(B) JPod (Douglas Coupland, 2006)
Grade: B+
According to my friend, there are two types of people who read this book: geeks and people trying to understand geeks. I’m the latter. Example: The buzzword is so horrible that I have to spell it out in ASCII: {101, 100, 103, 121} (I had to ask; it spells “edgy.” And if you already knew that, you’re a geek.) Nevertheless, I appreciated Coupland’s unusual prose, interrupting his story with e-mails, advertisements and variants of typesetting. And I enjoyed the social commentary: What we describe as “character” and “personality” are not so much spiritual or cosmic states of being, but rather, an overall effect by clusters of overlapping brain dysfunctions. Geek out!