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    JPOD
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    JPOD
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    JPOD
    Audiobook10 hours

    JPOD

    Written by Douglas Coupland

    Narrated by Marc Cashman

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Very evil…very funny
    A lethal joyride into today's new breed of technogeeks, Douglas Coupland's new novel updates Microserfs for the age of Google.

    Ethan Jarlewski and five co-workers are bureaucratically marooned in JPod, a no-escape architectural limbo on the fringes of a massive Vancouver video game design company.
    The six jPodders wage daily battle against the demands of a bone-headed marketing staff, who daily torture employees with idiotic changes to already idiotic games. Meanwhile, Ethan's personal life is shaped (or twisted) by phenomena as disparate as Hollywood, marijuana grow-ops, people-smuggling, ballroom dancing, and the rise of China. JPod's universe is amoral and shameless-and dizzyingly fast-paced. The characters are products of their era even as they're creating it. Everybody in Ethan's life inhabits a moral gray zone. Nobody is exempt, not even his seemingly straitlaced parents or Coupland himself. Full of word games, visual jokes, and sideways jabs, this book throws a sharp, pointed lawn dart into the heart of contemporary life. JPOD is Douglas Coupland at the top of his game.


    From the Cassette edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMay 16, 2006
    ISBN9780739340288
    Author

    Douglas Coupland

    DOUGLAS COUPLAND is a writer, visual artist and designer. He has published fourteen novels, three collections of short stories, and eight nonfiction books; has written and performed for England’s Royal Shakespeare Company; and is a columnist for the Financial Times and a frequent contributor to the New York Times. In 2015 and 2016 Coupland was artist in residence at the Paris Google Cultural Institute. In May 2018 his exhibition on ecology, Vortex, opened at the Vancouver Aquarium. Coupland is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy, an Officer of the Order of Canada, an Officer of the Order of British Columbia, a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and a recipient of the Lieutenant Governor's Award for Literary Excellence.

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    Reviews for JPOD

    3.5/5

    918 ratings42 reviews

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    • 3/5
      The back-blurbs don't lie: JPod is a compulsively fast read that engages you and draws you along. However, while it engaged and amused me, I can't say I liked it all that much. The amorality of the characters was offputting and made them less interesting; the PoMo conceit of putting the author in the book seemed stale and, in this case, contrived. Unlike Microserfs, wherein moments of transcendence and meaning rose out of the rich white noise of geek life, here the white noise seems to serve itself first, foremost and forever. Maybe that's supposed to be a comment on modern mores. But as a Gen-Xer and a geek...I think he's selling us short.
    • 3/5
      This is a pretty funny book about being a computer programmer with family problems. There are quite believable in my experience.
    • 3/5
      Not as good as Microserfs, but worth reading. It'S really odd to find Coupland as a central character himself
    • 4/5
      This book is what made me want to become a computer programmer. In real life it is nothing like that. But a very fun, experimental book.
    • 2/5
      Microserfs is one of my favourites. I started out not liking JPod because it seemed a bit cold. I didn't find Ethan, the main character, very likable. It gradually won me over, after I accepted the fact that it's quite a different book than Microserfs was -- much more of a satire.

