The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland

Reading a Douglas Coupland book makes you think. By you I mean me. His books make me think, and the thoughts are usually sad - thoughts about meaninglessness, about loneliness. There is humor in his books; not in-your-face punch-lines type humor, more of a subtle dark-humor type humor. But the humor, I find, is overwhelmed by sadness. The main character in The Gum Thief, Roger, has nothing going for him and he is working the aisles at the local Staples. He his attempting to write a book, titled Glove Pond. One of the characters in Glove Pond, Kyle, is in the middle of writing a book. The setting of Kyle's book: an office superstore. That is delicious.

The Gum Thief on BookCrossing.

anecdote from my youth

Here's an amusing anecdote from my youth. I used to like playing with green plastic soldiers, but my mom was anti-war (odd, considering what a battle-axe she was) and wouldn't buy me the soldiers. I was too young for a paper route to make my own money, and our house was miles away from a store. My father brought me home a bag of soldiers one night, and I was out of my mind with happiness. I began to play with them, but then my mom came into the room, holding a phone with an extension cord, and she sat down and said, "Okay, you can play with your soldiers, fine. But I'm going to sit here, and every time one of them gets killed or injured, I'm going to telephone their mother. Ready? One, two three, play ..." Well, you can imagine how much fun that was.
-- The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland

Imagine feeling more powerful...

Imagine feeling more powerful and more capable of falling in love with life every new day instead of being scared and sick and not knowing whether to stay under a sheet or venture forth into the cold.

-- The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland

saddest little one-word sentence

I said, "But..." (and isn't that the saddest little one-word sentence in the language?)
-- The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland