body types. I counted three instances of really repulsive descriptions of people who are overweight in the first forty pages. I'm assuming this was added to set up the pointless fatkins storyline (what was the point of that anyway?), but it doesn't make these sections any less repulsive to me. Here's a sample:
And
Anyway, this book was horrible. The story just kept going and going on pointlessly for 400 pages. I was excited to read something by Doctorow, because I really like his ideas, so this was definitely disappointing. And, okay, the ideas underneath this mess were actually very interesting (I DID like the idea of the crowd-sourced ride slowly turning into a subconsciously created story). But, I rather read about these ideas in blog posts and non-fiction. My advice? Don't read Makers and stick to Doctorow's non-fiction.
The first half of this book is simply a message with a story slathered thinly on top. The practically all-male cast is cardboard and hollow, and their characters seem to be half developed based on what clothes they wear and food they eat. The female main character is a Mary Sue who can do little wrong (every single male character professes himself in love with her at some point). The other female characters are weird wish fulfillment girl (a college student who offers sage advice and then throws herself at a main character 10+ years her senior, in a very awkward sex scene) or the frustrated wife of another male character who mainly exists to watch the children and occasionally gets angry at her husband.
There's all sorts of over-the-top telling. Like, a character will say "You really smell, man!" and then everyone in the scene will find this so funny they are described as doubled over laughing (or rolling around on the ground) with tears running down their face. Was this book meant for 10 year olds?
Also, the fat shaming. Doctorow is obsessed with describing everyone's body types. I counted three instances of really repulsive descriptions of people who are overweight in the first forty pages. I'm assuming this was added to set up the pointless fatkins storyline (what was the point of that anyway?), but it doesn't make these sections any less repulsive to me. Here's a sample:
The other commonality this stretch of road shared with Detroit was the obesity of the people she passed. She'd felt a little self-conscious that morning, dressing in a light short-sleeved blouse and a pair of shorts -- nothing else would do, the weather was so hot and drippy that even closed-toe shoes would have been intolerable. At 45, her legs had slight cellulite saddlebags and her tummy wasn't the washboard it had been when she was 25. But here, on this stretch of road populated by people so fat they could barely walk, so fat that they were de-sexed marshmallows with faces like inflatable toys, she felt like a toothpick.
And
"Right," Perry said. "That's next week, and this aft we've got some work to do, but now I'm ready for lunch. You guys ready for lunch?"
Something about food and really fat guys, it seemed like an awkward question to Suzanne, like asking someone who'd been horribly disfigured by burns if he wanted to toast a marshmallow. But Lester didn't react to the question -- of course not, he had to eat, everyone had to eat.
Anyway, this book was horrible. The story just kept going and going on pointlessly for 400 pages. I was excited to read something by Doctorow, because I really like his ideas, so this was definitely disappointing. And, okay, the ideas underneath this mess were actually very interesting (I DID like the idea of the crowd-sourced ride slowly turning into a subconsciously created story). But, I rather read about these ideas in blog posts and non-fiction. My advice? Don't read Makers and stick to Doctorow's non-fiction.
I initially rated this book three stars, for a couple reasons. For one, I had just rated a bunch of books 4 and 5 stars and felt like my rating scale was too narrow. But mostly - and this isn't something that I have changed my mind about - the writing isn't stellar. It's not really bad, but the craft of writing itself isn't something that seems to be Doctorow's strength, and at times that was pretty evident, and made it a little difficult to get into the book at first. Some of the dialog feels stilted or forced, character development is a bit awkward at times, and the writing/editing juts isn't as polished as I've gotten used to.
So why the upgrade and late review? Because over the past few year, this book just kept popping back into my head, because the ideas and characters were intriguing and fascinating and - since it is set in the near future - increasingly pertinent to issues at hand today. Oh, and because I just recommended this book to a friend and realized I had never reviewed it.
Doctorow's strength is in his ideas and the way he explores them, and this book excels in delving into those interesting issues deeply and intriguingly. Makers is an exploration of what happens when corporations are increasingly possessive of more expansive copyright claims in a world where riffing on and building things with those copyrights is increasingly effortless and lines get murkier, thanks to the internet and ease of access to things like photoshop and, particularly in this near-future world, 3D printing. It's a window into a very plausible future, and its explorations of how corporations and individuals might either collide or work together is mind-expanding, and the characters that play out his story are well-written, even if they take longer than they should to really take form.
TL;DR: Makers is a book full of ideas and characters worth reading, and writing that is certainly good enough to convey them, as long as you can get past the initial bumpiness.
So why the upgrade and late review? Because over the past few year, this book just kept popping back into my head, because the ideas and characters were intriguing and fascinating and - since it is set in the near future - increasingly pertinent to issues at hand today. Oh, and because I just recommended this book to a friend and realized I had never reviewed it.
Doctorow's strength is in his ideas and the way he explores them, and this book excels in delving into those interesting issues deeply and intriguingly. Makers is an exploration of what happens when corporations are increasingly possessive of more expansive copyright claims in a world where riffing on and building things with those copyrights is increasingly effortless and lines get murkier, thanks to the internet and ease of access to things like photoshop and, particularly in this near-future world, 3D printing. It's a window into a very plausible future, and its explorations of how corporations and individuals might either collide or work together is mind-expanding, and the characters that play out his story are well-written, even if they take longer than they should to really take form.
TL;DR: Makers is a book full of ideas and characters worth reading, and writing that is certainly good enough to convey them, as long as you can get past the initial bumpiness.
At once hopeful and bleak this was a good read. A bright and shiny future of new collaboration opportunities and democratization of physical production built on the wreckage of our current economy. There's a maudlin undercurrent I felt because our flawed current economic system is home and it's demise into garbage that makers reform into new products still has the twinge of loss to me. A worthy read but difficult at points because of this sense of loss.