JPod

It's been a while since I've read this book, so we'll see how well this goes. But this book...is [a:Douglas Coupland|1886|Douglas Coupland|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1264509011p2/1886.jpg]. I don't even know the guy, and haven't read any of his other books, but you can just tell that this is the book that he decided to have fun with. And it's a great read. It's hilarious, thoughtful and introspective from time to time, more often absurd. It's a really fun, ridiculous read. As the book progresses, you can't help but shake your head at Coupland's boldness and unashamedness in bending the rules of fiction, but the end product certainly justifies the means, if I can say that without making any greater philosophical statement.

I'm not really part of the generation that this book centers on - I'm a little after their time, I'm afraid - so I'm sure that I didn't connect as well with it as someone who was born a decade earlier might. But as long as you enjoy a good dose of absurdity and a don't mind a plot that doesn't really give a rat's ass where you think it should go next, it's certainly worth a read. It's post-(post-?)modern fiction on the entirely opposite end of the spectrum from the fantastic, elegant, and complex work of [a:Jonathan Safran Foer|2617|Jonathan Safran Foer|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1274633302p2/2617.jpg], but that is in no way a negative difference. It's absurd where Foer is profound, inscrutable in its complex strangeness rather than its strange complexity. And, in a way, he reminds me, just vaguely, of the great [a:Douglas Adams|4|Douglas Adams|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1189120061p2/4.jpg] - in a totally different genre, of course, but if Adams were to write a book about office drones back home in the early 21st century, I imagine it would look something like this.