This was the first book I've read by Cory Doctorow. It is a collection of four short stories, Unauthorized Bread, being my favourite, but all of them bring something to the table.
This was a finalist for this year's Canada Reads, defended by Akil Augustine. It was the first book voted off, but it's probably the book that had the most themes, all of them relevant to our world right now.
Unauthorized Bread was a clever story that used a lot of technology and focuses on the themes of racism, systemic racism and socioeconomic disparities.
Model Minority has a superhero named the American Eagle as its main character. It focuses on the treatment of black people by police and systemic racism. It definitely had a Black Lives Matter message.
Radicalized is the one story that felt the most American to me. It focuses on health insurance and health care, terrorism, and white privilege. Not that Canadians don't have issues with health care, but they are very different than in the U.S.
The Masque of the Red Death is the fourth story and it takes place during a pandemic. If that isn't timely, I don't know what is. The book was published before COVID-19, but I think reading it during a pandemic made it very real and even more powerful.
The writing is excellent and I think I would like to try to read a novel by Cory Doctorow and see how that goes.
Bookworm Rating: 🐛🐛🐛
I talk about Radicalized in my first YouTube video "I Love Books". You can check it out here:
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