PopCo

"PopCo" is another amazing book by Scarlett Thomas with a cover that promise greatness and manage to deliver it.

I loved it. Loved it, loved, l.o.v.e.d. it. LOVED. IT.

Possibly even more than I loved "The End of Mr. Y" (published after "PopCo"). This is truly the kind of book that can change your life. And to be honest, great books are a plethora, but it's not terribly often one get the joy of the possibly life changing ones.

The book certainly made me think. Even more than usual. It's just such a brilliant concoction of thought provoking ideas, a fascinatingly ambitious plot - the width, the research and the preparatory work is quite impressive - that's both easy to relate to, easy to read but at the same time highly enlightening (even to someone that really doesn't need convincing).

It's a marvellous roller coaster read about greedy multinational corporations, marketing, code-breaking, mathematics (me not being a number buff was rather mesmerized by their meaning in this book), animal rights, veganism, philosophy, paradoxes (ah, love those!), fashion, social criticism, religion, politics, love, life...

Some food for thought quotes from the book;

"Is it marketing that makes us think that something like being a vegetarian is as stupid as wearing shoulder pads and too much blusher? Is it just marketing that makes us feel good about tucking into a 99p slab of dead cow at lunchtime? That, and the fact that everyone else does it. The more people that do something, the more likely you are to do it too."

"Hitler tried to impose his shiny, blonde, neat, sparkling world on us all and we resisted. So how is it that when McDonald's, Disney, Gap and L'Oréal and all the others try to do the same thing we say 'OK'? Hitler needed marketing, that's all. What a great idea, to make people feel that they belong to something, that their identity makes them special. If Hitler had been able to enlist a twenty-first-century marketing department, would he have been able to sell Nazism to everyone? You can just see a beautiful, thin woman with her long blonde hair moving softly in the breeze and the tagline 'Because I'm worth it'. I am worth it. Me. I am worth the life of others."

Do read this fantastic book ~