Makers

For my turn hosting book club, I chose the books Makers by Cory Doctorow. Summary from Amazon:

In this tour de force, Doctorow (Little Brother) uses the contradictions of two overused SF themes—the decline and fall of America and the boundless optimism of open source/hacker culture—to draw one of the most brilliant reimaginings of the near future since cyberpunk wore out its mirror shades. Perry Gibbons and Lester Banks, typical brilliant geeks in a garage, are trash-hackers who find inspiration in the growing pile of technical junk. Attracting the attention of suits and smart reporter Suzanne Church, the duo soon get involved with cheap and easy 3D printing, a cure for obesity and crowd-sourced theme parks. The result is bitingly realistic and miraculously avoids cliché or predictability. While dates and details occasionally contradict one another, Doctorow's combination of business strategy, brilliant product ideas and laugh-out-loud moments of insight will keep readers powering through this quick-moving tale.

I wanted to read a sci-fi book, and I've liked some of Doctorow's earlier works. Also, we'd just been to the Maker Faire, so it seemed appropriate.

I have to say, however, we were all fairly underwhelmed by this novel. Some of the ideas and characters were intriguing.. loved his 3d printer stuff (check out this YouTube video for a quick look at how 3d printing is doing today.. pretty awesome). But it was way too long, and not very well-edited. It felt slapped together to me. Also, some of the way the characters spoke was just way too unrealistic.. basically I felt like they were just spouting Doctorow's philosophies a lot of the time. People were pro the sex scene though. :)

So overall, pretty so-so. My grandmother was very pleased that we used her Blue Willow china for our lunch! We had tamales from the farmer's market, fruit salad, and mint brownies.

Also, though Amy was in Hawaii, we got to Skype with her, which was so much fun! We put the laptop on the dining room table, and she ate her breakfast while we had lunch.