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What are you reading?

imatlas

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Originally Posted by Pennglock
Which books of his exactly are worth reading?

A while back I picked up Cryptonomicon on a recomendation and couldn't finish it. Some of the encryption stuff was interesting but I thought his characters and plot were very weak. Immature would almost be the word to describe it. The situations felt like something a nerdy 17 year old boy would contrive if he were plotting a novel... Turned me off.

The book seemed like a poor-man's V.


Well, he never rises above top quality pulp fiction, but Snow Crash is pretty clearly his best work, followed by Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon. Everything he's written since then has been bloated and dull.

In the Beginning was the Command Line is an interesting polemic along the lines of "information wants to be free."
 

Matt

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Cold_Six_Thou.jpg
 

HgaleK

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Originally Posted by imatlas
Well, he never rises above top quality pulp fiction, but Snow Crash is pretty clearly his best work, followed by Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon. Everything he's written since then has been bloated and dull.

In the Beginning was the Command Line is an interesting polemic along the lines of "information wants to be free."


+1

Read Snow Crash if you want a fun read. It's not going make you think, but it's a great, easy read. The Diamond Age is more involving, but I'd make it my second read. I enjoyed Cryptonomicon, but had to slog through a few parts.
 

james_timothy

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I loved Anathem. Made me pick up Cryptonomicon and have another go at it. Got about 30 pages in and put it down.

But Anathem was great.

By the way, I just made a connection between Stephenson's Anathem and Jorge Luis Borges' "Garden of Forking Paths". Stephenson is riffing on that idea but includes the science fiction idea of activist participants.
 

otc

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Originally Posted by james_timothy
I loved Anathem. Made me pick up Cryptonomicon and have another go at it. Got about 30 pages in and put it down.

But Anathem was great.

By the way, I just made a connection between Stephenson's Anathem and Jorge Luis Borges' "Garden of Forking Paths". Stephenson is riffing on that idea but includes the science fiction idea of activist participants.


Anathem was great. A bit long, especially in the first act (I have seen a lot of comments that the editors gave him too much reign...but I don't know what I would cut without hurting the book), but great. I would still say snow crash was better but I would definitely like to read a third book by him.
 

imatlas

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Originally Posted by Matt
Cold_Six_Thou.jpg

Speaking of bloated and dull...Ellroy is another writer whose best years are behind him.
 

imatlas

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Originally Posted by james_timothy
I loved Anathem. Made me pick up Cryptonomicon and have another go at it. Got about 30 pages in and put it down. But Anathem was great. By the way, I just made a connection between Stephenson's Anathem and Jorge Luis Borges' "Garden of Forking Paths". Stephenson is riffing on that idea but includes the science fiction idea of activist participants.
I'd forgotten about Anathem. This was his best work in years, but would have been far better with tighter editing. There was far too much vague, borderline indecipherable philosophical meandering that didn't contribute to advancing the plot.
 

james_timothy

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Diamond Age is the poster child of books without endings- my description of it is that the plot flies off the end of the book, wires trailing behind.

He's really gotten a lot better at endings, but the endings aren't where the joy of reading Stephenson lies.
 

GQgeek

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Finished jane eyee and Reread brave new world and the Iliad over last couple weeks. Not sure what im gonna read next. Love my kindle; i get so much reading done with it.
 

imatlas

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Originally Posted by GQgeek
Finished jane eyee and Reread brave new world and the Iliad over last couple weeks. Not sure what im gonna read next. Love my kindle; i get so much reading done with it.

Whose translation of the Iliad? I read the Richard Lattimore version in college, but there are a couple of versions that have come out since then that I'm curious about.
 

GraphicNovelty

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Thank god for kindles.
 

imatlas

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Originally Posted by Connemara
I just started this today:

american_tabloid_20081109.jpg


The beginning of the end.
 

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