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[felis_ultharus]

I finally finished One of the Boys last night, and moved on to the mountain o' manga I've borrowed and received as gifts.

I spent most of my Indigo/Chapters gift cards that I got for my birthday, and picked up yet another book of queer history, as well as Douglas Coupland's JPod. I used to read Coupland's books the second they came out, but I

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[felis_ultharus]

He's fascinating. Sometimes his pop culture stuff gets a little too cutesy for some people, but I like it.

Essentially, what interests Coupland is the times we're living in. That's nothing new -- the Modernists did the ame thing. But unlike them, he writes lucidly, and with a lot of brilliant, wry humour.

He popularized the terms "Generation X" and "McJob" in his first novel Generation X. It's about a group of Gen-Xers, looking for meaning and telling each other stories.

Then he wrote Shampoo Planet -- about our generation. After that, he wrote, Life After God, an autobiographical account of trying to find meaning in a cynical world. I read Polaroids from the Dead, but I can't remember a thing about it.

Microserfs is about a group of Microsoft employees who escape "the Cult of Bill" and decide to use their skills for good, not evil.

Miss Wyoming is about a former child beauty-pageant victim who uses being the sole survivor of a plane crash to escape her domineering mother and re-invent herself as a totally new person.

Girlfriend in a Coma is his only novel set in Canada, and it's about a group of Vancouverites who are the sole survivors of the end of the world -- and who are so set in their ways that their lifestyle barely changes.

He has several I haven't read, yet -- Hey, Nostradamus!, All Families Are Psychotic, Eleanor Rigby, and JPod. He also released a book in Japanese, in Japan, entitled God Hates Japan, which I've never been able to get a hold of.

I have most of his books, even the ones I haven't read yet, so if you want to borrow any, let me know. I recommend starting with Gen X -- it has little plot, but it's a very fun read.