I loved this book for 2 reasons.

1) It was a ridiculous and fun story. Easy to read, and never a dull moment. The character of Alan/Arthur/Antoine/etc is quirky (as expected being the son of a Mountain and a Washing Machine) and the development of his family dynamic through the story is really compelling.

2) As it was originally released in 2005 and deals with contemporary technology (somewhat bleeding edge at the time) it is really interesting to see, 7 years later, how drastically different the technological landscape is today. In 2005, it was rare for a laptop to have a built-in wifi card. Hell, it was rare for people to have a laptop. The Blackberry was the closest thing to what we now consider a smartphone and it was hardly that. PDAs & Palm Pilots were still a big deal. A plan to blanket Toronto in free Wifi was revolutionary. It feels almost archaic reading about this world again and remembering back to 2005 and how things were then.

As with any [a:Cory Doctorow|12581|Cory Doctorow|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1212526024p2/12581.jpg] book, his personal politics bleed through a little bit, but he has some really good points on freedom of speech and free access to information that never get in the way of the story. (If anything, they add to it and make you think about how these ideas could apply today in the age of smartphones and apps).

Finally, if I've convinced you to read this book (and you should), Cory is not one to make a claim and not back it up with his own material. By which I mean, you can download it for free (completely legally) from his website, in PDF, txt, html or any e-book reader format you want. A wild book appears! ( )

Oy. Is it a bad sign that I was most interested in the proselytizing portion of our program? The stuff with our hero's family was just too disjointed for me. Which is a shame, because I really like [a:Cory Doctorow|12581|Cory Doctorow|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1212526024p2/12581.jpg] and loved [b:Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom|29587|Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom|Cory Doctorow|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1168033624s/29587.jpg|1413], so I really wanted to like this book. I'm just not the reader for it. ( )

I thought this book was only good. I hated the first 40 or 50 pages which is something I can't just ignore. Those first pages seemed very male oriented and I felt like I couldn't relate to the story or characters at all, but once I got passed those first pages I became more engaged in the story, especially once the character of Kurt was introduced. Kurt was definitely my favorite character and he made the story actually enjoyable to me. I was okay with the other characters. They didn't really turn me away from the story but they weren't my favorite characters, though I did really like Kurt and Lyman. I found myself getting lost quite a bit in this story. there was a lot of jumping around and weird interspersed stories and I couldn't always follow where everyone was and what they were doing. It also took me a bit to get used to the name changing thing throughout this book. I think for me this was still an interesting read and I would probably pick up other books more similar to this in the future even if this particular book wasn't my favorite. I think for anyone thinking about reading this give it a try, but don't be ashamed about putting it aside or not completing the book if this style just isn't your thing, because I know for the first 40-50 pages I was seriously considering not finishing this book, which is not something I typically do. ( )

Hmm, Cory seems to be suffering from diminishing returns. I loved "Down and Out..."; "Eastern Standard Tribe" was pretty good; but this novel kinda blew. I just never got around to caring about either of the two plot threads - the struggle to bring free wi-fi to the citizens of Toronto and the attempt to reconcile flaws of the main character's disfunctionally supernatural family. That said, the writing is good, and Cory excels as usual in his ability to paint cool pictures.

What a strange and interesting novel! I've never read anying by Doctorow before, but I'd kept hearing how good he was. So when this audiobook became avaialable at my library, I snapped it up. I mean, how can you pass up a blurb about a dude who's father is a mountain, his mother is a washing machine, and three of his brothers are Russian nesting dolls...? You cannot.
Well, this book has this weird duality with the two storylines that don't quite work out. I loved the parts about A's childhood and siblings, and their troubles (which is putting it mildly). But the other part about giving everyone free wireless internet was good, and almost as interesting...and yet it didn't seem to mesh well with the other part. But I liked it quirky characters and wanted to know what happened at the big ending scene, so I kept on.
Then the big ending scene happened, and it just kind of.....fell apart, and went no where. Everyone walked away, it was really weird. I'm not even sure what all happened, and I will have to go back and listen to the last chapter again to make sure. What I do know is that the trip to the ending was well worth the read. Very interesting, and very different and singular from anything else I've read.

If the two storylines had been better formulated and meshed together, and if the ending would have coalesced into something solid, and made one feel......this would have been a higher review. But since it didn't have those things, I'm going to have to give this novel 3.5 stars, and recommend it to people who don't mind the fizzle at the end.
By the way, some Bronson Pinchot narrates this audiobook. I have no idea if it's the actor from the 80's sitcom or his weird redecorating show from a few years ago, or not, because this narrator doesn't sound like the actor at all. ( )