      I can see why people might not like this novel, but I think there are enough interesting thoughts about technology and culture to make it worthwhile (even if some of the insights are a little shallow). And, unexpectedly, it was pretty funny.
    • 3/5
      This is the first Douglas Coupland book I've read. Maybe it wasn't the best one to start with, because it came across as self-indulgent in a way that probably wouldn't have bothered me if I'd read lots of his other books. The pages of numbers were tedious to flick through and took the book to the level of 'nerdy in the extreme'. I liked the protrayal of the JPod characters which struck me as very realistic, having worked with techy people for a few years. Much of the rest of the book was wildly and deliberately unrealistic, but no less fun for all that.
    • 3/5
      I'm a big fan of Coupland, going back to the early 1990s but this book has been one of the few gaps in the collection for me. Reading it now, I don't have any regrets about waiting so long. As previous reviews have pointed out, this book was gimmicky and self-indulgent, and came at a low point in his career. Some of the episodes were funny, some of the thoughts were deep, but come on, 25 pages of prime numbers?''I can point out the exact place where he stopped and sent the book twirling through the air; that's where the character named Martin Amis comes in." Kingsley Amis, on his son Martin's novel Money: A Suicide Note
    • 3/5
      (Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)As I've detailed here before, I have for most of my adult life been an obsessive fan of "Generation X" phrase-coiner Douglas Coupland; but while I read literally everything from his first book up to Miss Wyoming when younger, mostly for personal reasons, and have read literally everything from The Gum Thief to now for professional reasons, there's a chunk from 2000 to 2007 that I completely missed altogether (comprising the books All Families are Psychotic, Hey Nostradamus!, Eleanor Rigby and jPod), mostly because this was when Coupland reached the low point of his transition between Postmodernism and 21st-century "Sincerism," right at a point when I myself was doing a lot more writing of books in my life than the reading of them. I mean, take 2006's jPod as a good example, which was ostensibly meant to be a "conceptual sequel" of sorts to the biggest hit of his career, 1995's Microserfs, with the two novels sharing a lot of the same premises and details; but while Microserfs was a revelatory celebration of a coming geek entrepreneurial class just starting to show itself, jPod is an unimaginative reaction to our Web 2.0 times, with Coupland seemingly out of ideas about what to do with his old pop-culture shtick and quirky Aspie characters besides to ramp things up to an unsatisfyingly cartoonish level, but not yet understanding what he needed to do to change his career path into its next higher level. Eventually, of course, he did end up realizing what to do, which in a nutshell was to make his stories a lot weirder and darker (see Generation A and Player One, for example); but here where he was still floundering with it all, jPod feels very much like a Coupland simply waiting with boredom for the high-profile MTV shorts offer that were guaranteed to come with any early-2000s project of his (and indeed, jPod itself got made into a 13-episode show for Canadian television, with a novel that feels very much like a quickly done afterthought to that show instead of the other way around). As big a fan as I am of his, it's admittedly hard to justify this particular stretch of his career, so best perhaps to turn either to the books older than these or newer to save yourself some wasted reading experiences.Out of 10: N/A
    • 5/5
      Hilarious. My one critique is Doug wrote himself into the text.
    • 3/5
      Coupland has more fun with book design within these pages than he has since his debut novel Generation X. While still not measuring up to the bar set early in the author's career, J Pod delivers a few giggles, one or two pseudo-deep thoughts, and enough pop culture references to strangle a modestly sized basement full of hipsters.
    • 4/5
      Excellent, funny, anarchic, and strangely accurate. I work as a software developer, and could identify several of the characters in the book as people I have worked with.
    • 4/5
      I unabashedly love Coupland's Microserfs. To me, JPod is a Twilight Zone paradigm of Microserfs with drugs and Asian gangsters thrown in. Oh, and Mr. Coupland also goes all Stephen King and includes himself as a character. It's all quite bizarre. I'm trying to separate the experience of reading this book from the context of Microserfs, and I can't quite do it. I liked this book, but I'm not sure how I would feel without the glow of my warm feelings for the earlier novel.The main difference, I think, is that Microserfs, at its core, was pretty warm. You really got a sense that the characters cared for each other (I did, at least). Not so in JPod. It's the same setup: a corps of programmers working together, with the main character dating another member of the group, the main character's parents, and a random sprinkling of outsiders. And you get some similar musings on time and identity, but it all seems so much shallower. And maybe that's the point. In that sense, it reminds me of my readings of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, which (again, to me) espouses artistic integrity, and Atlas Shrugged, which is a money-grubbing capitalist manifesto. Except Coupland knows how to make his characters seem, you know, human, and also he's not insane. And I don't think he's necessarily trying to push an agenda, just reflecting the changes in the times - Microserfs captured the burgeoning tech culture, where just about everything was cutting-edge and "one-point-oh," whereas it's now become a more jaded thing with the same ills that plague the music, film, and publishing industries (with marketing dictating substance instead of the other way around).As an aside to Mr. Coupland (who will assuredly never read this, but what the hell), I apologize profusely for bringing Ayn Rand into a discussion of your work, even as a touchstone mostly for my own reference. You deserve better, sir.
    • 3/5
      I've resented Coupland for the whole Generation X thing for years and have always perceived him as a bit pretentious. Fair? Maybe not, but what are you going to do. A friend pushed this book on me and I have to say I enjoyed it. Coupland even appears as a character that plays off the image I had of him. Well played, Doug.
    • 5/5
      I absolutely loved this book. It was so clever and so much fun to read. On numerous occasions I laughed out loud while I was reading this (which was slightly embarrassing when I was sitting on the bus). Douglas Coupland even makes an appearance in his own novel. Very clever!!
    • 3/5
      Though it's a geeky book about geeky programmers (ergo funny and sarcastic), it gets really tired at some point. Everything is way too non-realistic.Some people like it. I didn't quite.
    • 3/5
