Cory Doctorow was the perfect author to launch a new reading series: He was funny, smart, and supremely knowledgeable about a wide variety of topics. Doctorow spoke about privacy concerns with Facebook and Google (he said he didn't want to seem like an apologist, but "I've been feeling pretty good about Google lately," noting that he owns a Nexus One), and what Amazon does really, really well (their customer service is exceptional) and really, really poorly (they don't let you own the Kindle books you buy). He talked about some research he did on the Wobblies for his new book, For the Win (he bought some rare books about the IWW at Left Bank Books, in that "crazy fish mall" at First and Pike).
The audience questions were brilliant, too. They had less to do with where Doctorow gets his ideas from, and more to do with the privacy/tech issues in his books. If you missed the talk, you can find a lot of Doctorow's thoughts on these issues in Content, his book of essays, which you can download for free over here. He signed books for about an hour; I think he had an in-depth conversation with everybody in the goddamned place and came out smiling. Some people are born authors, I tell you.
You can find my thoughts on Pillow Army over on Line Out.
