inesperada lectura favorita en años

Fun and interesting, plus he almost makes a point!! The themes of transhumanism are undercut by close-mindedness. Characters: wow our immense privilege allows us to construct our own identity from all these component parts (like legos!) also characters: lets pause to laugh at the clocky transvestite

Reasons why I love both this book and Douglas Coupland:

1. "I sandpapered the roof of my mouth with three bowls of Cap'n Crunch--had raw gobbets of mouth-beef dangling onto my tongue all day." (Who hasn't had that happen to them? And yet, nobody could have said it awesomer.)

2. I learned 1410 *C = the melting point of silicon.

3. This book is totally the original Big Bang Theory.

4. Dated references to things like Doom and Myst.

5. I enjoy reading nerdy lists of things, like which school is the nerdiest (answer: Caltech) or what cereal is the most decadent (answer: NOT Count Chocula, he's pro bringing down the ruling class).

6. I enjoy reading references to places I've been, like the Westin Bayshore, because I know exactly what it looks like!

7. There's a two-page discussion of tampons and a reference to Summer's Eve (p. 286 for the curious).


And here's one more list for the road. If this book were featured on jeopardy its categories would be:

Nerdery
Apple vs. Microsoft
Books With No Conflict
Sappy but Cute Moments
Cliches and Stereotypes
Page Filler
Dated 90's Pop Culture

The thought that I had as I came to the conclusion of this novel is that if this book were transported back in time 100 years readers from that time would barely recognize it as written in English. I mean we read novels written 100, even 200 and 300 years ago with ease and pleasure (Dickens, Jane Austen etc.) They are stories we can still recognize. The language starts getting dicey for us about 500 years ago, Shakespeare's time. The language requires deciphering, and the references some research and context. Now I'm not saying that Douglas Coupland is the Shakespeare of the digital age - he doesn't possess Shakespeare's gift for drama, narrative or lyricism. But there is something undeniably compelling about a writer who can absorb so much of contemporary culture, process it through the machine of his imagination, and fashion a document that accurately and poignantly captures the strangeness, rhythm, language, and condition of our special time and place. So will Microserfs, a book that describes a group of coders working for the GM of the digital age, be read 100 years from now? It just might.

Microserfs. The book is about a bunch of nerds working at Microsoft in the 1990’s. They quickly realize that they have no lives. The intended audience is most definitely nerds or people interested in the lives of nerds during the prime of Silicon Valley. The purpose of this book is to shine a light into the minds of people behind all the computer software. They’re people too!

The thesis of the book is not revealed until the very last page in the book. Life is not about having lots of money or “having a life”, its about the people in your life, whether its your friends, coworkers and/or family that really give your life meaning. It all takes place in the mid 90’s where the Internet was still a little baby. Communicating seemed ancient twenty years ago. There wasn’t Facebook or Twitter or smart phones, there was just home-brewed instant messaging on your local network, huge phones, and e-mail with just text. So trying to get information about someone or finding a date was totally different to today’s standards. The book stars a nerd named Dan, who narrates the book in small journey entries he makes in his PowerBook. He works at Microsoft as a debugger, and has no life. He lives in a house with a bunch of other Microsoft nerds, whom have no life either. They eventually conclude that they all have no lives and jump on a new and exciting job opportunity at a start-up company down in Silicon Valley. Once down in California at their new job, they bond over work and more work. Once coworkers, now BFF’s, the nerds struggle to find success in the fast paced electronic industry that is Silicon Valley.

My expectations of the book from reading the back cover were high. I thought it was going to be about nerds going on a non-nerdy adventure. I was somewhat disappointed when I found out it wasn’t. First off, it took a third of the book to get there, so it was kind of slow. But slowly I realized it wasn’t about going on an adventure just for a change of scenery. It was about the adventure of life itself! Slowly as I got to know each character and the group as a whole, their lives were changing into something beautiful. Once poor and lonely coders now had life long friendships and fulfilling careers. All they had to do is wake up and look around. The plot was loose and I didn’t know where it was going at first, but it all came together at the end. It was very engrossing at the end, I felt like I was a part of the group/family.

