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BOOKS, ETC READ

Douglas Coupland's Microserfs. Picked this up for a quarter at a garage sale, along with a few other hardbacks at the same price (had the feeling the woman was trying to expunge the memory of an `ex'). So far this is the best book I've read at capturing the whole Silicon Valley dot-com startup-fever entrepreneurial-madness geek lifestyle-in-search-of-a-life. Coupland lived with a household of Microsoft software engineers, and the authenticity of his experience shines through; this is definitely true fiction. (I know, there are other books like Po Bronson's Nudist on the Night Shift and even earlier accounts like ____, but unlike Bronson's writing, Coupland's seems somehow more "sincere" and much less plot-driven and "contrived." Personally, I'm not a fan of manufactured dramatics. At least I for one felt greater empathy--rather than my previous stance of hostility and contempt--for the coders who can't help the fact they've always been that way, and also can't help the fact that engineers are taking over the world. Hey, culture and poetry be damned--the rich will inherit the earth, not the literate!

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