The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

I just finished listening to the unabridged audio-book version of Khaled Hosseini's first novel. It tells the story of Amir, a privelidged Afghan boy growing up in the years before the Russian invasion. As the country dissolves into chaos, Amir and his father emmigrate to the United States, finding a new life among other Afghan refugees. As an adult Amir must make a return trip to his homeland to honour the memory of his childhood friend and earn himself redemption from a boyhood act of cowardice.

Eastern Standard Tribe - Cory Doctorow

I've enjoyed several of Doctorow's pod-casted short stories (especially Anda's Game) but this is the first full length novel of his that I have read. It's a great fast-paced story that plunges you into the near-future world of a network consultant forwarding the interests of his time-zone 'tribe' by sabotaging the code of their European rivals. Doctorow is at his best when he's fleshing out the 'what-ifs' of our digital culture; he fabricates train wrecks between social structures and electronic ones and writes stories based on the results. A quick read, but an enjoyable one.