jPod

jPod

By: Douglas Coupland
Random House of Canada; http://www.randomhouse.ca/

Ethan Jarlewski works in a cubicle surrounded by co-workers with surnames that begin with the letter 'J'. Even though they're all around thirty-something years old, their personalities are still composed of pop culture and stale soundbites off of junk food packages. At one point, Ethan even questions whether he has a personality.

Based in Vancouver, jPod works for a company that produces video games. Rather than build the game their marketing department doomed to commercial failure, they engage in useless but amusing antics: competing to see who can write the best pitch to sell themselves on eBay or imagining what Ronald McDonald's love life would be like.

Read this if you: Feel your life lacks any purpose or significance, or if you just don't have anything better to do.

Don't read this if you: Enjoy character driven literature.

The mood you need to be in: Cynical.

Read it while you're: At work to pass time, or while you're on the phone, waiting on hold for someone, anyone but "Amelie", the corporate interactive voicemail, to answer.

The best part: When Ethan's girlfriend (also a member of jPod) invents a 'hug machine' to console isolated and socially-inept IT workers.

Other books on your nightstand: Other books by Douglas Coupland, especially Microserfs.

Words to live by: Challenge yourself to be more than just "a depressing assemblage of pop culture influences and cancelled emotions, driven by the sputtering engine of only the most banal form of capitalism"..

In a nutshell: Life happens around Ethan and jPod. For most of the book, Ethan doesn't initiate any action. Ethan becomes swept up in other people's conflicts and becomes an accessory to their crimes. His protests are subdued by his feelings of hopelessness that he can change anything, an apt metaphor for how ineffectual many Gen Xers feel in the world.

By: Miranda Leigh