Book 26: "JPod" by Douglas Coupland

I work in a cubicle farm called jPod with a small handful of geeks. It's called jPod because of a computer glitch that put six people whose last names start with the letter J in the space that was supposed yo have been a rock climbing wall, but which got cancelled because it was too twentieth century. Once you're in jPod there's no escaping, I tried for months, and simply gave up. Kaitlin's new here. She'll try hard to get out for a while, and then she'll simply accept her fate and try to get on with life as best she can.

I enjoyed this book, with its offbeat characters (including the author himself) and its humour. I preferred it to the only other book of Douglas Coupland's that I've read which is "Girlfriend in a Coma".

Book 27: "Lucifer's Dragon" by Jon Courtnay Grimwood

This was quite an interesting cyberpunk story, but was spoilt by something that irritated me intensely once I noticed it. For some reason, the author italicises lots and lots of words, not just for emphasis but names of companies, tv shows, books and newspapers, and foreign words too (including French, Italian and Japanese). But he's inconsistent; not all company names are italicised (for some reason WeGuard is but CySat isn't) and not all foreign words, while some perfectly ordinary English words which happen to be of foreign origin, such as 'via', are italicised too.

There is another book by this author on my TBR shelf, and I have just flicked through it. He still seems to be fond of italics, but he doesn't go quite so over the top with them in '9Tail Fox'.

Book 28: "The Boats of the Glen Carrig" by WIlliam Hope Hodgson

Only 100 pages long, this is a tale of mystery and danger on the high seas. After the sinking of the ship Glen Carrig, two boats carrying her surviving crew and passengers find themselves in dire straits. Attacked by monstrous devil-fish and unseen dangers lurking in the darkness, as well as the expected dangers of storms and running out of food and drinking water, they have only their own ingenuity and the experience of the cool-headed bo'sun to bring them to safety.

I liked it a lot, and my book contains four novels by this author so I have three more to look forward to.