One of the few books I actually bought from new, probably with book tokens given to me for my birthday. This was published in 1991 when it was no doubt really up to the minute stuff. Have I left it too late to read it? I will admit that a part of me groans over the 1990s, a period in which it was fashionable to feel lost and to be losing one's religion (yes, I went through it too), disorientated by the rampant consumerism of the 1980s and unsure of what future we wanted or could reasonably expect. Like REM, it all ended up becoming rather self-centred and unattractive and we all got into the bad habit of thinking something profound would happen when midnight struck at the turn of the millennium. It was also the period when packaging and spin really came of age and proper nouns were habitually printed without capital letters. So it is with mixed feelings that I enter this pink book into my TBR list, but no doubt, like the eponymous generation itself, I will survive.

They spent that night together, and the next morning [he] waltzed into the bedroom with one hundred long-stemmed roses, and he woke [her] up by gently lobbing them into her face, one by one. Then once she was fully awake, he heaped blood red Niagaras of stem and petal onto her body..."It had to be the most romantic moment of my life...I mean is it possible to die from roses? From pleasure? Anyhow, later that morning we were in the car...and I saw this huge plywood sign with the words '100 Roses only $9.95' and my heart just sank..."

Voter's Block: The attempt, however futile, to register dissent with the current political system by simply not voting

Personal Tabu: A small rule for living, bordering on a superstition, that allows one to cope with everyday life in the absence of cultural or religious dictums

A whole 17 years after it was published, this book turns out to be relatively contemporary still. The spirit of 1990s postmodernity was one of a rapid turnover, not of money but ideas, causing some to question whether books, with their implied permanence, were themselves something of an anachronism. Coupland captures something of the zeitgeist which, for me, was about adopting a deliberate, almost studied diffidence in reaction (conscious or otherwise) to the cheerful bravado of the modernist world view ("Who cares about pollution? We have thechnology to find a way out of that!") This diffidence remains, and with it a penetrating set of tests for any claim about life, but what is increasingly clear is that we can choose whether to use it in a new and life-affirming quest or to hide behind it, maintaining the teenage of the cool.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

The Official Book Crossing Zone (OBCZ) is just at the top of the stairs.

Just picked this up, this morning with a cup of tea and thought id pass the time with it, before i knew it i was, a quarter of the way in so thought id stick with it. Very good condition and really well written, i'll write back once i have finished it.

CAUGHT IN CHELTENHAM GLOUCESTERSHIRE ENGLAND