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- Shelfies #20: David Eastman
Shelfies #20: David Eastman
I'm rarely organised enough to store books alphabetically.
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David Eastman’s Shelfie
I am inordinately proud of my Coupland shelf, because I'm rarely organised enough to store books alphabetically, let alone have lots of books from the same author in the same place. You might be scanning for Generation X but I actually read that much later. All Families Are Psychotic is a bit malformed because my partner dropped it in the bath. There are few non-Coupland books as I now read his newer stuff on Kindle like everyone else.
Girlfriend in a Coma and Life after God are the relatively existential books that use slightly unusual storytelling devices to examine how we live the extent of our lives without the structure and direction that we all imagine existed up to the early parts of the 20th century. “The first generation to be raised without religion”.
Microserfs is probably the most Coupland of Coupland, following as it does startup and corporate workers in and around Silicon Valley. It accurately described the intellectual reverence developers had for Bill. Coupland’s detailism and eye for very current behaviour is infectious. JPod is a spiritual follow up, but about the video games industry - so close to my heart.
Coupland is normally thought of as a kind of seer; to write about the now you have to see one second into the future. Really he is a Canadian with that sideways eye on American culture. So he can empathise with Americans, while also showing how weird they are.
One of the non-C books is the brilliant Bear vs Shark, that I actually bought when I had run out of Coupland, and Waterstones recommended it as an "if you like.." shelf redirection. And I very much do like it - a quite ridiculous near future tale of the aforementioned mock battle in a low attention future where you can't turn the media off. Who would win between a bear vs a shark?
Houellebecq’s Atomised is a book more famous than read, and it should probably stay that way. I can’t remember much about it, other than it is too French.
David has been a London-based professional software developer who writes regular tech posts for TheNewStack.io, often on AI. He is returning to his first love, games development. In 1990, he released the video game “Conflict: Middle East Political Simulator”, in which you play the Israeli government. Yes, you read that correctly. In 1991, he completed “Floor 13”, which had the player heading up a clandestine department within the British government.
Shelfies is edited by Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin. If you are interested in sharing a shelfie, please let us know.