Book 2007.02.28 - JPod

Finished JPod today. First time I read a Douglas Copland book is Microserfs. That was when Microsoft was the big thing. I usually finish off a book pretty quickly, but for some reason, I still haven't finished Microserfs. After reading JPod, I now remember why. Douglas Coupland tries too hard to be an uber-cool techno-geek, I'm a bit turned off by his writing style. Sure, he knows his techie stuff and the geek culture, but does he have to flaunt it? My other complaint about JPod is that it is utterly devoid of any plot. You have this bunch of autistic antisocial geeks coding some game for some company, and that's about the main plot. Filling up the rest of the 450 pages are just faithful accounts of what food and beverages they consume, the childish pranks and inane games they play in their cubicles, the mandatory office politics and office romance, etc. To make the book thicker, the thing is peppered with pages of pi to the hundred thousand digits, a list of 58,894 random numbers, letters to Ronald McDonald, a list of 974 three-letter words officially allowed in Scrabble, some pages off an English-Chinese phrasebook, random text in gigantic fonts, etc. I mean, what do I care if the main character's mom has a grow-up in the basement and his Dad is an aspiring extra and a ballroom dancing fanatic on the side? Do I need to know that his boss has a crush on his hottie mom, and was later dispatched to a fake Nike sweatshop in Shanghai by their Chinese gangsta friend? So what if his colleague John Doe's real name is crow (small c) and his dyke mom is called freedom (small f), who tries to seduce the main character's hottie mom, but was later convinced to become a bimbo by the Chinese gangster? If you want to be confused some more, read the book.