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Recommendations based on The Gum Thiefby Douglas Coupland
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JPod
by Douglas Coupland
A darkly humorous look at the lives of the twenty-somethings working in the video game industry.
JPod , Douglas Coupland's most acclaimed novel to date, is a lethal joyride into today's new breed of tech worker. Ethan Jarlewski and five co-workers whose surnames begin with "J" are ... (Goodreads)
Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture
by Douglas Coupland
A satirical look at the lives of disaffected young adults in the early 1990s.
Andy, Dag and Claire have been handed a society priced beyond their means. Twentysomethings, brought up with divorce, Watergate and Three Mile Island, and scarred by the 80s fall-out of yuppies, ... (Goodreads)
Girlfriend in a Coma
by Douglas Coupland
A group of friends must grapple with a mysterious coma, while reflecting on their lives and relationships.
The first part of the book covers the 17 years in the lives of this group of friends after Karen's lapse into a coma. Richard has to cope with losing Karen but gaining a daughter, Megan, as ... (Wikipedia)
Diary
by Chuck Palahniuk
An exploration of the depths of human depravity, exposing the darkest aspects of society.
Diary takes the form of a "coma diary" telling the story of Misty Marie Wilmot as her husband lies senseless in a hospital after a suicide attempt. The story is not exactly told by Misty but through ... (Wikipedia)
Choke
by Chuck Palahniuk
A darkly humorous story of a man's journey to self-awareness through disruption and chaos.
Choke follows Victor Mancini and his friend Denny through a few months of their lives with frequent flashbacks to the days when Victor was a child. , Victor had grown up moving from one foster home ... (Wikipedia)
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
by Terry Pratchett
A group of rats and a young street-smart cat use their wits to con the townsfolk.
The book opens with Amazing Maurice (a sentient cat), a group of talking rats (the Clan), and the human boy Keith travelling in a mail coach to a small town called Bad Blintz . The group plans to ... (Wikipedia)
Call Me By Your Name
by André Aciman
A tender story of first love, exploring the complexities of identity, sexuality and desire.
The narrator, Elio Perlman , recalls the events of the summer of about 1987, when he was seventeen and living with his parents in Italy . Each summer, his parents would take in a doctoral student as ... (Wikipedia)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal journey of self-discovery, exploring the inner and outer worlds.
The first part, "The Thieving Magpie", begins with the narrator, Toru Okada, a low-key and unemployed lawyer's assistant, being tasked by his wife, Kumiko, to find their missing cat. Kumiko suggests ... (Wikipedia)
Lullaby
by Chuck Palahniuk
A dark satire of modern society, following a journalist in search of the mysterious 'lullaby' killer.
Newspaper reporter Carl Streator has been assigned to write articles on a series of cases of sudden infant death syndrome , from which his own child had died. Carl discovers that his wife and child ... (Wikipedia)
Candide
by Voltaire
A young man's satirical journey through life, encountering misfortune and eventual optimism.
Candide is the story of a gentle man who, though pummeled and slapped in every direction by fate, clings desperately to the belief that he lives in "the best of all possible worlds." On the surface a ... (Goodreads)
Neuromancer
by William Gibson
A hacker's journey through a dystopian cyberpunk world, searching for a way to survive.
Henry Dorsett Case is a low-level hustler in the dystopian underworld of Chiba City , Japan. Once a talented computer hacker , Case was caught stealing from his employer. As punishment for his theft, ... (Wikipedia)
Motherless Brooklyn
by Jonathan Lethem
A detective investigates a powerful crime syndicate in New York City.
Lionel Essrog is Brooklyn’s very own self-appointed Human Freakshow, an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark, count, and rip apart our language in the most startling and original ways. ... (Goodreads)
The Crossing
by Cormac McCarthy
A father and son's perilous journey across a post-apocalyptic landscape.
Following All the Pretty Horses in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy is a novel whose force of language is matched only by its breadth of experience and depth of thought. In the bootheel of New Mexico ... (Goodreads)
Making Money
by Terry Pratchett
A daring attempt to control gold and currency markets in an alternate world.
Moist von Lipwig is bored with his job as the Postmaster General of the Ankh-Morpork Post Office, which is running smoothly without any challenges, so the Patrician tries to persuade him to take over ... (Wikipedia)
Asleep
by Banana Yoshimoto
A young woman's journey of grief and recovery after the death of her mother.
Banana Yoshimoto has a magical ability to animate the lives of her young characters, and here she spins the stories of three women, all bewitched into a spiritual sleep. One, mourning a lost lover, ... (Goodreads)
Anansi Boys
by Neil Gaiman
A young man discovers his magical family history and learns to use his new supernatural powers.
