Jpod

This is one of my favorite books, although I’m afraid I’d rarely recommend it to people. It is filled with nonsense and babblings on about obscure subjects, but it is exactly everything I love in a book. It pokes fun at society as a whole, and st the inner workings of the office space and all the institutions we find ourselves to be part of. Basically if you’re a trolley human with trolley tendencies and an appreciation for trolley behavior and thought, you’ll love it.

Jpod by Douglas Coupland is hilarious. I was laughing throughout the entire book. Coupland creates great characters and takes them on a wild ride with a plot full of crazy scenarios. I have read some negative reviews on how Coupland incorporated himself into the book. These people said it was "egotistical" and "arrogant," but in all actuality it was for comical relief. Read it and see for yourself, Coupland does not seem like an arrogant man at all. Jpod will go down as another excellent book from the mastermind Douglas Coupland.

If you like the show Weeds, you will love this book. It possesses the same sort of irreverence and wit. Is it a work of genius? Perhaps not. Then again, perhaps it is. There are at least flickers of Coupland's true brilliance. Blank pages and pages full of nothing but numbers. I believe some of the other reviewers here are missing the point. As for me, I loved it and anxiously await Coupland's next great adventure.

For me, this is immeasurably better than "Microserfs." In fact, calling it a straight-up sequel to that novel is probably a little misguided -- it actually felt more like a sequel to "All Families Are Psychotic." I think it's a testament to "JPod" that I read five Coupland books one right after the other and I enjoyed "JPod" the most. While "Jpod" takes the style of "Microserfs" and has quite a few similarities and certainly has its format, this novel takes a much-needed detour out of the stifling office of the coders and devotes a lot of time to the main character's crazy parents, his brother, and most importantly Kam Fong, an insane, emotionless Asian drug dealer/problem-solver (who also ballroom dances, people-smuggles and digs karaoke). All I can say is that "JPod" made me laugh -- made me REALLY laugh. I simply loved Ethan's parents and Kam Fong, and enjoyed every this-is-a-novel-and-not-real-life scenario they found themselves in. It was like Coupland was saying "You want more Zeitgeist? Well, too bad -- here's dead bikers, pot-selling moms, Asian immigrants, forced heroin addiction (with a little heroin-makes-my-life-good sentiment), and a wild stopoff adventure in China. Enjoy!" "JPod" has all that "Microserfs" office interaction -- with the pop-culture/geek/math references slipping everywhere -- but it's not nearly as dense and crowding as it was in that novel. And it's all often so much a shot at Coupland's own writing that it makes it that much more fun. Coupland's writing here is just so loose and unconcerned and free-flowing -- it's like the novel was written on a long jag of just being on a roll. I had a ball reading this book, and it feels like something that was a ball to write. Coupland shows up as a character here, which I admit is odd (though it's hilarious when he makes fun of himself). This is somehow Coupland's most self-indulgent novel, but on the other hand his least. Coupland is an author with very obvious quirks, and somehow while often lovingly indulging in them, I felt them get in the way of his book the least here. The bottom line for me is that "JPod" is flat-out funny. I looked forward to picking it up every day because I knew it was going to make me laugh. Ethan's coworkers are pretty close to being as annoying as their counterparts in "Microserfs," but Ethan's parents felt so impossibly real to me, and Kam Fong was so impossibly unreal, and everything they do is in that the-almost-reality-of-novel-life-reality (where you can hide bodies and not go to jail, etc.) and so darkly funny that I couldn't get enough of them. I hope Coupland brings them back one day. "JPod" came as something of a surprise for me. It is essentially offspring from his most suffocating book and it ends up being one of his lightest. I don't think this is Coupland's best book, but it certainly is one of his most fun. And I enjoyed every moment of it.

Not only is this book witty, critical, and funny at the same time... Not only does this book (like most of Coupland's books) capture the zeitgeist, the essence of our culture, really well... No, this book also reflects how work in the games industry is. I work in the games industry, and even though Coupland exaggerates it a bit, it certainly goes in the right direction and all those things do happen. An excellent read!

I absolutely adored Microserfs, particularly because I was working with Microsoft at the time (not AT but WITH their folks) and it was spot on. Working in the high tech industry as that time, it was easy to see the satire. JPod just continued the fun and I utterly loved it. I loved the stream of consciousness pages, the random stuff, and the torturing of Kaitlin. A WONDERFUL read.