JPod

By: Douglas Coupland

Narrated by: Marc Cashman

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.©2006 Douglas Coupland; (P)Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Coupland is an accomplished and talented writer whose books are perennial bestsellers.” —Quill and Quire

“[JPod] is a work in which [Coupland's] familiar misgivings about life on the technological cusp are again invoked, but also one in which the skills he’s been developing as a novelist pay off, where his satirical streak and his social consciousness finally stop fooling around with each other and settle down together. . . . JPod is a sleek and necessary device: the finely tuned output of an author whose obsolescence is thankfully years away.” —The New York Times Book Review

“JPod is a seriously funny book, . . . a rolling thunder of sustained comedy, first page to last, as it ends up, and skewers the shamelessness and amorality that define our era. . . . Coupland’s timing is impeccable: JPod is the right book at the right time.” —The Globe and Mail

“Imagine a cocktail of The Office, Weeds and Wired magazine, shaken not stirred . . . The master ironist just might redefine E.M. Forster’s famous dictate ‘Only Connect’ for the Google age.” —USA Today

“Coupland once again nails the zeitgeist of the age. . . . The best thing about JPod is its characteristic good writing . . . and its dark, unflagging wit.” —Calgary Sun

“Coupland is possibly the most gifted exegete of North American mass culture writing today. . . . JPod is without a doubt his strongest, best-observed novel since Microserfs.” —The Guardian

Praise for Hey Nostradamus!:

“A leap sideways from the acid irony which has shaded some of Coupland’s earlier novels. Instead, from the pen of one of the coolest authors on the planet has come a work of suffusing humanity.”
–Sunday Herald (UK)

“The leading literary voice of the most cynical generation lets it all out in a blaze of spirituality, terror, high comedy and soul-searching, and does it all in a way that is caring and clever, heartbreaking and hilarious, tough and tender. . .not only Coupland’s best novel, but also one of the best of the year.”
–The Hamilton Spectator

Canadian hicks do not sound like American hicks.

The story was good. Overall the performer portrayed the satire well and kept the esoteric bits moving.

I know Canada is a small, hapless nation but we have our own distinct hick voices (they are called hosers, btw) and they sound like someone who is just waking up from dental surgery and have been watching Rock em Sock em 4 all day.

One love.

a little is lost

There's things lost in the audio book, that are easier read than heard. Like the 10 pages of RAMEN NOODLE ,or their number games they play,but so far a good listen

REQUIRED READING FOR GEEKS

JPod is my favorite book (and I've downloaded over 400 audiobooks). I first purchased this book in 2007 and have listened to it several dozen times since. On the surface, the book chronicles the hilarious and hapless adventures of Ethan, his family and pod mates, but I think there's so much more to it than the basic narrative. Let me put it this way: if you are a geek, into computers and the internet, and the kind of person who watches YouTube videos and Google's random questions, you will *LOVE* this audiobook. The negative reviews here are absolutely false.

This is also one of the most excellently read audiobooks on Audible. Marc Cashman has the pitch-perfect voice for the light-hearted comedy in this book. He also manages to give each character their own vocal idiosyncrasies so you are always aware of who is speaking, regardless of whether Coupland tells you.

There are a few books out there where you feel like the protagonist is "you". This is one of them. I hope you come to enjoy the book as much as I did.

-Michael

A bit self-indulgent

I wouldn't say I'm a rabid Coupland fan, but I've enjoyed his works for a number of years, so I have a bit of perspective with regard to his writing. This book was a disappointment. I thoroughly enjoyed Microserfs, and given the comparisons that have been made between that book and this, I was looking forward to the listen.

It just seemed as though he was patting himself on the back the whole time, making references to himself in his own book, as though he is such a strong presence in the social consciousness. It reminded me of the really cheesy scene in Ocean's Twelve where Julia Roberts dressed up as 'herself' to help out with the heist. It's just not effective and comes off a bit smarmy.

And his way of writing random pages of words/characters/phrases in his books, which I don't mind, doesn't come across effectively in the audio version.

I'm giving it 3-stars because it did have a few redeeming qualities and comical aspects to the characters, but definitely not his best effort.

Should you get it? I don't know....there are better ones out there.

Very funny, recommended

I liked the book a lot as a software developer myself, however I don’t think its required to enjoy the book at all. The characters and events in the book are all hilarious!

Theres a point in the book where every single three letter word in the english language is read aloud, feel free to skip forward at that point as it is tedious and ultimately meaningless.