Anansi Boys is the story of Charles "Fat Charlie" Nancy, a timid Londoner devoid of ambition, whose unenthusiastic wedding preparations are disrupted when he learns that his father (Mr. Nancy) has ... (Wikipedia)
Kafka on the Shore
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal journey of self-discovery, exploring the boundaries between the real and surreal.
Comprising two distinct but interrelated plots, the narrative runs back and forth between both plots, taking up each plotline in alternating chapters. The odd-numbered chapters tell the 15-year-old ... (Wikipedia)
Many Waters
by Madeleine L'Engle
Twins travel back in time to biblical era, encountering angels, nephilim, and a flood. They must find their way back home before it's too late.
In the middle of a New England winter, identical twin brothers Sandy and Dennys accidentally disturb an experiment in their parents' laboratory and are teleported to a sandy desert. There, they are ... (Wikipedia)
Dearly Devoted Dexter
by Jeff Lindsay
A serial killer's struggle to evade capture while trying to maintain a semblance of normalcy in his life.
Sgt. Albert Doakes , a Homicide detective, has grown suspicious of Dexter & is obsessively tailing him in his free time. This makes it impossible for Dexter to investigate (& perhaps kill) someone ... (Wikipedia)
Stories of Your Life and Others
by Ted Chiang
A collection of short stories exploring themes of science, technology, and humanity.
Ted Chiang's first published story, ",Tower of Babylon," won the Nebula Award in 1990. Subsequent stories have won the Asimov's SF Magazine reader poll, a second Nebula Award, the Theodore Sturgeon ... (Goodreads)
Oryx and Crake
by Margaret Atwood
An exploration of a post-apocalyptic world, and the power of human nature.
The novel focuses on a post-apocalyptic character called "Snowman", living near a group of primitive human-like creatures whom he calls Crakers . Flashbacks reveal that Snowman was once a boy named ... (Wikipedia)
Idoru
by William Gibson
A thrilling cyberpunk adventure of a man searching for a mysterious virtual celebrity.
In the post Tokyo/San Francisco earthquake world of the early 21st century, Colin Laney is referred to agents of mega-rock star Rez (of the musical group Lo/Rez) for a job using his peculiar talent ... (Wikipedia)
Vernon God Little
by D.B.C. Pierre
A teenage boy's struggle to survive after being wrongfully accused of a school shooting.
Named as one of the 100 Best Things in the World by GQ magazine in 2003, the riotous adventures of Vernon Gregory Little in small town Texas and beachfront Mexico mark one of the most spectacular, ... (Goodreads)
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
by Haruki Murakami
Collection of surreal and mysterious stories, exploring the depths of human emotions.
Collection of twenty-four stories that generously expresses Murakami’s mastery of the form. From the surreal to the mundane, these stories exhibit his ability to transform the full range of human ... (Goodreads)
The Sound of Waves
by Yukio Mishima
A young fisherman's love story, set against the backdrop of a small fishing village.
Shinji Kubo lives with his mother, a pearl diver, and his younger brother, Hiroshi. He and his mother support the family because Shinji's father died in World War II after the fishing boat he was on ... (Wikipedia)
The Fortress of Solitude
by Jonathan Lethem
A young man's exploration of friendship, identity and belonging in a rapidly changing world.
From the prize-winning author of Motherless Brooklyn , a daring, riotous, sweeping novel that spins the tale of two friends and their adventures in late 20th-century America. This is the story of two ... (Goodreads)
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
by Dave Eggers
An autobiographical account of a young man dealing with grief and responsibility.
'When you read his extraordinary memoir you don't laugh, then cry, then laugh again; you somehow experience these emotions all at once.' "Well, this was when Bill was sighing a lot. He had decided ... (Goodreads)
I've Got Your Number
by Sophie Kinsella
A young woman's chaotic life is turned upside-down when she finds a stranger's lost phone.
Poppy Wyatt loses her engagement ring, which has been in her fiancé's family for three generations, on the day that his parents arrive from the US and in the following panic, she also ends up losing ... (Wikipedia)
Slaughterhouse-Five
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A surrealistic, satirical commentary on the horror of war and the loss of innocence.
The story is told in a non-linear order by an unreliable narrator (he begins the novel by telling the reader, "All of this happened, more or less"). Events become clear through flashbacks and ... (Wikipedia)
No One Belongs Here More Than You
by Miranda July
Short stories of everyday people struggling to find their place in the world.
Screenwriter, director, and star of the acclaimed film Me and You and Everyone We Know, Miranda July brings her extraordinary talents to the page in a startling, sexy, and tender collection. ... (Goodreads)
