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Finally finished reading No Logo by Naomi Klein (Finnish translation, 2000).

The first half of the book was actually pretty interesting, citing a lot of facts and fresh views of a new brand-based business world with the bad boys like Nike and Disney in the lead.

It's very healthy to analyze how these brands, their advertising and their shops affect our culture, while we as individuals are prohibited by trademark and copyright laws from shaping that culture any further by ourselves. All we can do is accept the presence of the brands and let them decide where we are going.

The main problem with the book is that it gets really boring after that. The sweat shop stories of evil factories in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Philippines, etc. are pretty much self-repeating and you just lose interest after a while.

The author is unable to create any sense of dramatics, but instead just spreads all her data out to 400 pages of dullness. Chapter after chapter we get to read about the same sweat shop stuff again and again, no matter what the chapter's title was.

No Logo is an important book about important things, so maybe books like that are supposed to be boring. It's actually a bit reminiscent of Noam Chomsky, who also seems to maintain a very low-profiled, analytical tone in his writings.

Personally I prefer the more caustic and sarcastic approach of Michael Moore, if only because it keeps you interested (and awake) with its entertainment value...