I found this quirky novel on a table in the break room where I work, and once I opened it I couldn't put it down.

How could anybody not recognize and identify with this opening scenario/rant:

"And so we waited. Tick-tock, blink-blink, thirty seconds stretched themselves out one by one, a hole in human experience. Waiting for the system: life today is full of such pauses. The soft clacking of computer keys, then the voice on the telephone telling you, 'Just a moment, please.' The credit-card reader instructing you 'Remove card quickly!' then displaying 'Processing. Please wait.' The little hourglass icon on your computer screen reminding you how time is passing and there is nothing you can do about it. ... All the hours the computer is supposedly saving us--I don't believe it ... It has filled our lives with little wait states like this one, useless wait states, little slices of time in which you can't do anything at all but stand there, sit there, hold the phone--the sort of unoccupied slices of time no decent computer operating system would tolerate for itself."

Clearly, the author is someone well-versed in the intersection between human life and the cyber world, and what she has made of it here amounts to a very realistic horror story.

I didn't take the book back to the break room when I'd finished it. It's a keeper.