douglas coupland: life after god

[Glorious Amok]

i've been dicking around with the first 50 pages of this book for the last 3 months. i picked it up this morning and couldn't remember how i'd gotten to the place i had laid my bookmark (a folded up receipt for something, i didn't open it to see what it was for) so i laid in bed with a bowl of canned mandarin orange slices and started it over again from the top.

i got out of bed only once, to pee and to cut two slices from a new loaf of banana bread which i buy from the guy with one hand who sells produce and baked goods out of his van in the parking lot where i work, slathered them with butter and returned to bed. i didn't get out again until i finished the whole book, just now, at 1:18 on a rainy sunday afternoon. i started at 10:30.

get this book. read this book. especially if you are canadian or american. especially if you are from the west coast of either of those two countries. and especially if you are from vancouver. i knew almost every street, every intersection, every neighbourhood, restaurant, pub, bar, cinema, highway and body of water that was named in the book.

but that's just 1% of the greatness that makes up this book.

douglas coupland is the greatest writer of our day. i'm certain of it now. i can never tell where exactly he switches from writing about his own life, his own thoughts and problems to where he is suddenly making everything up. fact and fiction walk together in his books, down granville street, holding hands in broad daylight as tho for the very first time.

he's been everywhere. he's been to the little lake on the island where my family reunions are held every august 1st long weekend. he's been to the indian village an hour outside of town that lays in the moist crotch of the rocky mountains. he's been inside my wallet, inside my pain, inside my family, inside my highschool, inside my conscience and imagination, and inside the air that they share, each one inhaling the other's waste and taking what it needed, exhaling it's own waste which the other then processes in return.

and i can't wait to be back in a room by myself.

[singlemalt]

So what's it about?

I heard that Hey Nostradamus! was good, but I didn't pick it up. Didja read that one?

[shamatha1]

I read "Generation X" several years back and thought it was good. Not great, but good. Not good enough that I'd want to pick up any of his other books. I flipped through Polaroids from the Dead and said 'Eh.'

I do remember reading a remembrance of Kurt Cobain he wrote that was really good.

[Glorious Amok]

postcards from the edge was way too obscure. i own it, i've had it for years but never got anywhere near thru it.

try shampoo planet, it's a better one to cut your teeth on if you're new to douglas coupland. i need to pick up a new copy of Gen X, i loaned it to someone and never got it back.

life after god i'd say is a slow emotional breakdown and recovery... told in a composed, yet unabashadly deep manner. nah, i dunno, i think of a better way to describe it later, but i gotta run we;re shutting down like NOW for x-mas!

cheers!

[judih]

hey, glorious! was just gonna say thanks for that great description - i can't relate much to vancouver, i'm sorry to say, but i did get a flash of the canned mandarins!

good xmas weekend to ya!

judih