      I have read this book twice. The first time, it was super fun, satirical, and witty. The second time, I had trouble getting through it. This book pokes fun at the meaninglessness of everyday existence in our corporate and technological worlds, and it is funny, and it does some aesthetically experimental things (some of which work, to some extent, and some of which waste paper), but it lacks some essence of literature in my opinion. Rather than inspiring me to get more out of life, I felt this book just provoked dark humour, the kind that is funny in limited doses, but slowly kills you over five-hundred pages. I have never met Coupland, but this book feels like it was written by an author who is trying to compensate for an over abundance of boredom. If you're looking for something fun, go for it. This book shits fun.
    • 5/5
      I love this book. It was quirky, interesting, and insanely funny. I think Douglas Coupland is a genius. He is my favorite Canadian.
    • 5/5
      I work in a cubicle farm called jPod with a small handful of geeks. It's called jPod because of a computer glitch that put six people whose last names start with the letter J in the space that was supposed yo have been a rock climbing wall, but which got cancelled because it was too twentieth century. Once you're in jPod there's no escaping, I tried for months, and simply gave up. Kaitlin's new here. She'll try hard to get out for a while, and then she'll simply accept her fate and try to get on with life as best she can.I enjoyed this book, with its offbeat characters (including the author himself) and its humour. I preferred it to the only other book of Douglas Coupland's that I've read which is "Girlfriend in a Coma".
    • 4/5
      JPod is Microserfs on amphetamines in Coupland's home town Vancouver, BC, already lovingly portrayed in his City of Glass. Sequels rarely match the quality of the original. This book is no exception. Coupland has transposed his Microserfs characters (Daniel is Ethan, Karla is Kaitlin, Todd is Cowboy, Ethan is Steve, Mom and Dad are Mom and Dad) while increasing their weirdness factor beyond belief, characters as caricatures. The work environment does not feel real either: His supposedly work-slave programmers spend their time doing anything but work, the pressure to "ship" a product so present in Microserfs isn't there. Management rarely shows up in this Dilbert world. Even if one accepts the surreal weirdness, the book suffers from Coupland's lazy approach towards his characters and plot: If a character runs into a road block or experiences pain, a bizarre deus ex machina instantly resolves the problem or switches the scene. The characters never have a chance to react, grow - and grow to be loved by the reader. It feels more like a string of levels in an Arcade game (This is also the problem of the already canceled eponymous Canadian TV series.). The instant gratification and attention deficit writing does not produce great literature. Coupland seems to acknowledge this by filling pages with the digits of pi - a writer's abdication (Shakespeare surrendering to the typing monkeys?). Overall, this book is better than the recent Coupland books, but lacks the depth and warmth of Microserfs. I wish Coupland would write fewer, better crafted books.
    • 3/5
      An entertaining read, though Coupland could do without all the repetition of number sequences/abbreviations within the book; save some paper, we get the point you're trying to make about the characters and their environment!
    • 4/5
      Very funny, particularly if you work in an office environment and can relate. Also fun to read and recognize the Vancouver locales.
    • 5/5
      Read the entire thing on Sept 20, 2007. Great book, though not as tight and coherent as other Coupland books.
    • 5/5
      Funny, absurd and unconventional are words that describe JPod very well. The story focuses on Ethan and his co-workers situated in a dead-end part of a software company, the last person to leave this particular cubicle group died... A main part of the story are the strange things these guys come up with to find some distraction from work such as writing a love letter to Ronald McDonald or finding a wrong number in the first 100'000 digits of Pi. Those 100'000 digits are even printed, so the reader can search as well. Another unique thing about the book is it's design there are pages where the writing is minuscule others where a couple of catch phrases are supersized and take up almost all the page.All in all it's been a very entertaining read and I'm definitely going to check out more of Coupland's work.
    • 3/5
      July 2007. Entertaining read. Assumes readers' intelligence. Especially liked the lists. My favorite list was the language list, which included Catalan (lisping) and Catalan (non-lisping). The self-referencial aspect was a bit tiresome and overdone. This was my book club's choice for this month's review. [We are 5 women, 4 men, only two of whom comprise a couple. We've been a book club since 1993, and have 3 original members, and 2 more members whose membership is almost as long.] One member said the book reminded him of PG Wodehouse, comparing Copeland's use of pop culture to Wodehouse's "period" color and motifs. My club rates on 1-5, but any decimal point between the cardinal numbers is accepted (even pi, but only 2 digits). I think the average was 3.6. My rating was 3.
    • 4/5
      Lived this life before. Doug brings it to life. It would've been great, but Doug decided to pull a Hitchcock and put himself in his own work of art...self-agrandizing propaganda brought this down a notch...but still worth a read.
    • 2/5
      Unfortunately, this smacks for Microserfs for Generationals.
    • 3/5
      There's something vaguely disturbing about being cynical about the very medium you are using - is that irony? Coupland totally overdoes it, and frankly while it was fresh and edgy in Generation X, 15 years later it becomes old. Add to this an outlandlish plot and the author as a character and it gets rather tiresome. At least the main character, Ethan is endearing in his willingness to please and in his naivete.
    • 5/5
      After Miss Wyoming and All Families are Psychotic, I was afraid DC had lost his fastball.This is a return to form, and hopefully a sign of things to come from my favorite author.
    • 3/5
      Some would say that this is Coupland's attempt to revisit his previous success with Microserfs, like revising a program to conform to 2.0 standards and they'd be correct. The problem here lies in the fact that sometimes like a program being ported to 2.0 status, what comes out is less impressive than the original.This book chronicles the lives of a group of people who code, except that this time around the topic is about video games, not basic building blocks of code that can be formed into more complex programs like Lego.I think Coupland was not as successful this time around, as the novel felt staid and lacking a certain heart that I've come to associate with the Microserfs team.Borrow it for the video game references.
    • 4/5
      I guess most people will find this pretty disappointing after Eleanor Rigby, although I enjoyed it enough in a throwaway sort of way. Coupland had been maturing as an author, and this kind of rebels against that, with lots of Simpsons references etc. One for fans only.