The only thing I remember about this book, nine years on, was that one of the characters built a "hug machine" based on Temple Grandin's design and all the programmers were into it. (Which is... not even that clever or interesting an idea, tbh.) A hug machine sounded pretty appealing to me, though, as did a career in software development.

Crazy but relatable. Glorious pop culture fest for nerds. ( )

This book was... an interesting experience. It follows the experiences of a team of office workers at a tech company. I read this while travelling and the lighthearted silliness of it was perfect for that situation since there were other things going on all around me. Maybe I would have felt differently about this book under different circumstances, but I ended up really enjoying it and chuckling to myself a coupe of times.

This book is incredibly random. I guess that's kind of expected when reading about a bunch of nerd and their shenanigans though. There are lots of jokes and references so some people may find it a bit dated. You get things like discussions about making their own cola flavoured beverage in the office (they can't call it coke) and character profiles that contain each character's favourite Simpsons character, room temperature and snack woven in with the story. While this book may look long, there are a lot of pages you'll probably just skip (like 15 pages filled with numbers, one of which isn't prime. There are several such pages - these are challenges one character sets for the others and are not necessary to read for the story).

If you are looking for something random and a little mindless, I think you might enjoy this book. I went in not knowing what to expect, and even so I was somehow still surprised by what I found ( )

I needed a break from my self-inflicted assignment of reading novels about King Arthur, so I turned to jPod, which is one of my favorite books. I read it a few years ago while on vacation in British Columbia and have passed it along to quite a few people over the years. Nearly all enjoyed it as much as I did.
It was nice to see that it was still a joy to read. ( )

Vancouver, the beginning of the 21st century. At a game design company, six designers with surnames starting with J have been assigned to the same cubicle pod. There’s no way out—the company bureaucracy has put them there. So the members of jPod (as it’s known) try to maintain their perspective while faced with the idiocy of the marketing department, the absurd hijinks of their family members, and life in the new millennium.

The book is narrated by Ethan, whose family has more than its fair share of weirdness: grow-ops, human traffickers, and ballroom dancing. All of these play a role in the story, which meanders a bit and is definitely more extreme than its spiritual ancestor, Microserfs. Of the two, I prefer Microserfs, because there’s some really weird shit in jPod—the Ronald McDonald origin story in particular had me making horrible faces at the book because I’d forgotten about it from my last read. And I’m not sure that the freedom plot thread ages very well. Microserfs felt more wholesome and innocent.

What I did like was the setting, the commitment to the extreme meta-ness of putting Douglas Coupland in his own novel, and Kaitlin’s creative writing assignments. I also enjoyed the little profiles that the gang wrote up at the beginning of the book, because of how much they reminded me of Microserfs. And some of the absurd storylines were funny when they weren’t super gruesome.

This is certainly a hard book to tell people whether they’re going to like it or not. It’s certainly different. ( )