Review: Pirate Cinema

Pirate Cinema

Author: Cory Doctorow
Pages: 384
Publisher: Tor Teen
Source: For review from YA Books Central

Description from Goodreads:
Trent McCauley is sixteen, brilliant, and obsessed with one thing: making movies on his computer by reassembling footage from popular films he downloads from the net. In the dystopian near-future Britain where Trent is growing up, this is more illegal than ever; the punishment for being caught three times is that your entire household’s access to the internet is cut off for a year, with no appeal.

Trent's too clever for that too happen. Except it does, and it nearly destroys his family. Shamed and shattered, Trent runs away to London, where he slowly he learns the ways of staying alive on the streets. This brings him in touch with a demimonde of artists and activists who are trying to fight a new bill that will criminalize even more harmless internet creativity, making felons of millions of British citizens at a stroke.

Things look bad. Parliament is in power of a few wealthy media conglomerates. But the powers-that-be haven’t entirely reckoned with the power of a gripping movie to change people’s minds….

First Sentence: "I will never forget the day my family got cut off from the internet."

Review:
Up to now, my only Cory Doctorow experience was with Little Brother, because of course I would start with a dystopia. I read it before I started blogging, so I don't have a real review to consult. From what I recall, I really liked it, but I remember being more into the concept than the characters or the writing. Now that I've read Pirate Cinema and quite enjoyed it, I definitely need to be reading more Doctorow.

For those who don't know, Cory Doctorow is an activist about copyright as it pertains to the shift to digital. He supports Creative Commons licenses, and even offers some of his books for free in ebook format. All this is to say that Pirate Cinema clearly touches an issue close to his heart, that of the freedom to create, even if it requires 'illegal downloading.' Basically, he obviously feels, and I agree, that there's clearly something different about digital consumption, and that the laws do not properly reflect this change.

His writing really appealed to me, funny and a bit gritty. Trent, the MC, comes off as rather a stereotypical nerd, very focused on making his videos and in search of a lady love. I suspect some readers could be offended by some of the sexual references or the way he thinks, but it seemed like typical boy behavior to me, and much more honest than most of the male POV books I've read. The  book's set in Britain, an interesting change since Doctorow is Canadian; the slang sounded fine to me, but I only know it from pop culture, so who knows.

Pirate Cinema definitely is unlike any of the other books I've read. At the beginning of the book, Trent's family's internet is taken away by the government for a full year, as punishment for Trent's illegal downloads. Yikes, right? His father's job, his mother's health, his sister's education and his access to videos to remix relied on the internet.

In this future, the media companies essentially control the government, offering money and vacations with glamorous starlets in exchange for getting the parties to vote their way. The copyright law worldwide has become increasingly draconian, as the corporations that make the films, music and video games feel increasingly threatened by illegal downloading of their content. Having the internet shut off was a fairly common measure in this future. And, sadly, this future does not seem impossible by any means.

Trent, feeling awful about what his love of creating movies using clips of actor Scot Colford's films has done to his family, hoofs it, hopping a bus to London. Once there, he is promptly robbed and homeless. Luckily for him, he meets the artful Jem on his second day in London, who teaches him how best to live as a homeless person, explaining where to find the best food in garbage bins, how to get people to give you money when begging, and how to find a proper squat. The homeless lifestyle isn't one I've really encountered in fiction, and Doctorow makes it sound like something not to be pitied interestingly enough. Jem and Trent can find anything they need from high-powered electronics to gourmet food to a decent home, all without spending any money.

While I did really enjoy it, the downside of the book is how political it is. I suspect the publication date being before the election was intentional, as it's all about political activism and making a difference. The overall tone does get a bit preachy, but the writing, hellishly possibly future, and Trent's obvious passion for movie-making save the book from feeling like solely a political tract. The characters feel pretty realistic, and run the gamut of races and backgrounds, which made a nice change from the usual middle to upper class white kids that dominate YA. There is romance too, but that takes a backseat and doesn't follow the usual YA patterns either.

I'm one of the apathetic that the kids herein would despise, but I still really liked this book anyway. More politically-minded teens and adults, particularly those interested in the way the copyright laws regarding digital content might evolve, should most definitely read this book.

