Book Review: Cryptonomicon
This book was on the best seller list over a decade ago, I only just now read it. That's OK it will probably be a classic 100 years from now, so being reviewed 10 years later is not a problem.
Rollicking Good Time
If you had just one takeaway from this review, it would be this:
Cryptonomicon
Time Thief
Dense does not begin to describe some of Neal Stephenson's writing. I wanted to read my normal speed, it just wasn't possible with much of this book. The author packs so much detail into a sentence that it can take some time to absorb it all, to make a mental picture.
900+ pages later, you could have read War and Peace or something. Don't worry, you won't resent a minute of it.
Slow Start
Give yourself about 75 pages to really get hooked. Up until that point, you'll really wonder why you're even reading the book. Neal Stephenson builds complex characters with several generations of history in this book, and in the beginning it feels as if he is not courteous of your sense of time.
You want him to move on with things, and instead he's building a foundation. Give him time. He will :)
Nerd As Action Hero
Viewing the world through the lens of a nerd as an action hero is truly a strange phenomenon, but that's much of what this work is about. It has real, non-nerdy action heroes too, but even they begin to look a little nerdy through the lens of this story.
Military History
It's a novel. It's about nerds. But what is interesting is you'll feel, after it's all over, as if you have read a military history. You'll definitely have a great sense of some aspects of World War II
Recommended
This book is definitely one you will enjoy reading. You'll learn a lot about how things work that you probably never thought about before, and it's fun read.
