Microserfs

Rating:
Summary: it's hard to describe why it's so good...
Review: I've found it to be almost universally true that each Coupland fan has an unwavering allegence to a particular book, often the first one they read. Though Microserfs was my first, it wasn't my favorite until a couple years later. Many criticize Microserfs for having a weak plot, but I feel as though the plot is really secondary in this book. Coupland's characters are increadibly real- particularly Dan, the narrator. The beautiful thing about this book is the way that Coupland uses Dan's journal to turn beautiful phrases that would otherwise seem self-indulgent and forced.
Microserfs is absolutely NOT about computers and microsoft, but rather about the evolution of a group of friends, and the way they grow and relate.

Rating:
Summary: More than you bargained for
Review: "Microserfs" is a great novel as well as an invaluable snapshot of the Silicon Valley tech culture of the early 1990s. Most of the people who weighed in on this book are computer techies themselves but I'd like to recommend this book to the casual reader. Douglas Coupland's characters (based, it seems, on actual people) are fully human "geeks." I do not share in others' complaints about the plotting of the novel.

"Microserfs" is wickedly funny social satire and its tongue-in-cheek view of Microsoft's corporate culture is unparalleled. A warning. If you buy this book, don't be surprised to suddenly find yourself reading a great novel instead of the cleverly-formatted ramblings of a computer programmer. It sneaks up on you!

Rating:
Summary: Pretty Good, Not Great
Review: This book had a lot of funny and interesting parts in it. Unfortunately, it didn't really have much in the way of plot. While reading this, I kept expecting something big to happen but it never did. The book goes along in the same manner from beginning to end with little to no plot twists or turns...

Rating:
Summary: Resistance is Futile
Review: This is a good book. Perhaps it is not as strong as Gen X or Shampoo Planet--or those Harolding moments in Portraits--but still a quite decent read. Although at times, the plot is a bit slow. Coupland accurately portrays characters whose cyber-world consists of computer games, coding, and geeky emails.

This is a must for those of us who deeply empathize with thematic elements in films such as Office Space or Trees Lounge. I actually was acquainted with a real housemates couple in Berkeley who could be characters in this novel, who in their "free time" romantically played computer games with each other and otherwise spent vast amounts of time behind a computer screen.

I remember the world before Atari and the internet. I recall anxious nuclear holocaust days prior to when "cyberspace" was a regular constituent in our mental vocabulary. Perhaps technology does in fact ennoble our human values and aspirations, or perhaps it is a means of convenient evasion from self-knowledge.

Coupland explores some of these concerns in this novel with real-life characters who could mirror those folks in tech cultures (Irvine, Silicon Valley, Seattle, and/or Portland)--a culture that is both oddly familiar yet cubicled in silence--nameless shadows who input code and ship products for our servile consumption.

Rating:
Summary: Accurate Portrayal of Life in the Valley
Review: I lived in the Valley for a couple of years while working at Apple during the same time period as this book. This book is an accurate portrayal of life in the hi-tech industry there. The most striking thing to me personally was the main character Dan's quest to "get a life". He feels is not enough to live in the valley, be a "big brain" and work really hard. Dan feels inferior to everyone, from the people that work in his office to the people that work at Microsoft, Apple, Interval, Xerox PARC, and his girlfriend, and even his dead brother.

Another accurate thing is how a more-or-less disparate group of people become intimately accquainted while working together. They don't just work together, they do everything together. If it wasn't the project, there is no way they would be together. He also has a email friendship with a friend (Abe)- he finds himself telling Abe things that he wouldn't necessarily tell him in person. (Also happens in real life, admit it!)

I recommend this book to anyone wanting to understand what life is truly like working in the Valley. This book has so many reviews written for it you know that it is something interesting at least.

Rating:
Summary: Great fun!
Review: I enjoyed this book tremendously. Coupland puts an astonishing amount of detail into it, but without becoming tedious. The description of the nerd techies was also very true to life. When I first started reading this, I thought that the numerous and specific references to easily dated pop culture artifacts was very weird- most authors usually try to avoid putting details into their books that might date it too much -but you get used to it. A very enjoyable read!

Rating:
Summary: Still true even into the next millenium....
Review: I first read Coupland's Generation X in the late 90's. After moving to the PAcific Northwest and working for a handful of dot.coms before and after the bust, I picked up this book in hopes of finding other stories of tech geeks with no life so I didn't feel so abnormal.

Whity, funny, yet emotionally honest and soul piercing at times, this book reveals the true nature of IT workers during the climb of the IT field. Written in 94 (i think), many of the lifestyles that Coupland wrote about then still hold true today. It showed me just how much of an IT slave I really am, but that freedom must first come from within, and that I am still a human being even though I work 60-70 hour work weeks. Is there a life outside of IT?

I think so! This book shows me the way and allows me to laugh at myself and the stupididty of my way of life. Thanks Doug...thanks for showing me there is more to life than computers.

kevin

Rating:
Summary: Giant Ideas and Little Slices of Life
Review: Do machines feel? In creating them, what are we doing to ourselves? If and when an artificially intelligent being comes into existence, what will it be like? And if processed cheese is 80% milk, what's the other 20%?
Coupland's novel deals, in a speedy but probing style, with an array of fascinating questions like these. The major characters are incredibly smart and rather zany computer programmers, so they offer interesting thoughts on these questions. Though they never conclusively settle these questions-- except the one about cheese ["non-milk additives, of course"]-- their hypotheses alone make the book worth reading.

Additionally, they strive to make lives for themselves beyond the sea-foam green walls of Microsoft. These attempts are especially pertinent to Coupland's Gen X readership as it begins to settle down. Of Coupland's works, this one easily rates among his best. If Generation X hadn't been so groundbreaking and scored such a major cultural impact, I would probably argue that Microserfs is Coupland's best. However, Microserfs is probably destined to be Coupland's most brilliant little-known work. A must-read for: Gen Xers who think they need to get a life, people in the high-tech industries of any age, Coupland fans, parents of computer programmers.

Rating:
Summary: Much better than I imagined.
Review: This book was great. Incredible writeing style and very unexpectedly entertaining.

Rating:
Summary: A touching story of the lives of geeks
Review: I was worried when I picked this up last month; it takes place in the early 1990s, before the Internet really hit. I was worried that it would seem outdated, that somehow a geek was different ten years ago than they are now.
I am proud to say that this is not the case. Coupland's story of a young man working as an insomniac bug-checker at Microsoft is beautiful in its ability to show the true inner hearts of people (like myself) who are often almost totally closed off from other people and who are searching for love and meaning in this crazy world. In fact, the actual "techie" side of the book is almost secondary to the inner workings of Daniel's (the protagonist's) mind and heart, as he and his friends set out on a journey to find something better and find meaning in their lives.
This book touched me, not with a bang, but with a whisper. I usually like books with a bit more... well... schizophrenia, but this book is to those others as a Japanese painting is to pop art. It is sparing in its imagery, but what imagery it has, shines brilliantly.
This book made me realize how important it is to write down your thoughts, and how they can help you release all that tension and despair you keep locked up inside. I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to any geek who is feeling a bit lost in the world, or who is feeling that their once-hobby, which is now the primary fixture in their life, may not be enough. Read this and be healed.