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turnthepage13's review against another edition
5.0
I love books that make me feel like I know the characters, that I'm going to remember them as friends for a long time. Books like this and Where'd you go Bernadette? seem to use a method of letters to really make their characters come alive. This book is brilliantly clever and the characters are so real. For a book that can be depressing, it also constantly gives hope. It's darkly hilarious, probably one of my new favorites.
boygirlparty's review against another edition
2.0
off to a rocky beginning, but i quickly became adapted to the format. two complaints:
1. "glove pond" drove me nuts; coupland hacked "who's afraid of virginia woolf?" and used it as filler for his book, practically with annotations.
2. no girl of any age greater than 14 is that into johnny depp.
the short essays written from the perspective of bread being buttered were brilliant.
there is one point in the book where you're reading a story about a guy writing a story about a guy writing a story about a guy writing a story. ok ok ok, enough with the hall of mirrors!
1. "glove pond" drove me nuts; coupland hacked "who's afraid of virginia woolf?" and used it as filler for his book, practically with annotations.
2. no girl of any age greater than 14 is that into johnny depp.
the short essays written from the perspective of bread being buttered were brilliant.
there is one point in the book where you're reading a story about a guy writing a story about a guy writing a story about a guy writing a story. ok ok ok, enough with the hall of mirrors!
jinjer's review against another edition
3.0
Why this book? @LectricSheep said on Litsy that it was so dark and bitter she had to stare at her Pusheen pencil case to recalibrate! Bwaaaaa haaaa haaa.
This book was really cleverly written with a story within a story within a story, but I don't think I was in the mood for it. I ended up skimming my way to the end.
This book was really cleverly written with a story within a story within a story, but I don't think I was in the mood for it. I ended up skimming my way to the end.
chukg's review against another edition
3.0
This was kind of like a meta-novel, in the form of letters from one character to another interspersed with chapters of a novel one of the characters is writing. Short, kind of trippy, handles most of the voices well but the novel is weird and then when the characters start talking about the novel it gets even more weird. Some of the observations remind me of things he was saying back in Generation X but with hindsight applied.
jennifercawley's review against another edition
3.0
In it’s simplest form, this book revolves around two main characters, Bethany and Roger, corresponding back and forth via letters and journal entries — though there are several “guest” writers along the way. The cool (and sometimes confusing) part is that, because some characters double as creative writers, there is literally a story within a story within a story. A nice touch though!
It’s a pretty depressing book overall, but it’s actually an interesting assessment of life. The majority of us are not very extraordinary; we really do just “plod” along. Again, just a tad depressing! I loved parts of it, I absolutely hated parts of it and then there’s other parts of it that I’m still trying to understand. In many ways, the book just feels unfinished. I understand that it was definitely a deliberate artistic choice to leave the individuals’ stories so open, but that drives me insane. It leaves me unsatisfied. Still, that’s not reason enough for me to call it a bad book — it wasn’t. The writing was actually quite beautiful and very witty!
Because it was filled with so many amazing life lessons and memorable quotes, I’ll share some of those. Hopefully, they give you a sense of what the book was like, because I’m not sure my words did.
“It’s amazing how you can be a total shithead, and yet your soul still wants to hang out with you. Souls ought to have the legal right to bail once you cross certain behaviour thresholds: I draw the line at cheating at golf; I draw the line at theft over $100,000; I draw the line at bestiality. Imagine all the souls of the world, out on the sides of highways, all of them hitchhiking to try to find new places to live, all of them holding signs designed to lure you into selecting them as a passenger: I sing! I tell jokes. I know shiatsu. I know Katharine Hepburn. I don’t deserve a soul, yet I still have one. I know because it hurts.”
“Having the same illness as everybody else truly is the definition of health.”
“I don’t think anyone ever gets over anything in life. They merely get used to it.”
“My dear, the reason we wear makeup is to prevent the world from seeing what we’re like underneath. What’s wrong with that? […] If you allow your feelings to be exposed, people will hurt you with them.”
“Imagine feeling more powerful and more capable of falling in love with life every new day instead of being scared and sick and not knowing whether to stay under a sheet or venture forth into the cold.”
“Write me-but I don’t know where I’ll be, so there’s no address to give you. Isn’t that all of life compressed into a sentence?”
“Roger, why is it that people wait until the end of a relationship before they say all the meanest shit to each other? Why do people stockpile their grudges like ammunition? Why does it always have to end so badly?”
“I think this is an alarming trend, Bethany, this whole ‘passionate’ thing. I’m guessing it started about four years ago, and it’s driving me nuts. Let’s be practical: Earth was not built for six billion people all running around and being passionate about things. The world was built for about 20 million people foraging for roots and grubs. […] My hunch is that there was some self-help bestseller a few years back that told people to follow their passion. What a sucky expression. I can usually tell when people have recently read that book because they’re a bit distracted, and maybe they’ve done their hair a new way, and they’re always trying to discuss the Big Picture of life and failing miserably. And then, when you bump into them again six months later, they appear haggard and bitter; the joy drained from them — and this means that the universe is back to normal and that they’ve given up searching for a passion they’re doomed to never find. Want a chocolate?”
