Eastern Standard Tribe
In celebration of International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, we are pleased as punch to announce the addition of Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow to our collection of freely available audiobooks in podcast form.
Art is an up-and-coming interface designer, working on the management of data flow along the Massachusetts Turnpike. He’s doing the best work of his career and can guarantee that the system will be, without question, the most counterintuitive, user-hostile piece of software ever pushed forth into the world.
Why? Because Art is an industrial saboteur. He may live in London and work for an EU telecommunications megacorp, but Art’s real home is the Eastern Standard Tribe.
The comm — instant wireless communication — puts everyone in touch with everyone else, twenty-four hours a day. But one thing hasn’t changed: the need for sleep. The world is slowly splintering into Tribes held together by common time zones, less than families and more than nations. And Art is working to humiliate the Greenwich Mean Tribe to the benefit of his own people.
The world of next week is overflowing with ubiquitous computing, where an idea scribbled onto one’s comm can revolutionize an industry. But in a world without boundaries, nothing can be taken for granted — not happiness, not money, and, most certainly, not love.
Which might explain why Art finds himself stranded on the roof of an insane asylum outside Boston, debating whether to push a pencil into his brain. Happiness or smarts? What’s it going to be, Art?
May 21st, 2007 at 11:43 pm
Well it was interesting getting started for me, largely cause I had no idea what was going on. The problem with audio books is once in awhile you miss a key phrase or segment that changes the whole flow of the book.
Eventually I figured it out and figured my confusion was largely due to the fact that the book is written from the perspective of a semi crazy person in a semi dystopian future, who works in a rather abstract field.
Towards the end I thought the book really found its stride. My comprehension of it went way up and all the confusion of earlier episodes started to gel and clarify in my mind.
June 28th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
There’s probably a good story in here, but I won’t find out by listening to it. Cory Doctorow, like so many other authors, just goes too fast, and it’s really frustrating. I felt like I was being rushed along. I couldn’t sit back and enjoy the story, as I had to concentrate too hard to keep up with it. The pauses are not long enough in transitions from one character to another, or one scene to the next, and so it’s only once you’re into the next part that you realise the perspective has changed. Man, just slow down a bit, and use emphasis and silence to convey meaning.
October 31st, 2007 at 9:31 pm
I wouldn’t change the reading pace. I actually am thrilled by the pace.. you just have to listen fast. He doesn’t waste my time.
Trust me, audiobooks read too slow are WAYYYYY more annoying.
Loved the book, Doc. Incidentally, you should use your clout as a goggle-wearing hot air balloon superblogger to try to get podiobooks to partition their bandwidth a little better so the website runs a little faster. I literally can’t rate books because it just takes too long for the rating to happen.
(I note that the paypal link seems to be pretty quick though
March 30th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
I loved the book, and I’m glad you put in your authorial aside about Harvard Divinity School, because I was yelling at my stereo about it at that very minute. Much more character driven than I expected, too. It was as if Douglas Coupland wrote Pattern Recognition.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:21 am
It took me two tries to get into this book, just because of the reading/ performing style. But wow, great book and the style so totally fits the characters/ setting. The concept of being aligned with a time zone is intriguing also. Now, six months later, I find myself still thinking about this book, especially the “comm” chatter scenes- loved those! May listen again after I’m done my current book, and I have only, ever listened to one book/ series twice, and that was 7th Son. Thanks so much for the brain candy, Churchie
March 4th, 2010 at 3:27 pm
Terrific book! I loved the delicately styled plot and shifts back and forth from the asylum to the lead-up. Cory is a great reader; I’m glad I listened to this instead of reading it, as it made me laugh out loud quite a bit, but was also poignant and powerful in vision. I dosagree about the pace of the reading – the book has a frenetic character that is well represented by the rapid fire dialogue. Yes, there was a time or two I had to rewind a bit, but that is only proof that I cared to hear something I’d missed! I donated!
August 13th, 2010 at 6:11 am
Excellent book. I had the same thought about the speed at which it was read. SLLLOOOWWWW would be annoying, but making sure the transition pauses are in there would help with flow. I love the concepts in this book. I swear, I think an agent provocatuer had a hand in designing Verizon UI’s, particularly in the ‘feature phones’.