WEBmikey: JPod / Douglas Coupland : 3 of 5

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JPod / Douglas Coupland : 3 of 5
3.27.2008 5:48 AM \| Link	I've been a Douglas Coupland fan for a long time (there are at least three other novels of his reviewed here on WEBmikey), but this time around I waited for his latest book JPod to come out in paperback, and then let it sit on my shelf unread for longer than I'm willing to mention! But thanks to my quest to read all my unread books, I finally got to it, and it was a blast to read! JPod is about a group of employees at a video game company that organizes people's cubes alphabetically, so all of the "J" names, including our hero Ethan Jarlewski, sit together, hence the title. The book goes into fantastic detail about Ethan and his co-workers, all of which are quirky and interesting, and the story winds from Vancouver to China in some of the most bizarre plot twists Coupland has yet devised. In fact, Coupland himself is a character in the book, and you can sense that he had so much fun writing himself in as a rude, scheming guy who ends up taking Ethan's laptop (which theoretically becomes the basis for this very book)! One of the funniest story devices is the group's plot to sabotage a video game in development by secretly including a deranged, bloody Ronald McDonald, and the descriptions of their plans are hilarious! It's easy to compare this book to Coupland's Microserfs, and in many ways it is an updated variation on that Microsoft-inspired story, but this book is actually much more experimental and even serves as its own art exhibit by the inclusion of huge typography, pages of spam email, and long sections of prime numbers and digits of Pi. All of these serve the story, but are essentially more of a visual device, which is interesting, but a little disappointing at the same time. However, JPod is still an incredible novel that I really enjoyed reading, and apparently it was popular enough to become a TV series in Canada (which I plan on watching soon)! Labels: books


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