My overall impression of the book is positive. The pros and cons definitely balance out at the end. The beginning was really slow, but there was a little romance (I’m a sucker for chick flicks) that got me through it. The second half really developed the characters well and made you feel like you were part of the gang. Surprisingly the ending was quite emotional for me as the group turned into a family. I didn’t want the book to end. I wanted to see more life adventures of the microserfs!

perché mica ti fa tornare indietro. anzi. ti fa capire quanto sei arrivato tardi. poi però chiudi il libro e chiudi la storia, con una scrollata di testa. che quel libro andava preso quando ancora c'era sugli scaffali, ma mica lo sapevi che coupland non lo ristampano. arriverà, arriverà, poi ci metti anni a deciderti a prenderlo dall'amazzone. e allora, tac! improvvisamente è tardi. troppo lontano dai fax, troppo prima dei cellulari, in una generazione in cui non ti riconosci più e che non esiste più.
certi libri vanno letti quando è il loro momento. altrimenti sono solo degli esorcismi. che servono sempre, eh. ma ecco se fossero in tempo per dire di più sarebbe meglio.

Read this in a night - super fun - made me nostalgic for a time in history I didn't experience.

Such fun... I especially loved the idea of someone locking himself in his office and only eating flat foods that can be inserted under the door. I think of this book every time I open a slice of American cheese!

I much preferred JPod, but that is also closer to being of my generation.

A tale of boring first-world problems narrated by an early 90s whiner. Skip it.

I just chose this as my favorite book in the 30 Days Book Challenge on Facebook, so I might as well review it, even though "favorite book" is a nebulous distinction at best and "what's your favorite book?" is a stupid fucking question and I am afraid this might be a sentimental favorite more than anything else.

So yeah, I read this when I was 14 or 15. I bought it because it had a neat mirror cover with a Lego man. I didn't know Douglas Coupland was the voice of a generation, and anyway, it wasn't even MY generation. I was a dorky high school kid, but not dorky in any way much connected to computer programming, so there was no reason for me fall for a book about a bunch of cynical Microsoft employees living in pre-tech boom Silicon Valley.

But I loved it. I read and re-read it through high school and college. It is a super-dated '90s time capsule now, but it felt entirely new and fresh to me back then, and in many ways, it predicted how technology and the internet would explode all over our lives by the end of that decade. It's also basically like reading someone's LiveJournal or blog -- the book takes the form of a digital journal kept by the narrator -- which wasn't something you could just do back then. It isn't just the diary entries that tell the story, it's the everything else: run-downs of dream Jeopardy! categories for all of the characters, musings on pop culture minutia like the sociological messages communicated by various cereal mascots [Cap'n Crunch -- Reasons this cereal is decadent: a) Colonialist exploiter pursues naive Crunchberry cultures to plunder. b) Drunkenness, torture and debauchery implicit in long ocean cruises.] Lots of lists. Lots of navel-gazing.

It was what I imagined being an adult would be like: working at a job you felt ambivalent about with a bunch of people who became your closest friends, sharing inside jokes and slowly gathering the wisdom that comes with age. I was too introverted in college and made the mistake of living alone, and I would read this and yearn for that kind of connection and camaraderie. Sappy, I know.

I haven't read it since at least 2005, right after I picked up a paperback to replace the hardcover copy that I had read into tatters (the only book I have ever done that for). I have fond memories of the characters, I remember the whole plot, I still reference sections randomly (most often this part about how different parts of your body store emotional pain). I kind of never want to read it again. I might hate it: I certainly haven't read a Coupland book since that was a quarter as endearing (and I read a lot of them before I realized I was chasing the dragon). It is self-conscious and twee and post-modern and has a bunch of different fonts and, like, entire pages filled with a single word or random nonsense or ones and zeroes or no vowels, followed by all vowels. It is big and sloppy and emotional and I don't know if I am still big and sloppy and emotional enough to love it liked I used to.

Sure, favorite book. Why not.

Facebook 30 Day Book Challenge Day 1: Favorite book.

I pick books based on exactly what I need at that moment and therefore I love every book I pick. This felt like reading Fight Club with one eye and watching Halt and Catch Fire with the other. I had a really nice time reading this book. I'm infected with its earnest pithy tone!