O.k., so there are a couple of things you need to know about IT people, if you haven’t guessed:

 1) Acronyms are our life.

 2) Writing a book dealing with technology from any angle is an almost instant draw.

 I bought a book for MJ for Christmas that was on her list.  SAHM I am, by Meredith Efken that I picked up an read over the past couple of days and I liked it…a ton.  SAHM stands for Stay At Home Mom and it’s a book that tells a story through a collection of e-mails sent to and from a listserv and to and from various members of the listserv.

There are a couple of interesting dynamics that strike a cord for me from my grad school days.  There are good examples of the book of people crafting a different face to their online communication to escape the trouble of their own offline lives.  There are two lists in the book that get used – SAHM I am, the main list, is a larger group and is moderated by the chief ‘villan’ of the book Rosalynn and there is ‘Green eggs and Ham’, a smaller group of people that exchange e-mails and is filled with the main characters of the book.  There is an interesting dynamic in ‘small groups’ (I use the term loosely because some of the dynamics work in an e-mail list) that when it is too large there are often sub-groups that form.  Green eggs and Ham is one of those subgroups.  Finally, it’s also filled with some good examples of how e-mail can be misinterpreted. 

 The book is a quick read.  The characters have some good depth to them and the dynamic of exchanging e-mails makes the book an interesting read from my perspective.  It’s also just funny at points with a wedding scene (at the end of the book) described really well. 

The main character, Dulcie Huckleberry, has a husband who is a programmer.  The two big compaints that I have with the book have resulted in some conversations with my editor wife.  First, is that Tom (Dulcie’s husband) really doesn’t ‘sound’ like a geek.  There are points later in the book that it changes, but overall his geekness lacks.  MJ pointed out that he’s not a main character which works.  The other, and it’s a trivial complaint at that, is that the e-mails take on a very novel like quality – it’s just not how people write.  The point being is that I don’t know if character development could have taken on such form if e-mails were a bit truer to form.

 End result – it’s a fun geek read.  It gets you an insight into your wife’s life :) , there are some interesting dynamics of e-mail and it’s really quick…it gets a 4/4 for me :) .