Rating: 4/5

Favorite Quote:

"In the films, they always say that you'll never forget your first kiss. In the films, you first kiss is always perfect. In the films, everyone participating in the kiss always knows what to do.
   In real life, my first kiss was wildly imperfect. First, there was the business of noses. Hers was small and round and adorable, like a Bollywood star on a poster. Mine was a large, no-shape English nose. both of them tried to occupy the same space at the same time and it didn't really work out.
   Then teeth. The sound your teeth make when they knock against someone else's teeth is minging, and you hear it right in your head, liek the sound you get when you crunch an unexpected chicken bone. And it seemed that no matter where I wanted to put my teeth, she wanted to put her teeth.
   And tongues! Christ, tongues! I mean, when you see them going at it in videos, they're doing insane things with their tongues, making them writhe like an eelmonger's barrow. But when I tried to use a bit of tongue, I ended up licking her teeth, and then I had the realization that my tongue was in another person's mouth, which was nearly as weird as, say, having your hand in someone's stomach or your foot in someone's lung.
   That was only the first realization that entered my head. After that it was a nonstop monologue, something like Holy crap, I'm kissing her, I'm really kissing her! What should I be doing with my hands? Should I put my hands on her bum? I'd love to put my hands on her bum. I probably shouldn't put my hands on her bum. Oh, yes I should. No. Wait, why am I thinking this, should the kiss be, like, all-obliterating and occupying 300 percent of my total consciousness, transporting me to the Galaxy of the First Kiss? I wonder if this means she's my girlfriend now. i wonder if she's kissed other blokes. I wonder if I'm better at it then they are. I bet I'm rubbish at it. Of course I'm rubbish at it. I'm spending all my time thinking instead of kissing her. For God's sake, Trent, stop thinking and KISS."

Bell Boy - The Who

An American Tragedy

Author: Theodore Dreiser
Narrator: Dan John Miller
Duration: 34 hours, 16 minutes
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Brief Summary:
Clyde Griffiths' parents are street preachers and from a young age, he resents their lifestyle. He hates being poor and being mocked by the people who walk past. He doesn't see that God is actually working any wonders in their lives. If so, wouldn't they be better? Unlike the rest of his family, Clyde is filled with ambition. He goes out, in his early teens, to get a job. Eventually, he gets work as a bell boy in the swankiest hotel in Kansas City, where the other bell boys introduce him to a lifestyle he never previously knew. This was the beginning of his descent into a life completely unlike that of his parents, one that would end in nothing but tragedy.

Review:
Just a warning to my dear readers. I do not believe I can discuss this book without spoilers, given the fact that it is really long and most of the parts I want to write about come later in the novel. With that said, you may want to not read this review if you don't want the book to be spoilered. The next couple paragraphs will be safe, since they will be a review of the audiobook version.

Confession: For many years, I have judged audiobook listeners as people unwilling to actually read a book. I don't know why. Listening to a book takes way longer than reading it and certainly I would consider someone reading a book or play aloud to me as having 'read' it. I imagine my completely unfair prejudice stems from having disliked the first couple audiobooks I listened to (back in middle school when they were books on tape). After that, I didn't listen to any more until graduate school.

What I would like to announce officially is that audiobooks can be really amazing and can, in point of fact, be better, for some books, than reading it the traditional way would have been. Not having read An American Tragedy, I am still fairly certain this is one such book. Dreiser writes in a style that imitates speech in many instances and that, thus, lends itself well to the audiobook format.

The narrator, Dan John Miller, has a voice that, although it took me a little bit to get used to, fits well with the time period (the 1920s). Apparently, Miller is from Detroit and sings in a gothic country garage band. He also acted in Walk the Line as Luther Perkins. He does a great job of making most of the main characters' voices recognizable and speaks at a good pace. I heard a couple of weirdly pronounced words and some strange accents from some of the smaller characters. Otherwise, he did a great job, and I very much enjoyed his performance.

Now, to the novel itself. I feared that I would absolutely hate this novel, as the only thing I had ever heard about Dreiser was people talking about how completely terrible Sister Carrie is. Thankfully, when I started listening, I found myself really enjoying it, which is good, given that it's a 32 hour audiobook. The novel is composed of four books, all of which are rather different. The first 3/4 of the novel, I really enjoyed, but the last 1/4 was really rough going.

The opening book discusses Clyde's life in Kansas City, from his time with his parents street preaching through the tragic event that compelled him to leave (although he totally was not guilty of a crime in that case, so he should have gone to the police and explained and would have been fine). Learning about 1920s society was fun, such as work as a bell boy. I also really loved reading about how dumb Clyde was in his pursuit of a girl he was completely obsessed with. She didn't like him so much as she liked his pocketbook, and constantly had him buy her things. Poor Clyde just is not very smart.