It’s a pretty depressing book overall, but it’s actually an interesting assessment of life. The majority of us are not very extraordinary; we really do just “plod” along. Again, just a tad depressing! I loved parts of it, I absolutely hated parts of it and then there’s other parts of it that I’m still trying to understand. In many ways, the book just feels unfinished. I understand that it was definitely a deliberate artistic choice to leave the individuals’ stories so open, but that drives me insane. It leaves me unsatisfied. Still, that’s not reason enough for me to call it a bad book — it wasn’t. The writing was actually quite beautiful and very witty!
Because it was filled with so many amazing life lessons and memorable quotes, I’ll share some of those. Hopefully, they give you a sense of what the book was like, because I’m not sure my words did.
“It’s amazing how you can be a total shithead, and yet your soul still wants to hang out with you. Souls ought to have the legal right to bail once you cross certain behaviour thresholds: I draw the line at cheating at golf; I draw the line at theft over $100,000; I draw the line at bestiality. Imagine all the souls of the world, out on the sides of highways, all of them hitchhiking to try to find new places to live, all of them holding signs designed to lure you into selecting them as a passenger: I sing! I tell jokes. I know shiatsu. I know Katharine Hepburn. I don’t deserve a soul, yet I still have one. I know because it hurts.”
“Having the same illness as everybody else truly is the definition of health.”
“I don’t think anyone ever gets over anything in life. They merely get used to it.”
“My dear, the reason we wear makeup is to prevent the world from seeing what we’re like underneath. What’s wrong with that? […] If you allow your feelings to be exposed, people will hurt you with them.”
“Imagine feeling more powerful and more capable of falling in love with life every new day instead of being scared and sick and not knowing whether to stay under a sheet or venture forth into the cold.”
“Write me-but I don’t know where I’ll be, so there’s no address to give you. Isn’t that all of life compressed into a sentence?”
“Roger, why is it that people wait until the end of a relationship before they say all the meanest shit to each other? Why do people stockpile their grudges like ammunition? Why does it always have to end so badly?”
“I think this is an alarming trend, Bethany, this whole ‘passionate’ thing. I’m guessing it started about four years ago, and it’s driving me nuts. Let’s be practical: Earth was not built for six billion people all running around and being passionate about things. The world was built for about 20 million people foraging for roots and grubs. […] My hunch is that there was some self-help bestseller a few years back that told people to follow their passion. What a sucky expression. I can usually tell when people have recently read that book because they’re a bit distracted, and maybe they’ve done their hair a new way, and they’re always trying to discuss the Big Picture of life and failing miserably. And then, when you bump into them again six months later, they appear haggard and bitter; the joy drained from them — and this means that the universe is back to normal and that they’ve given up searching for a passion they’re doomed to never find. Want a chocolate?”
cliobemuzedbookworm's review against another edition
4.0
A book about a friendship that develops between two Staples employees when one day one of them finds out that the other has been pretending to be her in his diary. A wonderful book that shows us that no matter how downcast our lives might look, there is still hope - through friendship abd selfunderstanding. I thought it was really nicely told through the perspective changes and the novel inside a novel - which I also found to be really good and addicting as both Bethany and her mother DeeDee agreed on. Drenched with Coupland's usual comic voice. Great ending!
breannamorgan's review against another edition
1.0
If there was a way to scrape this travesty of a book out of my brain, I would do it.
My biggest problem were the characters. Without fail, every single one of them had the same voice, what I can only assume is Coupland's voice, because it wasn't a believable voice for anyone. The characters are also incredibly one dimensional: bored goth, alcoholic loser, alcoholic loser #2, alcoholic loser #3, pretty idiot boy.
Plot wise, Coupland seems to have decided that one terrible book wasn't enough, so he made a book within a book so that he could doubly torture his readers.
I can't fathom why anyone would write this, much less a publisher who'd be willing to take it on
My biggest problem were the characters. Without fail, every single one of them had the same voice, what I can only assume is Coupland's voice, because it wasn't a believable voice for anyone. The characters are also incredibly one dimensional: bored goth, alcoholic loser, alcoholic loser #2, alcoholic loser #3, pretty idiot boy.
Plot wise, Coupland seems to have decided that one terrible book wasn't enough, so he made a book within a book so that he could doubly torture his readers.
I can't fathom why anyone would write this, much less a publisher who'd be willing to take it on
christyco125's review
This was ok but the style of writing was a slog for me. And when I put it down, I didn’t miss it and I couldn’t make myself pick it back up.
bmahaffy's review against another edition
3.0
What an odd little book. Captivating, and yet, I had moments of thinking "why?" It has been ages since I read any Coupland but always enjoyed it. So I can't remember if this is usually how I feel about his stuff or if this book just isn't quite as good as the others.
suburban_ennui's review against another edition
4.0
Well, it was better than JPod, for one thing ... I'm not sure if my love affair with Coupland after the disappointment I felt after this book. The Gum Thief wasn't exactly classic Douglas Coupland, but was certainly enjoyable.