Book of The Month: Jpod

Hi guys, im back from country which has the best rice and toilets in the world. Will tok abt dat in another post. Anyway since we now have a babe of the month column, think it would be appropriate to have a monthly column for something more high-brow: Books. So here's the first book of the month column.

Title: Jpod
Author: Douglas Coupland
Has also written: Generation X, Microserfs
Who should read it: Anybody with a sense of humor and computer nerds.

Plot Summary: Where to even begin. Basically the story revolves around the Narrator, Ethan, and the people in his life, which consists mainly of his family, his colleagues, and a Chinese gangster chief called Kam Fong. Ethan works for a video game company, and Jpod is what he and his colleagues call the department in which they work in. Read the book to find out why. I'm not sure there's even a real plot going on, although to be fair I'm only 5/8 through. What happens are a series of events that is chronicled by Ethan, each as weird as the next. Examples include a human smuggling ring, a missing video game executive and a game to find the only non-prime number within 10000 and 100000. Peppered throughout the book are techno terms that my brother understands but refuses to tell me. Anyway the book is so far off from the norm that i don't really know how to describe it, so on to my review.

Why I like the book: I'm only half way through and I already love the book. Basically its fucking funny lah. The dialogue, the situations, the characters, easily one of the funniest books i ever read. Love letters to Ronald MacDonald, selling yourself on ebay. The writing style is extremely unconventional, which adds to the enjoyment. You get random pages of techno-speak, dialogue spelled out in actual Chinese, and 8-9 pages of actuall numbers between 10000 and 100000. Just a taste of what's within novel.

Memorable Quotes

"You are always hearing about 'following your dream', but what if your dream was boring? Most people's dreams are boring. What if you had a dream to sell roadside corn-if you went and sold it, would that mean you were living your dream? Would people perceive you as a failure anyway? And how long would you be happy doing it? Probably not long, but by then it's too late to start something else. You're fucked.

"the three things you can't fake are erections, creativity and competence"

"Sometimes I get too lazy to wear makeup. To compensate for it, I simply dress like a slut."

"....and the buzzword is so horrible I have to spell it out in ASCII: {101, 100, 103, 121}" ( if anybody understands pls let me know im clueless)

IF ANYBODY WANTS TO READ IT LET ME KNOW I CAN LEND YOU MY COPY ONCE IM DONE WITH IT.