After fleeing Kansas City, Clyde spends book two trying to figure out what to make of himself. He adopts an alias while he works in Chicago. He escapes life in the hotel industry when he happens across his wealthy uncle, Samuel Griffiths, and is offered a position in his collar factory. Clyde is convinced this will be his chance to enter high society (as high as it gets in Lycurgas, NY) and to advance in his career. When he arrives, though, he finds that his hopes were to high. Although his Uncle did give him a position, he has to start at the very bottom of the totem pole, and he is given no leg up in society. Eventually, he gets a promotion to a management position in a department and, once again, hopes that he will be accepted into society. When this doesn't follow, he begins an affair with one of the women he oversees, Roberta Alden, despite such behavior being strictly forbidden.

In book three (I think...the border between these two is less clear than the others), Clyde finally gets noticed by the upper glass girl he has had a crush on since he first saw her, during the one time he was invited to his Uncle's house for dinner. This Sondra Finchley notices how much he adores her and how attractive he is, and decides to exert her influence to bring him into society, while falling to his charms, despite her parent's warnings not to get too attached. Clyde begins deserting Roberta, now hoping to marry Sondra. About that time, Roberta informs him that she's pregnant. He tries to get her out of it (pills to miscarry, then to find a doctor to perform an abortion), but cannot. Driven to desperation and still determined to marry Sondra, he refuses to marry Roberta, as she insists, and begins to plan to murder her. He does, or doesn't, depending on your point of view (I'll leave some mystery); either way, Roberta ends up drowned in a lake and Clyde is soon tracked down.

The last quarter of the novel covers Clyde's trial, his time on death row (surprise!) and his death bed conversion to Christianity. Told you. Spoilers. But I really wanted to talk about this, because, while the most boring part of the novel, I suspect that this may be Dreiser's ultimate message, one of the evils of capital punishment and the glories of God's redemption. Also interesting was how he chose to end the novel, which is with a scene reminiscent of the beginning. Clyde's parents, his elder sister and her illegitimate son preaching on the street just as they did when he was a child. Does this forebode ill for his nephew?

In honor of the part of the novel, I most enjoyed, I chose a song that encapsulates Clyde's crazy bell boy years. If you're interested in reading this book, I definitely recommend the audiobook version!

"I've got a good job
And I'm newly born.
You should see me dressed up in my uniform.
I work in hotel, all gilt and flash."

God of Wine - Third Eye Blind

Vanishing Acts

Author: Jodi Picoult
Genre: realistic fiction
Pages: 418
Publisher: Washington Square Press

Brief Summary:
Delia Hopkins has a fantastic life. Her dad is the greatest: he does magic tricks, makes pancakes and has always been there whenever she needed him. She has two best friends, Eric and Fitz, who have lived near her as far back as she can remember. She and Eric have a beautiful daughter together; Fitz will do anything for her. Although sometimes disheartening, she loves her career as a find and rescue professional and her bloodhound Greta. Her life begins to unravel the day her father gets arrested. For kidnapping. Her. And apparently her name is Bethany. And her mom hasn't been dead for the last 24 years like her dad told her.

Review:
Jodi Picoult is one of the most popular contemporary authors. I have read and enjoyed (to varying degrees) three of her other novels. For one of my classes at Pitt, we read My Sister's Keeper, or were supposed to. I had read the book prior to taking the course and did not reread it. That one was my favorite of the Picoult books I had read. Imagine my surprise when all of my friends hated it. They said the writing was absolutely atrocious.

In my reading of Vanishing Acts, I paid way more attention to the construction of the novel than I ordinarily do on a first time through a book (in which, unless the story is absolutely awful, I focus on the plot and the characters). I still thought the story itself was engaging, but I definitely found weaknesses in the characterization/writing. The main problem is that, if the fonts were not different for each character, I would constantly have been forgetting which character's point of view I was currently reading. They lack a unique voice. And even when they were freaked out about something, they all continued to read as a bit disaffected.

Although changing the font for each different character is neat, I really think you ought to be able to tell which character is 'speaking' without needing that. Or even without a heading. Also, I have to admit that I was annoyed by the similarity between Andrew's (Delia's father) and Eric's (Delia's fiancee) fonts. Is Picoult (or the publisher) trying to suggest that Delia has serious Elektra complex type daddy issues? Or were they just too lazy to find another font that looked entirely different from the others? There are thousands of fonts; how hard can it be?

All three had two things in common, despite their differing plots: a focus on family and a twist at the very end. The twist here was...pretty much nonexistent. The only things that could maybe called twists are Delia's continual rediscoveries of memories and a 'revelation' that was completely unsurprising given the discourse of the previous chapters.

A decent read on an interesting subject, but not an astounding book. Now for some lyrics! (This song was also selected because alcoholism is a huge topic in this book; about half of the characters are, were or were related to alcoholics).

"And there's a memory of a window, looking through I see you.
Searching for something I could never give you.
There's someone who understands you more than I do.
A sadness I can't erase, all the love on your face."